The earliest known archeological evidence of the social usage of cannabis by humans is from tombs excavated in Taiwan dating back to
10,000 years ago.
Religious texts and writings of various societies and cultures refer to the usage of the plant by the gods and its divine nature. The plant was an integral part of the
recreational activities of human societies worldwide until around the last 100 years. When officers of the
British East India Company arrived in
India in the
17th century, the usage of cannabis was widely prevalent and had been so for thousands of years. It was used by all religious communities, all sections of society and in all parts of the country.
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission's Report of 1894 is possibly the most detailed and largest study ever conducted on the social and religious use of cannabis. The Commission says the following with regard to the classes of people who used cannabis. One thing that stands out is the perception that cannabis was a drug of the lower classes. Most of the witnesses for the commission belonged to, or aspired to belong to, the upper classes and the inherent bias that these people had against the majority of the people comes out in the passage. It also shows that by and large, usage was moderate and not excessive or problematic.
Classes who use the drugs as stimulants.
'488. There are few, if any, classes of the community some members of which do not use hemp drugs in some form. There are religious objections to the use of intoxicants by Muhammadans, and these deter such of this class as are orthodox from indulging in these drugs. Many of the Hindus who are both orthodox and respectable consider it contrary to their religion to indulge in these or any other intoxicants, though many of the same class also believe that they may, at least occasionally at feasts, take bhang. Orthodox Sikhs do not smoke, and therefore regard ganja and charas as prohibited, though they do not see the same religious objection to drinking bhang. These are illustrations of classes which generally abstain. Members even of these classes are, however, found among the consumers of these drugs. It may be said probably with safety that there is no class of the community that does not to some extent partake of these drugs. At the same time consumption is in the main confined to particular classes. Ganja or charas is chiefly used by (I) "religious" persons, such as fakirs and wandering mendicants, sadhus and pandahs, the followers of Trinath, and other sects; (2) the lower classes of both Hindus and Muhammadans, such as artizans and cultivators, fishermen and boatmen, palki-bearers and day labourers, sepoys and night watchmen, wrestlers and athletes, Chamars and Domes, and others of the lower orders; (3) domestic servants of all kinds, especially those who, as syces, durwans, or dhobis, have especially trying work to do; (4) aborigines of different races, such as Sonthals, Gonds, and many more; (5) tradesmen, Kayasths, and others of the lower middle classes. These are among the classes specially mentioned by witnesses as smoking hemp drugs. Among the upper classes this habit is generally regarded as exceptional and indicating a special tendency to dissipation, but not so among these lower classes. Bhang is also used to some extent by these classes, but is more generally used by the more respectable middle and upper classes. Among those who are specially mentioned as habitually using it are Marwaris, Banias, and jewellers, sharp, intelligent, and successful tradesmen. Bhang is also occasionally used more or less generally by practically all classes on certain feast days and at times of social rejoicing. Like all intoxicants everywhere, the drugs are used in moderation, but more frequently to excess, by licentious and dissipated persons of all classes. Except, however, in the case of religious mendicants, the use by all the classes named above is generally moderate. Excess is exceptional.'
Places in India where cannabis was used
There was hardly any part of the country where its usage was not prevalent. It was an integral part of the country's social, religious and cultural norms, widely revered by all. Highlighting some of the places, the occasions and communities using cannabis, the Report says the following:
'Bengal
432. In Bengal there is a considerable body of evidence dealing with these customs, and more particularly with the custom of offering an infusion of bhang on the last day of the Durga Puja. Some few witnesses, it is true, state either that no social or religious custom with which hemp drugs are connected exists, or that they are unaware of any such custom; but the great majority of the witnesses either give an account of them more or less full, or allude to them briefly as matters of common notoriety.
Assam.
438. In Assam, where the use of hemp drugs is but little practised by the Assamese proper, there appear to be no indigenous customs connected with the drugs. But the customs prevailing in Bengal are also found in Assam. There is evidence as to the use of bhang or siddhi at the Durga Puja, and of ganja by the worshippers of Siva. In Sylhet the Trinath form of worship appears to prevail to a considerable extent. With reference to this practice, one witness (Prasanno Kumar Das) observes that " in the Surma Valley ganja is offered in the name of Pir (Muhammadan saint) for the benefit of the cattle."
North-Western Provinces.
439. In the North-Western Provinces, where the celebration of the Durga Puja is not so generally observed as in Bengal, a considerable number of witnesses (some fifty in all) state that there are no customs, religious or social, with which these drugs are connected. But, on the other hand, there is overwhelming evidence to establish the almost universal use by the people of bhang at the Holi festival, and some evidence as to the common use of ganja by certain classes of the followers of Siva at their festivals and seasons of worship. Of the witnesses who speak to the use of ganja in connection with religious observances, 22 state that it is essential and 92 that it is not essential. As to whether the use of bhang should be regarded as a purely social custom or as essential to religious observance, the opinion of witnesses who speak on the point is about equally divided. It is sufficient to say that the custom is now a general one, and that where the Holi festival is observed, there the practice of consuming bhang during its observance is common. On other occasions, such as the Diwali festival, marriages, and family festivities, there is evidence to show that among certain classes the consumption of bhang is common. Allusion is also frequently made to the habit of using bhang, to which, for example, the Chaubes of Mathra and Brindaban are notoriously addicted, but how far the habit is connected with the religious observances at the temples the evidence does not justify the formation of an opinion. A custom is mentioned by a Kumaon witness, Dharma Nand Joshi, who states that a class of people called Kouls, who worship spirits, meat, fish, etc., have the bhang plant as one of the objects of their worship.
Punjab.
440. In the Punjab there is evidence as to the general use of hemp by some of the followers of Siva, and especially of bhang, at the Holi, Dasehra, Diwali, and other festivals, and on the occasion of marriages and other family festivities. Among the Sikhs the use of bhang as a beverage appears to be common, and to be associated with their religious practices. The witnesses who refer to this use by the Sikhs appear to regard it as an essential part of their religious rites having the authority of the Granth or Sikh scripture. Witness Sodhi Iswar Singh, Extra Assistant Commissioner, says:— "As far as I know, bhang is pounded by the Sikhs on the Dasehra day, and it is ordinarily binding upon every Sikh to drink it as a sacred draught by mixing water with it.
"Legend—Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru, the founder of the Sikh religion, was on the gaddi of Baba Nanak in the time of Emperor Aurangzeb. When the guru was at Anandpur, tahsil Una, Hoshiarpur district, engaged in battle with the Hill Rajas of the Simla, Kangra, and the Hoshiarpur districts, the Rajas sent an elephant, who was trained in attacking and slaying the forces of the enemy with a sword in his trunk and in breaking open the gates of forts, to attack and capture the Lohgarh fort near Anandpur. The guru gave one of his followers, Bachittar Singh, some bhang and a little of opium to eat, and directed him to face the said elephant. This brave man obeyed the word of command of his leader and attacked the elephant, who was intoxicated and had achieved victories in several battles before, with the result that the animal was overpowered and the Hill Rajas defeated. The use of bhang, therefore, on the Dasehra day is necessary as a sacred draught. It is customary among the Sikhs generally to drink bhang, so that Guru Gobind Singh has himself said the following poems in praise of bhang: 'Give me, O Saki (butler), a cup of green colour (bhang), as it is required by me at the time of battle' (vide 'Suraj Parkash,' the Sikh religious book). "Bhang is also used on the Chandas day, which is a festival of the god Sheoji Mahadeva. The Sikhs consider it binding to use it on the Dasehra day. The quantity then taken is too small to prove injurious." As Sikhs are absolutely prohibited by their religion from smoking, the use of ganja and charas in this form is not practised by them. A unique custom of dispensing bhang at a religious charitable institution is that mentioned by witness Baba Kirpa Singh. The institution, as a relic of old Sikh times, is annually permitted to collect without interference a boat load of bhang, which is afterwards distributed throughout the year to the sadhus and beggars who are supported by the dharamsala.
Central Provinces.
441. The evidence as to social or religious customs in the Central Provinces is somewhat discrepant, but on the whole points to the existence of customs akin to those existing in the North-Western Provinces. The use of bhang at the Holi and Diwali festivals and at marriages and such occasions, and of ganja or bhang in connection with the worship of Siva, is frequently mentioned by the witnesses. A few local customs are also mentioned by some witnesses. Regarding a custom of the Chamar caste, the Rev. Mr. Jacob says: "At Chanda, the Chamars use ganja dust in the preparation of a beverage called gulabpani, which is drunk at a ceremony called dadhi (the first shaving of the beard), when no liquor is permitted." Among the Gonds, Cowasjee Nusserwanjee Hattidaru describes the following custom as existing: "In the funeral ceremony amongst the Gonds of these provinces, kalli or flat ganja is placed over the chest of the dead body of the Gond, and when the funeral party returns home, a little of the ganja is burnt in the house of the dead person, the smoke of which is supposed to reach the spirit of the dead." Another Satpura witness, Hosen Khan, mentions a custom of offering "a little ganja at the Chitarai Debis, or collections of stones with rags tied to some tree above. They offer either a cock or a cocoanut or some ganja. It is a custom among travellers. These Chitarai Debis are in the open, and the travellers have a smoke at the same time." One witness states that he has heard of the hemp plant being worshipped in the Berars, but this is not corroborated by any of the witnesses from these districts. Another has heard that the Gonds in their hill homes are worshippers of the plant.
Madras.
442. In the Madras Presidency, where the use of hemp drugs is less common than in most other provinces, many witnesses assert that there are no customs, social or religious, with which they are connected, and the evidence as a whole fails to establish the prevalence of any customs so general as those connected with the Durga Puja and the worship of Siva in Bengal or the Holi festival in the North-Western Provinces. But there is evidence as to the existence of customs of a less general or widespread nature. In Ganjam, the witnesses speak to the, common use of bhang on the Mesha Sankranti day in honour of Siva and Anjanayya, and also in the worship of Durga. Several also allude to a custom of offering a confection or draught containing bhang to the image at the temples of Hanuman. At the festival of Kama, the Indian cupid, bhang is freely made and drunk according to several witnesses. The Rajputs or Bondilis are particularly referred to in connection with this custom. On occasions of holidays or galadays, and at the Mohurram, a number of witnesses say it is usual for Muhammadans as well as Hindus to take bhang. It is also said that various intoxicants, including ganja, are sometimes offered to the gods in worship, and then swallowed by those offering them. Witness M. Sundaram Iyer, Deputy Tahsildar (60), says: "Some of the lower orders make use of ganja as an offering, like cocoanut, plantains, liquor, and such other articles, for certain deities, such as Mathuraveeran, Muniappan, etc., according to the vow taken by each person. This cannot be considered as essential, but is only a practice observed in very rare cases. Such practice is not followed by many people, and it is not injurious.' Others allude to the offering of ganja to Karuppannam, Kali, Mathuraveeran, Muniappan, Karuannaswami, and Aiyaswami, more particularly in the south of the Presidency. Mr. Azizuddin, Sahib Bahadur, Deputy Collector, says: " Neither the Musalman nor the Hindu religion requires the use of these drugs on religious occasions. On the other hand, it is prohibited. Nevertheless, in the maths of bairagis, such as at Tripati, and of Muhammadan saints, such as at Nagore, Conjeveram, Arcot, and other places, the manager of the shrine distributes ganja to all the fakirs who assemble during the festival. In none of these places, religiously speaking, ganja should be distributed, but, according to custom among the fakirs, its distribution is essential." The Rev. Mr. Campbell says that ganja is used in connection with the funeral ceremonies observed by certain classes, but that the use is not essential. Mr. Merriman alludes to a custom of offering and consuming bhang at the funeral of bhang consumers.
Bombay.
443. An interesting note, entitled " The Religion of Hemp," by Mr. J. M. Campbell, C.I.E., will be found in Vol. III Appendices. In the Bombay Presidency the use of hemp in, connection with the worship of Siva, Mahadev or Shankar appears to be very common. It is referred to by many witnesses. The following description of this custom as prevailing in part of Gujarat, Kaira, and probably Ahmedabad has been furnished to the Excise Commissioner by Mr. B. E. Modi, Deputy Collector:— " On the Shivratri day (the last day but one of the month of Magh), sacred to the god Mahadev or Shankar, bhang water is freely poured over the lingam. Mahadev is an ascetic, and is fond of bhang, and on this day it is considered a religious duty to offer him his favourite drink. From this day to the nth day of Ashad, on which day gods go to sleep, water is kept constantly dripping upon the lingam of Mahadev from an earthen pot kept above it." Somewhat similar accounts varying in detail are given by many witnesses coming from different parts of the province, of whom some also refer to the habit which ganja smokers have of invoking the deity before placing the pipe to their lips. Others also refer to hemp as required in the worship of Baldeo and to its use at the Shimga or Holi festival. The Marwaris and some other classes appear to use bhang at marriages and other festivities. Mr. Charles, Collector of Belgaum, says that among Musalmans and Marathas the ganja plant is offered to dead relatives who used it in their lifetime at the time of the anniversary ceremonies of their death. There appears to be no special custom of worshipping the hemp plant itself. R. K. Kothavale, of Satara district, says the hemp plant is worshipped by one sect only, namely, by people from Northern India and Nepal, while Mr. Lamb, Collector of Alibag, remarks that some of the Kunbis who make offerings to the local divinities of their fields at the harvest season include a small quantity of ganja in the offerings.
Sind.
444. In Sind the customs, both religious and social, appear to be much the same as in Bombay. In Karachi and some other places bhang is generally offered to all comers on occasions of marriages, panchayats, and other gatherings; and the custom of freely distributing bhang as a charity to all who care to partake is common both at temples and at other places of resort.
Berar.
445. In Berar there is evidence as to the use both of ganja and bhang at the Shivratri and Holi festivals and at social gatherings. The hemp plant itself is not worshipped, but, according to one witness, when a consumer dies, the plant is kept near his corpse during the funeral ceremony.
Ajmere-Merwara.
446. At the Holi and the Shivratri and at family festivities the drugs, especially bhang, are used.
Baluchistan.
447. Major Gaisford, Deputy Commissioner, states that among the Hindu sect called Bam Bargis the consumption of bhang is regarded as essential.
Native States.
448. From Native States there is but little information regarding customs, either social or religious, with which these drugs are connected. No purely local or indigenous customs have been brought to the notice of the Commission, but there is sufficient information to show that practices similar to those existing in British provinces at the Holi and Shivratri festivals and on occasions of family rejoicings are observed by certain classes of the people in many Native States. '
Occasions on which cannabis was used.
Cannabis was used across various occasions. Besides the frequent usage of cannabis among groups of regular users who met at evenings at common village meeting places, similar to the culture of the local pub in Europe, there were a number of key festivals or occasions where cannabis was used by the entire family as detailed below. Cannabis formed a part of funeral rituals as well among certain communities.
'433. The custom of offering an infusion of the leaves of the hemp plant to every guest and member of the family on the Bijoya Dasami, or last day of the Durga Puja, is common in Bengal, and may almost be said to be universal. It is alluded to by many of the witnesses who refer to its use on this occasion as well as on other days of the Durga Puja festival. But, while there can be no doubt as to the existence of the custom, there is considerable divergence of opinion as to the true nature of it. The custom itself is a simple one. On the last day of this great festival the male members of the family go forth to consign the image to the waters, and on their return the whole family with their guests exchange greetings and embrace one another. During this rejoicing a cup containing an infusion of the leaves of the hemp plant is handed round, and all are expected to partake thereof, or at least to place it to the lips in token of acceptance. Sweetmeats containing hemp are also distributed. Opinion is almost equally divided as to whether the custom is a mere social observance, or whether it is an essential part of the religious ceremonial of the festival. There is difference of opinion among the witnesses as to whether there is any injunction in the Shastras rendering obligatory the consumption of hemp; but Tantric religious works sanction the use, and the custom, whatever be its origin, may now be said from immemorial usage to be regarded by many people as part of their religious observances. From the evidence of the witnesses it would appear that there is no specific direction in the Shastras of the manner in which the drug should be used, but from the references quoted it would appear that the use alluded to is that of bhang in the form of an infusion. Witnesses who can speak with authority on the subject, such as Mahamahopadhya Mahesa Chandra Nyayaratna, C.I.E., Principal of the Government Sanskrit College, Calcutta, testify to religious sanction for the use of bhang or siddhi, while many witnesses of high social position, well acquainted with the habits of the people, as, for example, Maharaja Sir Jotindra Mohan Tagore, K.C.S.I., Maharaja Durga Charan Law, Raja Piari Mohan Mukharji, C.S.I., Rai Rajkumar Sarvadhikari Bahadur, Rai Bahadur Kanai Lall Dey, C.I.E., and others, speak to the prevalence of the custom, its intimate association with the religious devotions of the people, and the innocent harmlessness of the practice.
434. The custom described above, and which refers solely to bhang as distinguished from other preparations of the hemp plant, is the most important occasion on which bhang is used as a part of social or religious ceremonies; but there is evidence to show that the drug in this form is used at other festivals. For example, at the Holi festival, which is observed more generally in Behar than in other parts of the Lower Provinces, bhang is commonly consumed; and, according to many witnesses, at such festivals as the Diwali, Chait Sankranti, Pous Sankranti, Sripanchami, Sivachaturdasi, Ramnavami, and indeed on occasions of weddings and many other family festivities. But, so far as the evidence shows, the use on those occasions is a matter of social custom observed more generally in some parts of the province than in others, and, although no doubt there may be some who consider it essential to their devotions, partaking but little of the nature of general religious observance. In Orissa bhang is largely used by the attendants and worshippers at the temple of Jagannath at Puri; and there appears also to exist a custom, somewhat similar to that of the Durga Puja in Bengal, of offering siddhi or bhang in the form of sweetmeats to the god Ganesh, which are then eaten by the worshippers and their friends and relatives. This festival, called the Ganesh Chaturthi, occurs in the month of Bhadro (August-September).
435. It is chiefly in connection with the worship of Siva, the Mahadeo or great god of the Hindu trinity, that the hemp plant, and more especially perhaps ganja, is associated. The hemp plant is popularly believed to have been a great favourite of Siva, and there is a great deal of evidence before the Commission to show that the drug in some form or other is now extensively used in the exercise of the religious practices connected with this form of worship. Reference to the almost universal use of hemp drugs by fakirs, jogis, sanyasis, and ascetics of all classes, and more particularly of those devoted to the worship of Siva, will be found in the paragraphs of this report dealing with the classes of the people who consume the drugs. These religious ascetics, who are regarded with great veneration by the people at large, believe that the hemp plant is a special attribute of the god Siva, and this belief is largely shared by the people. Hence the origin of many fond epithets ascribing to ganja the significance of a divine property, and the common practice of invoking the deity in terms of adoration before placing the chillum or pipe of ganja to the lips. There is evidence to show that on almost all occasions of the worship of this god, the hemp drugs in some form or other are used by certain classes of the people. It is established by the evidence of Mahamahopadhya Mahesa Chandra Nyayaratna and of other witnesses that siddhi is offered to the image of Siva at Benares, Baidynath, Tarakeswar, and elsewhere. At the Shivratri festival, and on almost all occasions on which this worship is practised, there is abundant evidence before the Commission which shows not only that ganja is offered to the god and consumed by these classes of the worshippers, but that these customs are so intimately connected with their worship that they may be considered to form in some sense an integral part of it.
436. The special form of worship by the followers of Siva, called the Trinath or Tinnath Mela, in which the use of ganja is considered to be essential, is mentioned by many witnesses, and deserves more than a passing notice. A full account of this religious practice given by Babu Abhilas Chandra Mukharji will be found in Vol. III Appendices of this Report. The origin of the rite, which it is said sprang up first in Eastern Bengal, appears to be of recent date, about the year 1867. It appears to be observed at all times and at all seasons by Hindus and Muhammadans alike, the latter calling it Tinlakh Pir. When an object of special desire is fulfilled, or when a person recovers from illness, or a son is born, or a marriage or other ceremony is performed, the god Trinath, representing in one the Hindu trinity, is worshipped. Originally one pice worth of ganja, one pice worth of oil, and one pice worth of betel-nut was offered to the god. But now ganja—it may be in large quantities—is proffered, and during the incantations and the performance of the ritual it is incumbent on all present to smoke. This form of worship is shown to have spread extensively throughout Eastern Bengal and the Surma Valley of Assam, and, according to one witness, it has penetrated even to Orissa. On the other hand, there are a few witnesses who say [that the practice is gradually dying out. '
Besides the use of the cannabis plant for recreational and religious purposes, there are a few instances where the plant itself was worshiped.
'Worship of the hemp plant.
449. The custom of worshipping the hemp plant, although not so prevalent as that of offering hemp to Siva and other deities of the Hindus, would nevertheless appear from the statements of the witnesses to exist to some extent in some provinces of India. The reason why this fact is not generally known may perhaps be gathered from such statements as that of Pandit Dharma Nand Joshi, who says that such worship is performed in secret. There may be another cause of the denial on the part of the large majority of Hindu witnesses of any knowledge of the existence of a custom of worshipping the hemp plant in that the educated Hindu will not admit that he worships the material object of his adoration, but the deity as represented by it. The custom of worshipping the hemp plant, though not confined to the Himalayan districts or the northern portions of India alone, where the use of the products of the hemp plant is more general among the people, is less known as we go south. Still even far south, in some of the hilly districts of the Madras Presidency and among the rural population, the hemp plant is looked upon with some sort of veneration. Mr. J. H. Merriman (witness No. 28, Madras) says: "I know of no custom of worshipping the hemp plant, but believe it is held in a certain sort of veneration by some classes." Mr. J. Sturrock, the Collector of Coimbatorc (witness No. 2, Madras), says: "In some few localities there is a tradition of sanctity attached to the plant, but no regular worship." The Chairman of the Conjeveram Municipal Board, Mr. E. Subramana Iyer (witness No. 143, Madras), says: "There is no plant to be worshipped here, but it is generally used as sacrifices to some of the minor Hindu deities." There is a passage quoted from Rudrayamal Danakand and Karmakand in the report on the use of hemp drugs in the Baroda State, which also shows that the worship of the bhang plant is enjoined in the Shastras. It is thus stated: "The god Shiva says to Parvati— 'Oh, goddess Parvati, hear the benefits derived from bhang. The worship of bhang raises one to my position,' etc." In Bhabishya Puran it is stated that "on the 13th moon of Chaitra (March and April) one who wishes to see the number of his sons and grandsons increased must worship Kama (Cupid) in the hemp plant, etc." '
In spite of this widespread and pervasive use of cannabis, it was not a menace or evil to society but a part of the essential social fabric of the country, unlike today when the propaganda around the plant's evils is so great. This is clearly evident from the following passage that states that usage was so normal that most of the witnesses for the Hemp Commission were scarcely aware of its usage among such a wide proportion of the population. This ignorance regarding the extent of cannabis usage also indicates that many of the witnesses and experts who went on to recommend the regulation of cannabis, had almost no idea of the wide disruption that it would cause among the many communities that used the plant for various reasons.
'496. The impressions which the evidence leaves on the mind are these. The evil results from the use of the drugs, whether moderate or excessive, have not hitherto obtruded themselves on observation. The only manner in which they have really attracted attention is in respect to asylum statistics. Apart from this, the majority of witnesses have not seen the effects at all, and know nothing about them. Of the minority, a few witnesses only have had their attention drawn to the effects before this inquiry began; the rest knew nothing of them until they began to search them out on receipt of the questions issued by the Commission. '
The plant grew freely in public spaces, in nature and in people's gardens.
Drinks,
sweetmeats and
medicines made from the plant were commonly used. European
alcohol, tobacco and
pharmaceutical companies, as well as the
opium industry, immediately sensed the threat from cannabis and over a couple of centuries succeeded in getting cannabis prohibited in India, which was by then a British colony completely under the control of the Empire. A plant whose recreational use was comparable to the use of beer in Europe was banned without a second thought for its widespread users. In summing uo its chapter on the social use of cannabis, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission says the following:
- 'In summing up their conclusions on this chapter, the Commission would first remark that charas, which is a comparatively new article of consumption, has not been shown to be in any way connected with religious observance. As regards Northern India, the Commission are of opinion that the use of bhang is more or less common everywhere in connection with the social and religious customs of the people. As regards ganja, they find that there are certain classes in all parts, except the Punjab, who use the drug in connection with their social and religious observances. The Commission are also of opinion in regard to bhang that its use is considered essential in some religious observances by a large section of the community, and in regard to ganja that those who consider it essential are comparatively very few.' - Ch.9 Social And Religious Customs, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895, https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
- 'The Commission have little doubt that interference with the use of hemp in connection with the customs and observances above referred to would be regarded by the consumers as an interference with long established usage and as an encroachment upon their religious liberty. ' - Ch.9 Social And Religious Customs, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895, https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
The story is more or less the same the world over where governments
influenced by the alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical and opium industries
got the plant banned, with no small assistance from the US, who had now
taken over the mantle of cannabis enemy number one from colonial
Britain, along with Britain's aspiration for world domination.
Currently unhindered social usage of the plant exists only in a few places. These are among tribes and indigenous communities in the deep forests and remote hill regions of places like South America, Africa, the Caribbean and Asia. In most other places the plant is no longer a part of the social and cultural life. Not only that, the plant and
its users have been vilified, ostracized and even killed. Today to be a
cannabis user in most societies worldwide is to be looked upon
as a criminal, an insane person or the worst dregs of society. Usage promptly brings social and
legal retribution accompanied by fear and scorn. Cannabis has become the untouchable of the plant world and its users the new untouchables of human society. Such has been the effectiveness with which the plant has been stigmatized and suppressed.
In the meantime, our societies have adopted
alcohol,
tobacco,
pharmaceutical drugs, methamphetamine,
synthetic cannabinoids,
novel psychotropic substances(NPS), and
opioid based recreational drugs like heroin to replace cannabis as a social release. These alternatives are looked upon as indicators of refinement, deep medical knowledge and high social standing. The higher the price you pay for the drug, the greater your standing and respect in society. Millions have died from these alternatives, huge criminal and terror networks have been funded by these alternatives, but they are a honored and respected part of modern human society, found commonly among the 'elites', the very classes that remained ignorant of cannabis and expressed active support for its prohibition. People these days would rather be seen dead with any of these synthetic drugs than alive with cannabis, the drug of the lower class. Over 70,000 people died in the US in 2017 of opioid overdose. Every year millions die through alcohol and tobacco related deaths.
Fortunately for human society, some
individuals have managed to retain their sanity and sustain the cannabis plant through all this madness. Slowly, as some parts of society start to regain consciousness, a trickle of people around the world have started to go back to the
historical,
natural,
medicinal,
recreational plant as a social drug once again. This is starting to grow into a steady stream with the advent of improved communication, usage by people of social standing, reports of the damage caused by the dangerous alternatives, reports of the medicinal benefits, reports of the long tradition and widespread usage of cannabis and the emerging legalization of the plant in some parts of the world such as the US,
Canada and
Uruguay, as a result of
grassroots based social movements.
One of the main pushes of these social movements is to change the perception of cannabis usage from being treated as criminal behavior to it being treated as normal social behavior, or normalization. Individuals are starting to express their right to freedom over what they put in their own bodies and what they choose as their means of recreation, instead of being dictated to by the state and society, often based on intolerant, selfish, rigid and illogical social norms that aim to protect the economically elite classes and
big businesses. Cannabis is among the safest recreational drugs in the world, much safer than the current legal drugs,
alcohol and
tobacco. In places where it has been legalized,
the elderly are the fastest growing age segment in terms of cannabis usage and not
the youth, as it is feared. Other groups that have long suffered by being deprived of cannabis, who are finding great benefit through its legalization are
women,
minorities, the poor, indigenous communities,
the ill,
sports persons and
army veterans, to name just a few groups The usage however is across all demographics as cannabis is
universal medicine. Cannabis
tourism,
events,
consumption lounges,
cooking,
beverages,
wellness,
food, etc are just some of the social contexts in which the long vilified but highly versatile plant is making its comeback.
Working in the cannabis industry and the usage of
cannabis in the workplace these days is becoming more the norm than a crime.
How far the cannabis revival movement spreads and whether the plant once again finds its revered status in societies worldwide remains to be seen. This may well be a key measure of the level of sanity of human societies today.
The following set of articles taken from news media and scientific journals explore the social usage, context and status of cannabis in human society in the past as well as today. Studies are from limited parts of the world as most places still view the plant as antisocial and something to be shunned.
Words in italics are comments and thoughts of yours truly that occurred during the reading of the respective articles.
'In the 17th century, English travelers, merchants, and physicians were
first introduced to cannabis, particularly in the form of
bhang,
an intoxicating edible which had been getting Indians high for
millennia. Benjamin Breen charts the course of the drug from the streets
of Machilipatnam to the scientific circles of London.'
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/how-the-english-found-cannabis/
'Fifty years ago, cannabis was known as the drug most emblematic of
counterculture. Today, many people promote it as a fount of treatments
for almost any ailment imaginable. This immense about-turn is reflected
in changes in legal regimes: medicinal use of cannabis is now permitted
in many countries, and some also allow the drug to be used
recreationally. The times, they have a-changed.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02523-6'In 1937, weed was placed under the Harrison Narcotics Act. Narcotics authorities claim it is a habit-forming drug, that its use is injurious to mind and body, and that it causes the people who use it to commit crimes. Here are the facts: Weed is positively not habit forming. You can smoke weed for years and you will experience no discomfort if your supply is cut off. I have seen tea heads in jail and none of them showed withdrawal symptoms. I have smoked weed myself off and on for fifteen years, and never missed it when I ran out. There is less habit to weed than there is to tobacco. Weed does not harm the general health. In fact. most users claim it gives you an appetite and acts as a tonic to the system. I do not know of any other agent that gives as definite a boot to the appetite. I can smoke a stick of tea and enjoy a glass of California sherry and a hash house meal.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
So governments, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical industry cut off the supply of natural intoxicants like cannabis, opium, coca and palm toddy. They create refined and much more potent extracts from these natural materials. They control the supply and stock of these chemical drugs. They use the doctor-pharmacist route to administer these drugs to the public legally and the peddler-narcotics agent-rehabilitation center route to administer these drugs illegally. The individual is not allowed to grow or procure these intoxicants from nature. He must rely on the system to get his intoxicant and pay the maximum price for it. To realize more and more profits the system creates more and more potent chemical intoxicants moving further and further away from natural territory into synthetic chemically constructed territory. As the toxicity and addictive power of these drugs increase, the public gets addicted to an even greater extent and pays even more for any available intoxicant. Profits rise and fuel the growth of the system tremendously. The individual pays for the system, pays for the synthetic drug, pays for the treatment which is further synthetic drugs and eventually pays with his life for the synthetic intoxicant. Legalize all natural drugs - opium, coca, cannabis and toddy to name a few. Most importantly, legalize cannabis, the universal drug of the world...
'The victim is always and ever the deceived, foolish, working folk - those who with blistered hands have built all those ships, fortresses, arsenals, barracks, cannon, harbours, steamers, and moles, and all these palaces, halls, platforms, and triumphal arches; who have set up and printed all these newspapers and pamphlets, and have procured and brought all these pheasants and ortolans, oysters, and wines that are consumed by the men who are fed, brought up, and kept by them, and who are deceiving them and preparing the most fearful calamities for them. It is always the same kindly, foolish folk, who stand open-mouthed like children, showing their healthy white teeth, naively delighted by dressed-up admirals and presidents with flags waving above them, and by fireworks and bands of music; and for whom, before they have time to look around, there will be neither admirals nor presidents nor flags nor bands, but only a desolate battlefield, cold, hunger, and anguish - before them murderous enemies and behind them relentless officers preventing their escape - blood, wounds, suffering, putrefying corpses, and a senseless unnecessary death.'
Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
Cannabis meets all these criteria plus it it naturally growing worldwide and has been used for tens of thousands of years...no need for a new drug, we just need to bring it back..reefer madness had clouded even Huxley's mind at the time that this was written...
'What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short. Such a drug must be potent in minute doses and synthesizable. If it does not possess these qualities, its production, like that of wine, beer, spirits and tobacco will interfere with the raising of indispensible food and fibres. It must be less toxic than opium or cocaine, less likely to produce undesirable social consequences than alcohol or the barbiturates, less inimical to the heart and lungs than the tars and nicotine of cigarettes. And, on the positive side, it should produce changes in consciousness more interesting, more intrinsically valuable than mere sedation or dreaminess, delusions of impotence or release from inhibition.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'For years, the popular image of cannabis growers has been scruffy hippies getting high on their own supply in a disorganized underground economy, rather than shiny white industrial agriculture facilities. Even larger-scale operations involved minimal quality control or lacked formal record keeping.
But as legal medical — and increasingly, recreational — cannabis becomes more widespread, the cannabis industry is becoming more professional. By adopting the methods and rigour of plant science and analytical chemistry, it is ensuring that it can produce safe, consistent and high-quality products for a fast-growing and lucrative market.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02527-2'The stereotypical image of a cannabis smoker is someone who sprawls on the sofa for hours surrounded by a haze of smoke and half-eaten snacks. The scene is played up for laughs in films, but social psychologist Angela Bryan thought it could be cause for concern. After all, cannabis is known to increase appetite and aid relaxation, which might put people at risk of health conditions such as obesity, says Bryan, who is at the University of Colorado Boulder.
But digging into health trends revealed the opposite. Nationwide US studies report that, compared to non-users, cannabis users actually have a lower prevalence of obesity.'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02529-0
'Tea heads are not like junkies. A junkie hands you the money, takes his junk and cuts. But tea heads don't do things that way. They expect the peddler to light them up and sit around talking for half an hour to sell two dollars worth of weed. If you come right to the point, they say you are a "bring down." In fact, a peddler should not come right out and say he is a peddler. No, he just scores for a few good "cats and "chicks" because he is viperish. Everyone knows that he himself is the connection, but it is bad form to say so. God knows why. To me, tea heads are unfathomable.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'For many adults, researchers say, moderate use is probably fine. “I compare it to alcohol,” says Earl Miller, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory in Cambridge. “Too much or the wrong situation can be bad, but in other situations it can be beneficial. I think we’re going to find the same thing with cannabis.”'
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02530-7'And no matter the outcome, the study will do little to curb people selling CBD products. If the pudding does do something, CBD oil brands will have a paper to add to their marketing arsenal. If the special puddling doesn’t do anything for people with chronic pain, it will be easy to ignore; manufacturers can easily word claims about products’ benefits vaguely enough to avoid out-and-out false advertising. But more importantly, once something is in the public imagination as being useful, it’s hard to oust it. CBD has benefited from early studies that suggest legitimate uses from pain management to anxiety to insomnia. It doesn’t matter much that these are typically small, and often in rodents. There’s also the simple fact that it comes from marijuana; that it would do something positive seems logical, in the same way that buying face creams boasting antioxidants seems logical, even though they may only wind up being present in trace amounts. One only really has to note that a product has CBD in order to sell it. '
https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/unfortunately-the-cbd-horse-is-pretty-definitively-out-of-the-barn-so-to-speak.html'With 332% growth year-on-year and $52 million in sales, cannabidiol (CBD) has taken the top spot as the best-selling herbal supplement in the natural channel, according to the 2018 HerbalGram Herb Market Report by the American Botanical Council.'
https://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Article/2019/09/23/CBD-supplement-sales-rocket-to-take-top-spot-in-the-US-natural-channel
'In addition to the continued and “dramatic” capital inflow into the cannabis industry, Kagia noted a “dramatic reassessment of cannabis's place in society and the escalation of the legalization debate in capitals and local communities across the country.” Although legislative roadblocks still hobble some states, such as New York and New Jersey, from moving ahead with legalization, public support and pressure notwithstanding, right now, the issue has assumed great importance in the political landscape. Nearly every Democratic presidential candidate “has affirmed support for some measure of federal cannabis policy reform, adding to the likelihood of a substantial policy debate during the 2020 election cycle," added Kagia. With a majority of Americans supporting legalization, according to the latest Gallup poll, and “support among younger voters being dramatically higher than that of older voters, the trend toward a more accepting view of cannabis will be generational.”'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/irisdorbian/2019/09/24/new-cannabis-report-predicts-legal-sales-to-reach-nearly-30-billion-by-2025/'After discussing the data limitations of the study, the authors concluded that “it indeed seems to be the case that legalizing the recreational use of marijuana results in fewer marijuana related arrests and court cases” and that while law enforcement sources voiced various concerns, several “indicated that methamphetamine and heroin were much larger problems for their agencies than was marijuana.”
The team “saw no evidence that marijuana legalization had an impact on indicators in border states,” adding that they “found no indications of increases in arrests related to transportation/trafficking offenses.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/study-funded-by-feds-debunks-myths-about-marijuana-legalizations-alleged-harms/'Safety First: Real Drug Education for Teens is the nation’s first harm reduction-based drug education curriculum for high school teachers. The free curriculum consists of 15 lessons that can be completed in a 45- to 50-minute class period.
Each lesson is designed to engage students through interactive activities such as discussions and role-playing. The curriculum is aligned with National Health Education Standards as well as Common Core State Standards so it can be easily integrated into Health classes. '
http://www.drugpolicy.org/resource/safety-first-real-drug-education-teens
'Tea heads are gregarious, they are sensitive, and they are paranoiac. If you get to be known as a 'drag" or a "bring down", you can't do business with them. I soon found out I couldn't get along with these characters and I was glad to find someone to take the tea off my hands at cost. I decided right then I would never push any more tea.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'The study, published in the journal Justice Quarterly and funded by the federal National Institute of Justice, found that violent and property crimes rates were not affected in a statistically significant way in the years after Colorado and Washington State became the first in the nation to legalize marijuana for adult use.
“Our results suggest that marijuana legalization and sales have had minimal to no effect on major crimes in Colorado or Washington,” the paper concluded. “We observed no statistically significant long-term effects of recreational cannabis laws or the initiation of retail sales on violent or property crime rates in these states.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/marijuana-legalization-doesnt-cause-increased-crime-federally-funded-study-finds/'Marijuana activist and poet John Sinclair, although older now at 78, is no less the rebel he was in 1969.
“I knew they were going to be after me, but you can’t let them determine your life,” he said of his 1971 release from prison for possession of two joints.
About 9:49 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 1, at Arbors Wellness in Ann Arbor with a happy line of hundreds wrapped around the block, Sinclair made what was likely the first-ever licensed recreational retail marijuana sale in Michigan.'
https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2019/12/activist-and-poet-john-sinclair-among-first-to-purchase-legal-recreational-marijuana-in-michigan-50-years-after-his-historic-arrest.html'They are the latest generation of bioplastics, which are plastic materials produced from renewable sources such as agricultural by-products, straw, wood chips, sawdust and recycled food waste -- and now hemp.
Hemp seems to satisfy some plant-based plastics researchers looking for alternatives to plastic waste that has filled landfills and oceans.'
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2020/02/24/Products-made-from-hemp-based-plastics-enter-consumer-market/8661582241399/
https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/nba-insider-tom-haberstroh/marijuana-and-nba-erasing-stigma-and-healing-league'When it comes to withdrawal, Armentano said research has found symptoms to be mild and short-lived.
“Like with most matters specific to cannabis,” he said, the new findings “need to be placed in appropriate context.”
He compared cannabis withdrawal to withdrawal symptoms when someone stops using tobacco or alcohol.
“The profound physical withdrawal effects associated with tobacco are so severe that many subjects who strongly desire to quit end up reinitiating their use. In the case of alcohol, the abrupt ceasing of use in heavy users can be so severe that it can lead to death,” Armentano said.
“Simply withdrawing from caffeine can lead to a number of adverse side effects, like rebound headaches,” he added. “But we do not arrest 600,000 Americans annually for their use of caffeine.”'
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/marijuana-withdrawal-symptoms-are-real-for-regular-users
'Weed does not inspire anyone to commit crimes. I have never seen anyone get nasty under the influence of weed. Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking. I cannot understand why the people who claim weed causes crime do not follow through and demand the outlawing of alcohol. Every day, crimes are committed by drunks who would not have committed the crime sober.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
The urban legend of 420..https://thedcapage.blog/2020/04/21/california-dreamin-or-the-tale-of-420/Hey junkie, this dope is not against you. Of course he believes that his dope is a much better intoxicant, more versatile medicine and more useful to the planet than your junk but that doesn't mean he intends to ban your junk in retribution for you helping to get his dope banned. What he does want, however, is that you start growing your own plant at home like him. In this way, you source your junk directly from the plant instead of putting money in the pockets of chemists who increasingly make more and more toxic stuff that destroy you, me and the planet. Your money is making the chemist pay the government to arm itself and protect him while pushing you and me closer to death. Growing your own plant will give you organic healthy junk in the best possible way, directly from the plant, like how it used to be for thousands of years, making you sustainable and the planet sustainable..yes, you can go green too..don't remain snowblind..we need your eyes too, to steer the planet away from man-made chemical disaster...
'In 2013, the Government of Uruguay approved legislation (Law No. 19.172) regulating the cultivation, production, dispensing and use of cannabis for different purposes, including non-medical use. In accordance with the legislation, Uruguayan citizens or foreigners with permanent residence aged 18 and older can obtain cannabis for non-medical purposes by registering with the national Institute for the Regulation and Control of Cannabis and by choosing one of three options: (a) purchase in authorized pharmacies; (b) membership of a club; or (c) domestic cultivation. The quantity of cannabis permitted per person, obtained through any of the three mechanisms, cannot exceed 480 g per year. Initially, the Government of Uruguay set THC content at 2 per cent and CBD content at 6–7 per cent. In 2017, the Government introduced two new varieties, with a maximum THC content of 9 per cent and CBD content of no less than 3 per cent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'At the baseline, in the first quarter of 2018, nearly 14 per cent of Canadians (12.2 per cent of women and 15.8 per cent of men) reported that they had used cannabis, including cannabis products for medical purposes, in the past three months. The highest prevalence rates were reported among those aged 25–34 (26 per cent) and 15–24 (23 per cent). By the beginning of 2019, the prevalence of use in the past three months had increased to 17.5 per cent, and it remained close to that level until the third quarter of 2019 (17.1 per cent). While the prevalence of cannabis use in the past three months rose in most age groups in 2019, the most marked increase was observed in the oldest age group (65 and older), for which the prevalence nearly doubled in comparison with 2018. There also seems to be a larger proportion of new users among older adults than in other age groups: while 10 per cent of new cannabis users were aged 25–44 in the second and third quarters of 2019, more than one quarter were aged 65 and older.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'To monitor the outcome of the new cannabis regulations, the Government of Canada has invested in a formal system that may eventually help to evaluate their impact and support the further development of policies and programmes. One of the main measures taken to that end is a cannabis survey that established a baseline in 2018 and is repeated every quarter in order to provide objective information on trends in the use of cannabis products, both medical and non-medical, as well as on how the legal cannabis market has evolved over time.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'When you're sick, music is a great help. Once, in Texas, I kicked a habit on weed, a pint of paregoric and a few Louis Armstrong records.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953 - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'According to Witte, as the science behind CBD formulation affords more consistency, brands will begin to focus on whatever added value that they may provide beyond CBD itself.
“The way to think about CBD is as a compound no more interesting than caffeine or electrolytes, just a commoditized functional ingredient that’s ultimately going to be added to many types of products,” Witte explained. “The value is in being able to determine the right application to utilize it and being able to build a brand on top of the ingredient.”
Drawing a comparison with both Starbucks coffee and Red Bull energy drinks (“CBD is the caffeine of the 21st century,” he asserted), Witte pointed out how those brands essentially offer products with the same active ingredient; the differences are how the companies brand themselves and what kind of promises they offer their consumers.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/cannabis-insights/webinar-details-the-industry-buzz-about-cbd-infused-food-and-beverages/
'Fifty years ago, these men who are now feared in Kathmandu’s restaurants would be welcomed at Freak Street in shops called ‘Your Old & Favorite Hashish Centre.’ In the 1960s and early 70s, cheap and potent marijuana drew thousands of hippies to Kathmandu where they could readily buy one-kilogram boxes of the downer at a pittance.
In 1976, mostly under pressure from the American government which was worried about its young citizens becoming dope addicts, Nepal banned the use and sale of marijuana. The decision had far-reaching implications: the hippies left, tourism was hit, the government lost tax revenue, farmers lost a lucrative cash crop, and the trade in hash went underground, criminalising a legitimate livelihood.
In fact it is said that one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the Maoist revolution in 1996 was that the government’s ban on the production of cannabis was so stringent that it angered the Kham Magars who cultivated it as a major cash crop.'
http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/nation/marijuana-high-time-to-lift-ban,2548'In March 2019, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs decided to schedule four substances (all fentanyl analogues) under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol and a further five substances under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, thus raising the total number of psychoactive substances under international control to 282 as at the end of 2019. By comparison, the number of NPS identified by authorities worldwide and reported to UNODC is already more than three times that figure, having reached a total of 950 in December 2019, up from 892 in December 2018 and 166 in 2009.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'Where data are available, they show a steady decline in the use of NPS in Europe, but such substances have established themselves in some marginalized groups in society, such as the homeless or people in prison, among whom the smoking of synthetic cannabinoids has been identified as a problem. In Europe, the use of NPS in prisons was reported by 22 countries, with synthetic cannabinoids identified as posing the main challenge and health risks (16 countries), whereas the use of synthetic cathinones in prisons was reported by 10 countries, NPS with opioid effects by six, and new benzodiazepines by four countries. In Latvia, the use of synthetic opioids in prisons has also been linked to an increase in overdose cases and in injecting drugs and sharing needles among prisoners who use drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Cole did not have a habit at this time and he wanted to connect for some weed. He was a real tea head. He told me he could not enjoy himself without weed. I have seen people like that. For them, tea occupies the place usually filled by liquor. They don't have to have it in any physical sense, but they cannot have a really good time without it.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'For the third year in a row, the largest quantities of plant-based NPS [new psychoactive substances] seized in 2018 were of kratom (Mitragyna speciosa), a substance that has both opioid-like and stimulant-like effects. This was followed by khat, a stimulant, as well as smaller quantities of ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink made from the stem and bark of the tropical liana Banisteriopsis caapi and other botanical ingredients, and Salvia divinorum, another hallucinogen, the leaves of which are consumed by chewing or smoking or in the form of a tea. In previous years, the plant-based NPS seized also frequently included kava, which is used to produce a drink with sedative, anaesthetic and euphoriant properties, and Datura stramonium, a hallucinogen. None of those plants are under international control; they are regulated in some jurisdictions only. Kratom, for example, is available online in a number of countries.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'Unlike other plant-based drugs, for which cultivation and production is concentrated in only a limited number of countries, cannabis is produced in almost all countries worldwide. The cultivation of cannabis plants was reported by 151 countries in the period 2010–2018 – countries home to 96 per cent of the global population – and was reported through either direct indicators (such as the cultivation or eradication of cannabis plants and the eradication of cannabis-producing sites) or indirect indicators (such as seizures of cannabis plants and the origin of cannabis seizures reported by other Member States).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf'Most countries do not have a comprehensive system in place for monitoring areas under illicit cannabis cultivation. At present, the information available is insufficient to produce scientifically accurate global estimates of the area under illicit cannabis cultivation. In addition, most of the estimates of the areas under illicit cannabis cultivation reported to UNODC do not generally meet scientific standards.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf'The largest quantities of cannabis herb seized in 2018 were those reported in the Americas (61 per cent of the total), with South America alone accounting for 43 per cent of the global total. Of note is the marked decline in the share of seizures made in North America, which had long been the subregion reporting the largest cannabis herb seizures: on average, 50 per cent of the global total over the period 2008–2018, falling to 17 per cent of the global total in 2018, that is, to less than the total for Africa that year (19 per cent). The next largest regional reported seizure totals in 2018 were those for Asia and Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
Officially sponsored myth 1 -'"All drugs are more or less similar and all are habit forming." This myth lumps cocaine, marijuana and junk together. Marijuana is not at all habit forming and its action is almost the direct opposite from junk action. There is no habit to cocaine. You can develop a tremendous craving for cocaine, but you won't be sick if you can't get it. When you have a junk habit, on the other hand, you live in a state of chronic poisoning for which junk itself is the specific antidote. If you don't get the antidote at eight-hour intervals, and enough of it, you develop symptoms of allergic poisoning: yawning, sneezing, watering of the eyes and nose, cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, hot and cold flushes, loss of appetite, insomnia, restlessness and weakness, in some cases circulatory collapse and death from allergic shock....When I say "habit-forming drug" I mean a drug that alters the endocrinal balance of the body in such a way that the body requires that drug in order to function. So far as I know, junk is the only habit forming drug according to this definition.'- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'The quantity of cannabis herb seized in 2018 declined by 16 per cent compared with a year earlier, falling to 4,303 tons, the lowest level since 1999. As compared with 2010, the quantity seized fell by 34 per cent at the global level, largely due to decreases reported in North America (-84 per cent), with marked declines being reported by Mexico, the United States and Canada. Discussions and policies aimed at liberalizing the cannabis markets, including changes in the drug’s legislation in Canada and some jurisdictions of the United States, legalizing the production, distribution and the recreational use of cannabis, seem to have played a key role in this respect. By contrast, the quantities of cannabis herb seized almost doubled in the rest of the world over the period 2010–2018 (South America: +194 per cent; Oceania: +94 per cent; Europe: +73 per cent; Asia: +71 per cent; Africa: +53 per cent). The global cannabis herb trafficking index, based on qualitative information reported by Member States on trends in cannabis herb trafficking, also increased over the same period, although the trend appeared to be stabilizing in 2018.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf'Afghanistan appears to be the second most important source country of cannabis resin worldwide, with 19 per cent of all mentions worldwide in the annual report questionnaire over the period 2014– 2018, followed by Pakistan and Lebanon. The cannabis resin produced in these countries is principally destined for other countries in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, although cannabis resin originating in Afghanistan has also been identified in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Western and Central Europe. The Islamic Republic of Iran reported that the cannabis resin found on its territory originated mainly in Afghanistan (followed by Pakistan), with some 65 per cent destined for countries of the Arabian peninsula, 15 per cent for the Caucasus and some 20 per cent for domestic consumption. Cannabis resin originating in Lebanon is mainly found in the Near and Middle East and, to a lesser extent, in Western and Central Europe.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_3.pdf
Afghanistan and Mexico source the heroin and morphine. Mexico, Thailand, Myanmar and China source the methamphetamine. The Middle East and Eastern Europe sources the amphetamine. The US consumes heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine. Europe consumes heroin, morphine, methamphetamine and amphetamine. Asia consumes heroin, morphine and methamphetamine. Australia consumes methamphetamine. The Middle East consumes heroin and amphetamine. West Asia consumes heroin and methamphetamine. All countries grow and consume cannabis. Opioids, methamphetamine and amphetamines kill the most in terms of drug deaths, cannabis kills none. Who are the leading opponents to cannabis legalization and leading enforcers of global anti-cannabis policy? The countries involved the most in heroin, morphine, amphetamines and methamphetamines. They put on a mask of concern about harms from drugs, produce, sell and consume the most dangerous synthetic drugs and vehemently oppose cannabis legalization worldwide while clandestinely feeding their habits and protecting their sources. They use arms and armies to protect and promote their synthetic drug habits, and drug money to fund and wage a war on cannabis everywhere, pushing man and planet ever closer to death on massive scales and away from the safe, healing cannabis herb...
Jul 10, 2020, 1:14 PM
Why limit the study to illegal drugs? Legal prescription drugs are killing many times more people worldwide and its extent of use in the population as well as contamination of environment should also be assessed through these methods...'Owing to the development and application of proper analytical protocols, it is possible to gain new information on the content of different groups of illegal drugs of abuse, originating from human excretion, in wastewater samples collected at a WWTP. Based on this information, we can monitor changing patterns of illicit drug consumption (designer drugs), transport processes and chemical, photochemical and biological transformations of hazardous drugs of abuse. The obtained results complement and expand upon the studies of drug use, enlarging the sewage-based epidemiology database. The proposed procedure can be used as a tool for tracking and estimating drug use in a population in real time, helping social scientists and authorities combat drug abuse. The obtained research results may also constitute a valuable database for managing the quality of the environment and preventing the introduction of these hazardous substances into the environment, thus reducing the negative impact on quality of life.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7078280/'This article explores the nature of psychedelically induced anomalous experiences for what they reveal regarding the nature of “expanded consciousness” and its implications for humanistic and transpersonal psychology, parapsychology, and the psychology and underlying neuroscience of such experiences. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this essay reviews the nature of 10 transpersonal or parapsychological experiences that commonly occur spontaneously and in relation to the use of psychedelic substances, namely synesthesia, extradimensional percepts, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, entity encounters, alien abduction, sleep paralysis, interspecies communication, possession, and psi (telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance and psychokinesis).'
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022167820917767
Officially sponsored myth 8 - '"Peddlers try to get high school children on junk, or marijuana. A recent magazine article depicts peddlers slipping laudanum into the Coca-Cola of teenagers."
This is utterly ridiculous. No peddler wants kids for customers. They never have enough money, they talk too much and they cannot stand up under police questioning. The best customers are the old-timers. They know all the angles and generally have some source of revenue.'- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'It is a development that brings a new meaning to the title of high priest. Religious rituals in ancient Judah were carried out amid clouds of potent cannabis smoke, archaeologists have said.
Researchers in Israel have found residues of cannabinoids including tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive constituent of cannabis, in a shrine of the 8th century BC.
They conclude that the black solidified residue, which was found in a shallow depression on top of a limestone altar, derived from the burning of hashish to "stimulate ecstasy" in religious rites.'
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/judean-worshippers-were-high-on-cannabis-archaeologists-reveal-mkmxx2nd7
'However, this is the first time physical evidence has been identified that indicates the tribe of Judah participated in marijuana-infused ceremonies. Evidence of frankincense being burned was also found at the site.
The team behind the study, from the Israel Museum and the Volcani Center, relied on two common methods of identifying cannabinoids: liquid chromatography and gas chromatography. They found components of marijuana known widely today such as THC, CBD, CBN and various terpenoids.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/proof-of-marijuana-use-discovered-at-ancient-biblical-site-in-israel/ '"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt these communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news."
"Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did," he concluded, according to Baum.'
https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/top-nixon-adviser-reveals-the-racist-reason-he-started-the-war-on-drugs-decades-ago/articleshow/70473035.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/shimla/himachal-pradesh-cops-trek-six-hours-to-raid-charas-makers-31-held/articleshow/71887429.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/up-man-nigerian-held-for-possessing-drugs-worth-rs-3l/articleshow/72030061.cms
Officially sponsored myth 10 - '"There is a connection between addiction and crime. Marijuana, especially, is supposed to cause people to commit crimes."
There is no direct connection between crime and drug intoxication that I have ever seen or heard of. The people who talk about drugs causing crime never seem to follow through and take into account the vast number of crimes committed by drunks. Alcohol is a crime-producing drug that outclasses all others. Of course, a lot of junkies steal to keep up their habit. It isn't easy to get up $10-15 per day, which is what the addict has to pay out for a day's supply of junk in the US.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'By whatever names we dignify ourselves, in whatever apparel we attire ourselves, by whatever and before whatever priest we may be smeared with oil, however many millions we possess, however many special guards are stationed along our route, however many policemen guard our wealth, however many so-called miscreant-revolutionaries and anarchists we may execute, whatever exploits we may ourselves perform, whatever States we may found, whatever fortresses and towers we may erect - from the Tower of Babel to that of Eiffel - we are always all of us confronted by two inevitable conditions of life which destroy its whole meaning. There is first of all death, which may at any moment overtake any of us, and there is the transitoriness of all that we do and that is so quickly destroyed leaving no trace. Whatever we may do - found kingdoms, build palaces and monuments, compose poems and romances - everything is transitory, and soon passes leaving no trace. And therefore, however we may conceal it from ourselves, we cannot help seeing that the meaning of our life can be neither in our personal physical existence, subject to unavoidable sufferings and inevitable death, nor in any worldly institution or organization.
Whoever you may be who read these lines, consider your position and your duties - not the position of landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, or soldiers, temporarily attributed to you by men, nor those imaginary duties imposed on you by that position - but your real position in eternity as a creature who by Someone's will has been called out of unconsciousness after an eternity of nonexistence, to which by the same will you may at any moment be recalled. Think of your duties - not your imaginary duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your capital, as an emperor, minister, official to the State - but those real duties which follow from your real position as a being called to life and endowed with reason and love.'
Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Hypocrisy in our time is supported by two things - pseudo-religion and pseudo-science - and has reached such colossal dimensions that were we not living in the midst of it, it would be impossible to believe, that men could reach such a degree of self-deception. They have now reached such a strange condition and their hearts are so hardened that though they have eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not, neither do they understand.
Men have long been living in antagonism with their conscience. If it were not for hypocrisy they could not continue to do so. Their present arrangement of life in opposition to their conscience only exists because it is masked by hypocrisy.
And the more the divergence between reality and men's conscience increases, the more is that hypocrisy extended. But hypocrisy has its limits. And it seems that in our day those limits have been reached.'
Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'All the injustice and cruelties customary in present-day life have become habitual only because there are men always ready to carry out these injustices and cruelties. If it were not for them there would not only be no one to wreak violence on those immense masses of oppressed people, but those who issued the orders would never venture to do so, and would not even dare to dream of the sentences they now confidently pass.
Were it not for these men ready to torture or kill anyone they are commanded to, no one would dare to claim what is confidently claimed by all the non-working landowners, namely that land surrounded by men who are suffering for lack of land, is the property of a man who does not work on it, or that stores of grain collected by trickery ought to be preserved untouched in the midst of a population dying of hunger, because the merchant wants to make a profit. But for the existence of these people, ready at the will of the authorities to torture and kill anyone they are told to, it could never enter the head of a landowner to deprive the peasants of a wood they had grown, or of the officials to consider it proper to receive salaries taken from the famishing people for oppressing them, not to mention executing, imprisoning, or evicting people for exposing falsehood and preaching the truth. In fact all this is demanded and done only because the authorities are all fully convinced that they have always at hand servile people ready to carry out all their demands by means of tortures and killings.'
Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/russian-held-for-growing-cannabis-in-goa/articleshow/74427647.cms
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/drug-ring-busted-in-faizabad-cantonment-soldiers-buying-cannabis-under-lens/articleshow/73003241.cms
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1269160682852880386- 'Nearly three-quarters (73%) of Americans have discussed CBD, including two-thirds (67%) of those never having tried it.
- Roughly two-fifths (39%) of Americans have had CBD recommended to them.
- Almost 9 out of 10 CBD consumers (88%) reported having friends or family who use CBD; among nonconsumers, 41% reported so.
- Americans are broadly favorable of CBD: 84% of consumers and 39% of nonconsumers reported “positive feelings” about it.
- More than 6 in 10 Americans (61%) reported believing that CBD has valid medical uses.'
https://newfrontierdata.com/cannabis-insights/how-american-consumers-are-learning-about-cbd/'Still the numbers are undeniable when it comes to the racially disproportionate arrests.Of those approximate 11,700 arrested for a cannabis charge of some kind, around 10,500 were black. Of those 11,700 arrestees, 709 were white. Of those arrests, 5,987 were for cannabis possession or public consumption arrests were black while 451 were white.
The release of this data is useful for partially understanding where the district falls when it comes to cannabis arrests nationwide. On April 20 of this year, The American Civil Liberties Union released a massive report on racial disparities when it comes to who is arrested for cannabis possession. The report, “A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform,” looked at all 50 states’ cannabis possession arrests between 2010-2018 and revealed a national average in which a black person was 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than a white person.'
https://www.outlawreport.com/blog/washington-dc-cannabis-arrests-race
'The condition of Christian humanity, with its fortresses, cannon, dynamite, rifles, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories, custom-house and palaces, is really terrible. But neither the fortresses nor the cannon nor the rifles will attack anyone of themselves, the prisons will not of themselves lock anyone up, the gallows will not of themselves hang anyone, nor will the churches delude anyone or the custom-houses hold anyone back, and the palaces and factories do not build themselves or maintain themselves. All this is done by people. And if they once understand that there is no necessity for all these things, these things will disappear.
And men already begin to understand. If they do not all understand, the leaders among them do - those whom the rest will follow. And what the leaders have once understood they cannot possibly cease to understand. And what the leaders have understood the rest of mankind not only can, but inevitably must, understand too.
So that the prediction that a time will come when men will be taught of God, will cease to learn war any more, and will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks (which translated into our own tongue means that all the prisons, fortresses, barracks, palaces, and churches, will remain empty, and that all the gallows, guns and cannon will remain unused), is no longer a dream but a definite new form of life, to which humanity is approaching with ever-increasing rapidity.'
Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'There is no doubt that our national discussion over matters of race and policing will continue long after these public protests have ceased. NORML believes that calls for cannabis legalization need to be an important part of this emerging discussion — but only a part. Black and brown lives matter and we owe it to our country and to ourselves to take tangible steps toward dismantling many of the power structures that perpetuate injustice. Marijuana prohibition is simply one of them.
We are at a crossroads in this country and it is time for all of us to march as allies in the fight for racial justice and equality. It is important during this process for those of us not from these marginalized communities to truly listen to those who are facing this oppression and support them in this struggle. Let us take this moment in time to pledge to put in the work necessary in order to make America the better and more just nation that we know it can be'
https://www.aspentimes.com/news/high-country-marijuana-legalization-and-the-fight-for-racial-justice/'The cops who fatally shot Breonna Taylor, the black EMT who was killed in a no-knock raid in her home in Louisville, Ky., were looking for drugs. The NYPD accused Eric Garner, a black man strangled to death by a policeman in 2014, of having marijuana to justify the extrajudicial killing. After the killing of Sylville Smith by the Milwaukee Police Department, which sparked the 2016 Sherman Park riots, the Department of Justice made a point of mentioning that drugs, including “suspected marijuana,” were found in his car.'
https://shepherdexpress.com/hemp/cannabis/the-war-on-drugs-is-a-war-on-black-americans/'Coerced treatment mechanisms inevitably result in forcing people who do not have substance use disorders or who would naturally recover into services. The population of people who use drugs and need substance use disorder treatment is small, while the vast majority of people who use drugs do not develop a substance use disorder. Of those that do, most people will recover without participating in any formalized treatment or recovery services. Mandatory treatment can have a net-widening effect, continuing to trap people under an alternative form of state surveillance.
Adequate access to substance use disorder treatment and other support services that are attractive and affordable will increase voluntary treatment initiation and render mandated treatment unnecessary. Biden’s proposal would simply squander resources that could be used for people who actually want and could benefit from treatment'
http://drugpolicyaction.org/press-releases/statement-biden-law-enforcement-funding-mandatory-rehabilitation.html
'In 2018, more than 26 million Americans reported their regular consumption of cannabis, marking a 74% increase among the population since 2009. The trend has been fueled by convergence in recognition of the therapeutic value for medical cannabis, greater understanding of cannabis’ comparative health effects relative to alcohol and other drugs, and erosion of the stigma associated with cannabis as more jurisdictions have decriminalized and legalized its use.
Despite the surging usage rates, prohibition enforcement continues apace. In 2018, someone in the U.S. was arrested on average every 48 seconds for a cannabis offense or more than 660,000 times that single year. While arrests rates have fallen from a peak of more than 870,000 in 2007, marijuana continues to make up the largest category of U.S. drug arrests, accounting for upwards of half (45%) of all drug-related charges. Meanwhile, since 1996, nearly 17 million people have been arrested on marijuana offences, a number equivalent to 5% of the overall U.S. population'
https://newfrontierdata.com/cannabis-insights/racial-disparities-and-cannabis-legalization-in-american-policing/
'This is what ought to happen wherever violence is used. The officer feels dull. He has nothing to do. He has been put, poor fellow, in a position in which he has to give orders. He is shut off from all rational human existence. He can only look on and give orders, give orders and look on, though nobody needs either his orders or his attention. All our unfortunate rulers, ministers, members of parliament, governors, generals, officers, archbishops, bishops, priests, and even rich men, already find themselves partly, and soon will find themselves completely, in that position. They can do nothing but give orders, and so they make a fuss and send their subordinates about, as that officer sent the gendarme, to interfere with people. And as the people they interfere with ask them not to interfere, they imagine themselves to be quite indispensable men.
But a time is approaching and draws near when it will become perfectly evident to everyone that these people are of no use at all but are merely a hindrance, and those whom they interfere with will say amiably and quietly, like the man in the peasant's coat: "Don't interfere with us, please!" And then all these emissaries, and those who send them, will have to follow the good advice, that is, cease to ride about with an arm akimbo hindering people, and get off their horses, doff their uniforms, listen to what is being said, and join with others in real human work.'
Leo Tolstoy - The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays
'Americans consider marijuana consumption more morally acceptable than gay relationships, medical testing of animals, the death penalty and abortion, according to a new survey from Gallup.
The poll released on Tuesday shows a continuation of the growing acceptance of cannabis use among Americans as more states opt to legalize marijuana for medical or recreational purposes.
Seven-out-of-ten respondents said using cannabis is morally acceptable. Only 28 percent said the activity is morally unacceptable.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/marijuana-use-is-more-moral-than-porn-gay-relations-and-wearing-animal-fur-americans-say/
'Around 269 million people used drugs in 2018, up 30 per cent from 2009, with adolescents and young adults accounting for the largest share of users. More people are using drugs, and there are more drugs, and more types of drugs, than ever. Seizures of amphetamines quadrupled between 2009 and 2018. Even as precursor control improves globally, traffickers and manufacturers are using designer chemicals, devised to circumvent international controls, to synthesize amphetamine, methamphetamine and ecstasy. Production of heroin and cocaine remain among the highest levels recorded in modern times.' - Ghada Waly, Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'In the longer run, the economic downturn and associated lockdowns have the potential to disrupt drug markets. Rising unemployment and lack of opportunities will make it more likely that poor and disadvantaged people engage in harmful patterns of drug use, suffer drug use disorders and turn to illicit activities linked to drugs – either production or transport. And drug trafficking organizations are likely to exploit the situation by providing services to the vulnerable and boosting their ranks with new recruits. With Governments less able to respond, these shifts could quickly take root and become the new reality for many communities' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'Worldwide, drug use is more widespread in developed countries than in developing countries. Drugs such as cocaine are even more firmly associated with the wealthier parts of the world. Likewise, within countries, the wealthier sectors of society have a higher prevalence of drug use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'Drug markets are becoming increasingly complex. Plant-based substances such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin have been joined by hundreds of synthetic drugs, many not under international control. There has also been a rapid rise in the non-medical use of pharmaceutical drugs. Roughly 500 NPS are found on the national markets of Member States each year. Currently, most of those are stimulants, followed by synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists and a smaller number of opioids. However, while the overall number of NPS has stabilized, the proportions have changed. Opioid NPS accounted for just 2 per cent of the number of NPS identified in 2014 but by 2018 that figure had risen to 9 per cent. Opioid NPS, many of them fentanyl analogues, have proved both potent and harmful, fuelling overdose deaths in North America and to a lesser extent in other regions. In North America, fentanyls are either used as adulterants in heroin and other drugs (including cocaine and methamphetamine) or used to make falsified pharmaceutical opioids. Some evidence suggests NPS stimulants are also being injected in Europe: a study of residues in discarded syringes in six European cities found that many were tainted with stimulant NPS.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
Huxley misses a point or two here..no drug will be universally perfect for all. There will always be a minority (better that than a majority) for whom any drug will be incompatible given different mental and physical constitutions. Also his obsession and faith in the Western system of synthesizing something that can be had in measured doses like pills or alcohol is unnecessary for natural intoxicants where margins are much larger and safer..cannabis is the ideal...peyote and psilocybin too where it is available but not to the extent of cannabis...nature has done the work already, no need for pharmacologists and neurologists to re-invent the wheel...
'Although obviously superior to cocaine, opium, alcohol and tobacco, mescalin is not yet the ideal drug. Along with the happily transfigured majority of mescalin takers there is a minority that finds in the drug only hell or purgatory. Moreover, for a drug that is to be used, like alcohol, for general consumption, its effects last for an inconveniently long time. But chemistry and physiology are capable nowadays of practically anything. If the psychologists and sociologists will define the ideal, the neurologists and pharmacologists can be relied upon to discover the means whereby that ideal can be realized or at least (for this kind of ideal can never, in the very nature of things, be fully realized) more nearly approached than in the wine-bibbing past, the whisky-drinking, marijuana- smoking and barbiturate-swallowing present.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'Global seizures of cannabis herb fell to their lowest level in two decades in 2018 – a slump driven by declines in North America, where seizures have fallen by 84 per cent in the last 10 years. By contrast, seizures almost doubled in the rest of the world over the same period. The pattern of seizures suggests policies aimed at liberalizing cannabis markets have played a key role in the decline.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'The limited data at the global level show that intoxication may be a significant factor in homicide. However, alcohol seems to play a larger role in violence than do drugs' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'An estimated 192 million people used cannabis in 2018, making it the most used drug globally. In comparison, 58 million people used opioids in 2018. But that lower number of users belies the harm associated with opioids. This group of substances accounted for 66 per cent of the estimated 167,000 deaths related to drug use disorders in 2017 and 50 per cent of the 42 millions years (or 21 million years) lost due to disability or early death, attributed to drug use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'Cannabis is the drug that most brings people into contact with the criminal justice system, accounting for more than half of all drug law offences cases, based on reports from a total of 69 countries over 2014–2018 The predominance of cannabis-related cases in the statistics reflects the drug's large global market. ATS were the next biggest drug category (responsible for 19 per cent of cases), followed by cocaine (11 per cent) and opioids (7 per cent). Almost 90 per cent of suspects were men.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'Continued large-scale seizures of cannabis products in the Middle East and North Africa suggest that cannabis resin trafficking to Europe is not being disrupted by the restrictions related to the COVID19 pandemic. There are indications that the lockdown measures in Europe may lead to an increase in demand for cannabis products, which could intensify drug trafficking activities from North Africa to Europe in the future.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'In general, trafficking in cannabis may not be affected in the same way as trafficking in heroin or cocaine, given that cannabis production often takes place near consumer markets and traffickers are thus less reliant on long, transregional shipments of large quantities of the drug.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'Many countries have reported drug shortages at the retail level, with reports of heroin shortages in Europe, South-West Asia and North America in particular. Drug supply shortages can go together with an overall decrease in consumption (for example, of drugs that are mostly consumed in recreational settings such as bars and clubs) but may also, especially in the case of heroin, lead to the consumption of harmful domestically produced substances, as well as more harmful patterns of drug use by people with drug use disorders. In terms of alternatives, some countries in Europe have warned that heroin users may switch to substances such as fentanyl and its derivatives. An increase in the use of pharmaceutical products such as benzodiazepines and buprenorphine has also been reported, to the extent that their price has doubled in some areas.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf
Ganja in the Indian sub-continent...'The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is, as I have said, a principal appetite of the soul. When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates - alcohol and 'goof-pills' in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohameddan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America, alcohol and coca in the Andes, alcohol and the barbiturates in the more up-to-date regions of South America.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'Harmful patterns deriving from drug shortages include an increase in injecting drug use and the sharing of injecting equipment and other drug paraphernalia, all of which carry the risk of spreading blood-borne diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, as well as COVID-19. Risks resulting from drug overdose may also increase among people who inject drugs and who are infected with COVID-19.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdf'The economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 crisis has the potential to worsen levels of drug production, trafficking and use. The crisis may exacerbate the socioeconomic situation of vulnerable groups, who in turn may increasingly resort to illicit activities as a coping mechanism to compensate for the loss of licit income and employment. Once restrictions related to COVID-19 are lifted, economic shocks may also prompt an increase in drug consumption, as observed in the past. Pairing drug related programmes with the development interventions that Governments are launching to contain the negative socioeconomic consequences of the crisis can help prevent a possible further increase in the number of people with substance use disorders linked to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_1.pdfGoing through the executive summary of the 2020 World Drug Report, I find that there is no change in tune from the world drug control agencies. The report says that abuse of all forms of synthetic drugs are rapidly growing including opioids, amphetamines and benzodiazepines. It also says that Covid 19 is likely to exacerbate drug usage and that novel psychotropic substances synthesized in labs are growing rapidly. It says that national budgets for drug control have been slashed significantly over the last few years. Along with all this it also continues to say that cannabis was the most consumed and largest seized drug in the world. It also shows that the majority of persons in jail are for cannabis. It also seems more focused on curbing cannabis cultivation by poor farmers than focusing on synthetic drugs that kill. It talks about how 80% of the world suffers without access to pain medication and then goes on to say that cannabis needs to be closely monitored and claims of its use are only personal testimonials without clinical trial backing. It also does not miss the opportunity to say that THC is not as benign as CBD even though no statistic of cannabis related deaths exist. It says that adolescent use in places where cannabis has been legalized have not increased, states that alcohol is much more responsible for violence than drugs, but expresses concern about big tobacco and alcohol companies looking to enter cannabis businesses...how typical...
Jul 3, 2020, 4:18 PM
'The past-year use of cannabis is substantially higher than the global average in North America (14.6 per cent), Australia and New Zealand (10.6 per cent) and West and Central Africa (9.3 per cent). In 2009, cannabis use was reported to be stabilizing or declining in countries with established cannabis markets, such as in Western and Central Europe, North America and Australia and New Zealand, but that trend was offset by increasing use in many countries in Africa and Asia. A decade later, cannabis use in Western and Central Europe has remained stable overall and has increased considerably in North America, Africa and Asia.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf'The Americas remains the region with the highest annual prevalence of cannabis use (8.8 per cent among the population aged 15–64). In the United States of America, cannabis use has been consistently increasing since 2007, in particular among young adults (aged 18–25) and older adults (aged 26 and older). The main increase has been observed among regular users of cannabis; for example, the prevalence of daily or near-daily use of cannabis doubled over the period 2009–2018. In 2018, 4.7 per cent of the population aged 18 and older – around 11.6 million people – were estimated to be daily or near-daily users of cannabis. In comparison, in Western and Central Europe, nearly 1 per cent of the adult population were estimated to be daily or near-daily users of cannabis, a rate that has remained more or less stable over the past decade.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In the Poisons Sacres, Ivresses Divines Philippe de Felice has written at length and with a wealth of documentation on the immemorial connection between religion and the taking of drugs. Here, in summary, or in direct quotation, are his conclusions. The employment for religious purposes of toxic substances is 'extraordinarily widespread...The practices studied in this volume can be observed in every region of the earth, among primitives no less than among those who have reached a high pitch of civilization. We are dealing therefore with not just exceptional facts, which might justifiably be overlooked, but with a general and, in the widest sense of the word, a human phenomenon, the kind of phenomenon which cannot be disregarded by anyone who is trying to discover what religion is, and what are the deep needs which it must satisfy.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'An increase in past-year cannabis use is also reported in South American countries that have provided new survey data. In Uruguay, for example, as reported in a survey conducted in 2018, 12.1 per cent of men and 5.8 per cent of women used cannabis in the past month – that is, taken together, 8.9 per cent of the population aged 15–65. While all measures of cannabis use have shown increases since 2011, past-month use of cannabis has increased the most, having nearly doubled, which suggests that the main increase since 2011 has been among regular and frequent cannabis users. The highest past-month prevalence of cannabis use was reported among young people aged 19–25 (20.8 per cent) followed by those aged 26–35 (16.4 per cent). Around 9.9 per cent of those who reported cannabis use in the past year were reported to be daily or near-daily users of cannabis (13.1 per cent male versus 5.2 per cent female). More than one third of regular cannabis users were considered to be dependent.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf'In Western and Central Europe, the prevalence of past-year cannabis use has fluctuated over the past decade from 6 to 7 per cent among the population aged 15–64. However, some countries in the subregion, in particular countries with large populations such as Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom (England and Wales), have reported an increase in cannabis use in recent drug use surveys.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf'Cannabis is the most widely used drug among young people. Globally, it is estimated that there were 13 million past-year users of any drug among students aged 15–16 in 2018, with an estimated 11.6 million past-year users of cannabis. This corresponds to an annual prevalence of cannabis use of 4.7 per cent among this age group – a rate that is higher than the rate among the general population aged 15–64 (3.9 per cent). Past-year use of cannabis among young people aged 15–16 is high in Oceania (17.8 per cent), the Americas (12.1 per cent) and Europe (11.7 per cent).' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
As with cannabis...'For these Native Americans, religious experience is something more direct and illuminating, more spontaneous, less the home-made product of the superficial, self-conscious mind. Sometimes (according to the reports collected by Dr. Slotkin) they see visions which may be of Christ Himself. Sometimes they hear the voice of the Great Spirit. Sometimes they become aware of the presence of God and of those personal shortcomings which must be corrected if they are to do His will. The practical consequences of these chemical openings of doors into the Other World seem to be wholly good. Dr. Slotkin reports that habitual Peyotists are on the whole more industrious, more temperate (many of them abstain altogether from alcohol), more peaceable than non-Peyotists. A tree with such satisfactory fruits cannot be condemned out of hand as evil.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'A major drug use survey carried out recently in India found that in 2018, 2.1 per cent of the population aged 10–75, a total of 23 million people, had used opioids in the past year. Among opioids, heroin is the most prevalent substance, with a past-year prevalence of 1.1 per cent among the population aged 10–75; this is followed by the non-medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, with a past-year prevalence of almost 1 per cent, and by opium at almost 0.5 per cent. In general, the past-year use of opioids is much higher among men (4 per cent of the male population) than women (0.2 per cent of the female population). Moreover, 1.8 per cent of adolescents aged 10–17 are estimated to be past-year opioid users. Of the 23 million past-year opioid users, roughly one third, or 7.7 million people, suffer from opioid use disorders. Compared with earlier estimates from a survey carried out in 2004, overall opioid use in India is estimated to have increased fivefold.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf'The type and form of amphetamines used vary considerably between regions and subregions. In North America, the non-medical use of pharmaceutical stimulants and methamphetamine is most prevalent; in East and South-East Asia and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), it is methamphetamine; and in Western and Central Europe and the Near and Middle East, it is amphetamine. In the latter subregion, amphetamine is commonly known as “captagon”. In many countries in South and Central America, especially those that have reported recent survey data, the non-medical use of pharmaceutical stimulants is more common than the use of other amphetamines. The non-medical use of weight loss pills is reportedly more prevalent among women than among men, with pills such as sibutramine hydrochloride monohydrate (sold under the brand names Aderan and Ipomex) and phentermine (sold under the brand names Duromine and Suprenza), along with methylphenidate and amphetamine, reported to be the most commonly misused pharmaceutical stimulants in those subregions' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf'In 2018, methamphetamine use declined among young adults (aged 18–25), but increased significantly among adults aged 26 and older. This excludes institutionalized and homeless populations, however, both of which may be affected by disproportionately higher rates of drug use. In recent years, reported methamphetamine per gram purity levels in the United States have averaged more than 90 per cent, while prices have declined by a further 18 per cent over the past year to $56 per pure gram.48 Although in the United States, methamphetamine has historically been mixed with heroin to create a “speedball”, such combinations are increasingly rare. Recent forensic laboratory reports indicate that, while still comparatively rare, there are combinations of methamphetamine, fentanyl and fentanyl analogues on the United States drug markets.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf'Over the past decade and a half, all regions other than Africa have seen an increasing proportion of drug treatment being provided for cases of cannabis use disorders. In most of the regions, among people entering treatment for cannabis use disorders, nearly half were first-time entrants, with a mean age of 26 years. In Africa, although the proportion of people treated for cannabis as the primary drug of concern has been decreasing, it remains significant (50 per cent in 2018). In West and Central Africa, for instance, between 2014 and 2017 more than 7 out of 10 people in drug treatment underwent treatment for cannabis use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf
'In sacrementalizing the use of peyote, the Indians of the Native American Church have done something which is at once psychogically sound and historically respectable. In the early centuries of Christianity many pagan rites and festivals were baptized, so to say, and made to serve the purposes of the Church. These jollifications were not particularly edifying; but they assuaged a certain psychological hunger and, instead of trying to suppress them, the earlier missionaries had the sense to accept them for what they were, soul-satisfying expressions of fundamental urges, and to incorporate them into the fabric of the new religion. What the Native Americans have done is essentially similar. They have taken a pagan custom (a custom, incidentally, far more elevating and enlightening than most of the rather brutish carousals and mummeries adopted from European paganism) and given it a Christian signficance.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'The increase in treatment demand related to cannabis use disorders in some regions warrants special attention. There is great variability in the definition and practice of what constitutes treatment of cannabis use disorders. Treatment at present consists of behavioural or psychosocial interventions, such as cognitive behavioural therapy (in which irrational, negative thinking styles are challenged and the development of alternative coping skills is promoted) and motivational interviewing (in which a user’s personal motivation to change their own behaviour is facilitated and engaged). These interventions may vary from one-time online contact or screening and brief intervention in an outpatient setting, to a more comprehensive treatment plan including treatment of other comorbidities in an outpatient or inpatient setting. Some of the factors that may influence the number of people in treatment for cannabis use disorders include changes in the number of people who actually need treatment; changes in the treatment referral system; changes in awareness of potential problems associated with cannabis use disorders; and changes in the availability of and access to treatment for cannabis use disorders.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_Booklet_2.pdf'The Gallup poll, published Tuesday, asked 1,028 Americans in all 50 states and the nation’s capital whether they deemed 21 different behaviors or policies, from using birth control to the death penalty, moral or not. More respondents viewed marijuana use as acceptable than they did abortion, pornography, having children outside of marriage and wearing fur.'
https://www.nj.com/marijuana/2020/06/most-americans-see-smoking-weed-as-morally-acceptable-survey-finds.html
'Results and conclusion: Through a detailed analysis of the available resources about the origins of C. sativa we found that its use by ancient civilizations as a source of food and textile fibers dates back over 10,000 years, while its therapeutic applications have been improved over the centuries, from the ancient East medicine of the 2nd and 1st millennium B.C. to the more recent introduction in the Western world after the 1st century A.D. In the 20th and 21th centuries, Cannabis and its derivatives have been considered as a menace and banned throughout the world, but nowadays they are still the most widely consumed illicit drugs all over the world. Its legalization in some jurisdictions has been accompanied by new lines of research to investigate its possible applications for medical and therapeutic purposes.'
https://www.eurekaselect.com/182145/article'As a further factor, in most countries the highest prevalence of drug use is found among adolescents and young adults, in particular those aged 18–25. Over the period 2000–2018, the population in that age group grew significantly in developing countries – by 18 per cent, thus raising the overall vulnerability to drug use in those countries. In developed countries, by contrast, the population in that young age group decreased by 10 per cent over the same period.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Though but recently introduced into the northern United States, peyote-eating and the religion based upon it have become important symbols of the Red Man's right to spiritual independence. Some Indians have reacted to white supremacy by becoming Americanized, others by retreating into traditional Indianism. But some have tried to make the best of both worlds, indeed of all the worlds - the best of Indianism, the best of Christianity, and the best of those Other Worlds of transcendental experience, where the soul knows itself as unconditioned and of like nature with the divine. Hence the Native American Church. In it two great appetites of the soul - the urge to independence and self-determination and the urge to self-transcendence - were fused with, and interpreted in the light of, a third - the urge to worship, to justify the ways of God to man, to explain the universe by means of a coherent theology.' - The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley, 1954.
'The lack of disaggregated data makes it impossible to obtain a global overview of drug use as distributed between urban and rural areas and to analyse interacting global trends in urbanization and drug markets. From the information available, it seems that drug use is more prevalent in urban areas than in rural areas, in both developed and developing countries, with the exception of some major rural drug-producing areas. Urbanization has also been found to be a general risk factor for drug use; for example, data from school surveys in Colombia and Mexico show the prevalence of use of some drugs being up to 60 per cent higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Data on drug law offences including possession and trafficking of drugs in Germany and Austria confirm the same patterns with main cities showing higher per capita offences than the national average (typically around 50 per cent higher in 2018)'- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'A study conducted in India in the Chandigarh area, that city being the capital of the two neighbouring States of Punjab and Haryana, also suggested there are higher levels of drug use in urban slum areas than in rural areas. If this information were to be validated across all countries, the rapid urbanization of the past decade could be an element that explains, at least partially, the growth in the global drug market. In this context, urbanization becomes a crucial element when considering future dynamics in drug markets, in particular in developing countries, where growth in urbanization is more pronounced than in other countries.'- United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'Data on the annual prevalence of drug use among adults in Australia, the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, for example, show there is much higher drug use in urban areas than in rural areas, with the divide being even more pronounced among frequent users in the United States, where, in 2018, past-month prevalence of drug use was almost 80 per cent higher in large metropolitan areas than in rural areas.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'This suggests that while people with higher socioeconomic status may have a greater propensity to experiment, it is among the lower socioeconomic classes that the most negative impact of the onset of recreational drug use is found, with a higher proportion of people becoming dependent. This suggests that poverty is associated with drug use disorders. Indeed, poor people living on the margins of society tend to be more vulnerable to slipping from recreational drug use into full-scale drug abuse and drug dependence because treatment facilities for intervening at an early stage in a drug career are often unavailable or unaffordable for such population groups. In this context, drug use itself may exacerbate poverty and marginalization, thus creating the potential for a vicious cycle' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'Over the past two decades, drug markets have become increasingly complex in terms of variety and combinations of substances used and trafficked, manufacturing processes and the organizational structure of drug trafficking organizations. There has been a rapid emergence of new substances, as well as new mixes of controlled and non-controlled substances, with an increasing misuse of pharmaceuticals, which poses new challenges for both drug demand and supply control efforts at the national, regional and global levels.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'But in spite of their preoccupation with eternal punishment and in spite of their deficiency disease, spiritually minded ascetics often saw heaven and might even be aware, occasionally, of that divinely impartial One, in which the polar opposites are reconciled. For a glimpse of beatitude, for a foretaste of unitive knowledge, no price seemed too high. Mortification of the body may produce a host of undesirable mental symptoms; but it may also open a door into a transcendental world of Being, Knowledge and Bliss. That is why, in spite of its obvious disadvantages, almost all aspirants to the spiritual life have, in the past, undertaken regular courses of bodily mortification.' - Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley, 1956
'Beyond internationally controlled substances, the legal status of many substances in the market differ from country to country, and sometimes within countries. This creates quite complex production and trafficking patterns in which some substances are under national control in some countries but not in others, leaving ample opportunities for producers and traffickers of the substances to select countries depending on the legal status of those substances in the respective jurisdictions, while also quickly adjusting to new controls wherever and whenever they may occur. The multiplicity of substances currently in the market challenges the effectiveness of national and international interventions because the elimination of one substance from the market easily leads to replacement by another.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'The situation is particularly complex for the opioids group, as both legally and illegally produced substances satisfy the non-medical demand for opioids. While illegally produced opiates, such as heroin, used to dominate the non-medical demand for opioids, the illicit opioid markets in many countries have become far more diversified over the past two decades, with a number of pharmaceutical opioids that have started to cover a substantial part of the market for opioids for non-medical purposes.
This is creating an additional challenge for drug use prevention because, unlike the traditional hard drugs such as heroin, pharmaceuticals are often not perceived as harmful. In terms of drug control, this requires a careful equilibrium between maximizing accessibility for medical use while minimizing availability for non-medical use. It should be noted that the use of pharmaceuticals for non-medical purposes is not limited to opioids. There is also a substantial market for stimulant pharmaceuticals for non-medical use, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'The growing complexity of drug markets can be also seen in the manufacturing processes of synthetic drugs. In the past, a limited number of precursor chemicals was used to manufacture synthetic drugs, such as amphetamine (manufactured mostly from P-2-P), methamphetamine (manufactured mostly from ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, or from P-2-P in North America) and “ecstasy” (mainly manufactured from 3,4-MDP-2-P). This has changed over the past two decades. As the key precursors mentioned above are all under international control, traffickers have been looking for alternatives. Over the years, different strategies have been adopted by traffickers to overcome controls using as alternative precursors substances that were not equally well controlled in all countries, noncontrolled pre-precursors and so-called “designer precursors”, that is, chemicals specifically designed to circumvent existing precursor control systems. Pharmaceutical preparations containing controlled precursor chemicals have also been used to supply precursors because, although controlled, they are exempt from a number of control mechanisms such as the system of pre-export notifications' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'Polydrug use is not a recent trend. It remains a public health concern because the use of multiple drugs potentially increases risks and exacerbates dependence. The management of polydrug use remains a complex and challenging task because treatment is often less successful for individuals who use multiple substances. Moreover, it is difficult to find evidence to address the question about whether the complexity of the drug markets has increased over the past two decades in terms of the number of substances and combinations involved in polydrug use.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'Negative emotions - the fear which is the absence of confidence, the hatred, anger or malice which exclude love - are the guarantee that visionary experience, if and when it comes, shall be appalling. The Pharisee is a virtuous man, but his virtue is of the kind which is compatible with negative emotion. His visionary experiences are therefore likely to be infernal rather than blissful.' - Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley, 1956
'There is evidence that the number of polydrug users has increased in the United States and in the United Kingdom because in both countries the ratio of the aggregated number of users of individual drugs compared with the total number of drug users has followed an upward trend. It is still difficult, however, to assess the actual impact of this trend in terms of health consequences.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'However, polydrug trafficking is not limited to Europe and can also be found in other regions and subregions, including North America, South America, Asia, Oceania and Africa. For a number of years, for example, polydrug trafficking organizations have been dismantled in the United States. A recent example was the dismantlement in July 2019 of an organization involving more than 50 people selling counterfeit oxycodone pills (containing fentanyl), methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and benzodiazepine pills, as well as various types of weapons.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'Demand-driven dynamics of drug markets are the result of changing patterns of drug use and the desire of users to experiment with new substances, which may lead to an increasing number of users starting a new habit. The establishment of the tramadol market for recreational use in certain regions may have initially been generated by an increased demand based on the supply available for medical use. But once a demand was generated, a new supply-driven phenomenon further expanded the market with illicitly manufactured products that were not part of the medical market' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'It is worth remarking that many of the punishments described in the various accounts of hell are the punishments of pressure and constriction. Dante's sinners are buried in mud, shut up in the trunks of trees, frozen solid in blocks of ice, crushed beneath stones. The Inferno is psychologically true. Many of its pains are experienced by schizophrenics, and by those who have taken mescalin or lysergic acid under unfavourable conditions.
What is the nature of these unfavourable conditions? How and why is heaven turned into hell? In certain cases the negative visionary experience is the result of predominantly physical causes...If the liver is diseased, the associated mind may find itself in hell. But what is more important for our present purposes is the fact that negative visionary experience may be induced by purely psychological means. Fear and anger bar the way to the heavenly Other World and plunge the mescalin taker into hell.' - Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley, 1956
'Increases in drug use have at times also been supply driven, as users react to growing supply and the attendant falling prices by increasing their consumption of those drugs. This was the case with cocaine in recent years, among other drugs. Some of the recent changes in drug markets, such as the opioid crisis in North America and the rapid emergence of a synthetic drug market in the Russian Federation and Central Asia, can also be defined as supply driven phenomena. The expansion of the synthetic drugs market in the Russian Federation seems to be mainly linked to the Hydra darknet platform. While there may now be an established user-based demand for synthetic drugs, the initial trigger was new suppliers. The rise of fentanyl in North America was not defined by a new demand either but was the result of opportunities seized by drug suppliers to reduce costs and thus increase profit margins.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'While the main drug treatment interventions in Asia and Europe continue to be linked primarily to opiates, in Africa to cannabis, and in South America to cocaine, in North America there has been a shift over the past decade from the predominance of cocaine to an increasing importance of opioids. Marked shifts in the main drug for which patients receive drug treatment can also been observed at the subregional level. In a number of countries in East and South-East Asia, for example, methamphetamine has emerged as the predominant drug; in the Near and Middle East, “captagon” tablets (amphetamine), and along the eastern coast of Africa, heroin, have emerged as the predominant drugs.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'Although in Europe opioids continue to be the predominant main drug for which people seek drug treatment, cocaine has become more common in Spain and methamphetamine remains the main drug of concern in Czechia. Within the amphetamines group, different patterns have developed in different subregions. For example, amphetamine continues to be the primary ATS of concern in Europe and in the Middle East, while methamphetamine has emerged as the primary ATS of concern in East and South-East Asia and in North America.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'England and Wales and Australia are examples of places where cocaine and amphetamines have competed for their share of the stimulant market over the past 20 years. Germany and the United States are examples of places where cocaine and amphetamines have together led the changes in the stimulant market
Within the stimulant markets, there are also examples of substitution effects in the “ecstasy” market. In England and Wales, for example, trend data on the use of “ecstasy”, mephedrone and NPS in the period 2005–2019 suggest that first mephedrone and later NPS filled the market space left by the decreasing supply of “ecstasy”, mainly due to a supply shortage, until 2012. Once “ecstasy” started to regain its previous share, the other substances declined sharply' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf'In the context of the long-term dynamics of the global drug market, there are many different changes that have affected selected geographical areas. Within the past two decades some regions have seen a gradual transformation of their drug markets: methamphetamine has become the predominant drug in South-East Asia, amphetamine (“captagon’’) in the Middle East, North America has been confronted with the opioid crisis, Africa has seen an expansion of its domestic heroin market, and countries in North and West Africa are now facing a tramadol crisis. More recently, two subregions, the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia and the Russian Federation/ Central Asia, appear to have been affected by rapid changes in their drug markets, with new drugs taking a substantial share of the drug market.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'The negative visionary experience is often accompanied by bodily sensations of a very special and characteristic kind. Blissful visions are generally associated with a sense of separation from the body, a feeling of deindividualization. (It is, no doubt, the feeling of deindividualization which makes it possible for the Indians who practise the peyote cult to use the drug not merely as a short cut to the visionary world, but as an instrument for creating a loving solidarity within the participating group.) When the visionary experience is terrible and the world is transfigured for the worse, individualization is intensified and the negative visionary finds himself associated with a body that seems to grow progressively more dense, more tightly packed, until he finds himself at last reduced to being the agonized consciousness of an inspissated lump of matter, no bigger than a stone that can be held between the hands.' - Heaven and Hell, Aldous Huxley, 1956
'In the past few years, the manufacture and use of methamphetamine have emerged in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia, subregions that until recently were dominated by use of “captagon”. Methamphetamine manufacture and consumption used to be largely unknown in those subregions. Initially reported by only one country in the subregion (Israel), the number of countries reporting seizures of methamphetamine has increased in subsequent years. Overall, eight countries in the Near and Middle East/South-West Asia reported seizures of methamphetamine in the period 2000–2009, rising to 14 countries in the period 2010–2018. The bulk of the methamphetamine seized, however, continued to be seized by the Islamic Republic of Iran.' - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2020,
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/field/WDR20_BOOKLET_4.pdf
'As with smoking, so in the case of drinking, there is a common and simple form, and also various compounds more or less elaborate. The simple form is merely to pound the drug veryf inew ith a little black pepper, add water according to the strength of the drink desired, andf iltert he decoction through a cloth. This beverage is sometimes made with the bhang composed almost entirely of the leaves of the plant, and sometimes, most commonly outside Bengal, the North-Western Provinces, and the Punjab, of thef lowerh eads or mixture off lowera nd leaves that has come away in the course of the manufacture of ganja. It goes by different names in various parts of India. In Bengal it is commonly called bhang or siddhi; in the North-Western Provinces bhang, siddhi, or thandai; in the Punjab, Bombay, and Central Provinces bhang or ghota; and in Sind ghota and panga according to its strength. In Madras the simplest form of preparation seems to be very little used, but when it is, it is probably called bhang or subzi. The Madras preparation called ramras or ramrasam seems to correspond to the dudhia of Upper India'
Ch.8 Extent Of Use And The Manner And Forms In Which The Hemp Drugs Are Consumed, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895,
https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
Some people chose opium, alcohol and prescription drugs, instead of cannabis, for their recreation and medicine. That's fine, since everybody has the right to choose their sources of recreation and medicine. But what was unacceptable was that they banned cannabis, the medicine and recreation of millions of people, especially the poor and the labouring classes worldwide. Now, after decades of overdosing on their drugs, these people are dying from the side effects and the loss of health and immunity. Instead of changing their recreational and medical diet to a more sustainable one, these people have now confined billions of humans, again mostly the poor and labouring classes, while continuing to prescribe their dangerous drugs as medication for all. The cannabis plant must be legalized, for recreational and medicinal use, and made available for all who wish to use it. For those addicted to opium and prescription drugs, the recognition that the path they are following is unsustainable must happen as soon as possible. Also, the recognition that the majority of the world has always paid the price for the misadventures of these people, and continues to do so, must happen as soon as possible to stop the oppression of the majority, increasing deaths and damage to the planet.
'There is next a class of beverages in which the hemp drug and pepper are supplemented by harmless perfumes and spices, the whole enriched, it may be, with sugar and milk or curds. Every bhang drinker who can afford it adds some or other of these ingredients. The spices most commonly used are anise, fennel, coriander, dill, ajwan (Ptychotis), cucumber and musk-melon seeds, almonds, rose leaves, cloves, saffron, and cardamom. But many others of the same class of innocent ingredients are mentioned, viz., hemp and poppy seeds, mace, mint cummin, endive, parsley, musk, betel-leaves, keori, attar, cinnamon, lotus seeds the seed of hollyhock, the kernels of pistachio and charoli (Buchanania latifolia), asafoetida, liquorice, cubebs, chillies, and senna leaves. The juices of fruits and trees are also employed in the concoction, such as that of the pomegranate, grape, mango, bael, cocoanuts, and date (not toddy)'
Ch.8 Extent Of Use And The Manner And Forms In Which The Hemp Drugs Are Consumed, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895,
https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
'There is, however, a very considerable consumption of sweetmeats made with ganja or bhang, or even sometimes charas. They are all prepared in very much the same way, their various names and properties depending on the proportion of the hemp drugs and other ingredients that they contain. Their basis is sugar and milk, and the essence of the hemp drug is extracted by the aid of heat, and compounded with them with other drugs and spices or perfumes. The most common of them is majum, and the preparation is known by that name from one end of India to the other. It is largely used at certain Hindu feasts. It is evidently credited with aphrodisiacal qualities. Many people consume it habitually, either throughout the year or in the cold season, abandoning it in the hot in favour of the liquid preparations. The names of other similar preparations are yakuti (in general use from the Deccan northwards), purnathi (Madras), gulkhand (Bombay), shrikhand (Bombay), halwa (in general use), and many others. These preparations are all considered to be aphrodisiacal, some to such a degree that they should perhaps be regarded as medicinal forms rather than articles of ordinary consumption'
Ch.8 Extent Of Use And The Manner And Forms In Which The Hemp Drugs Are Consumed, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895,
https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
'Hemp is sometimes compounded into cakes made of gram flour. It is used as a seasoning in the cooking of various dishes, those composed of meat as well as others. More than one witness in more than one province mentions this use at parties to make fun of the guests. A witness from the Punjab describes how powdered bhang is sometimes wrapped in dhatura leaves, the whole enclosed in a covering of clay and baked. It is not clear whether the cooked substance is eaten or drunk. It might be either. Witnesses, speaking of the northern part of the Bombay Presidency, state that gram and dates are sometimes charged with hemp. And in Calcutta the drug is occasionally used to flavour ice-cream. '
Ch.8 Extent Of Use And The Manner And Forms In Which The Hemp Drugs Are Consumed, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895,
https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
'In the instructions issued to the Commission by the Government of India, reference is made to the use of hemp drugs among fakirs and ascetics who are held in veneration by large classes of the people, and to the custom, which is believed to obtain to a large extent in Bengal, of offering an infusion of bhang to every guest and member of the family on the last day of the Durga Puja. The Commission were instructed to ascertain to what extent these and similar customs prevail in Bengal and other parts of India, and how far the use of hemp drugs forms a part of social, or possibly religious, ceremonial or observance. Questions 32 and 33 of the Commission's questions were intended to elicit information on these points'
Ch.9 Social And Religious Customs, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895,
https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
'The custom of offering an infusion of the leaves of the hemp plant to every guest and member of the family on the Bijoya Dasami, or last day of the Durga Puja, is common in Bengal, and may almost be said to be universal. It is alluded to by many of the witnesses who refer to its use on this occasion as well as on other days of the Durga Puja festival. But, while there can be no doubt as to the existence of the custom, there is considerable divergence of opinion as to the true nature of it. The custom itself is a simple one. On the last day of this great festival the male members of the family go forth to consign the image to the waters, and on their return the whole family with their guests exchange greetings and embrace one another. During this rejoicing a cup containing an infusion of the leaves of the hemp plant is handed round, and all are expected to partake thereof, or at least to place it to the lips in token of acceptance.'
Ch.9 Social And Religious Customs, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895,
https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
'In summing up their conclusions on this chapter, the Commission would first remark that charas, which is a comparatively new article of consumption, has not been shown to be in any way connected with religious observance. As regards Northern India, the Commission are of opinion that the use of bhang is more or less common everywhere in connection with the social and religious customs of the people. As regards ganja, they find that there are certain classes in all parts, except the Punjab, who use the drug in connection with their social and religious observances. The Commission are also of opinion in regard to bhang that its use is considered essential in some religious observances by a large section of the community, and in regard to ganja that those who consider it essential are comparatively very few.'
Ch.9 Social And Religious Customs, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895,
https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
'The Commission have little doubt that interference with the use of hemp in connection with the customs and observances above referred to would be regarded by the consumers as an interference with long established usage and as an encroachment upon their religious liberty. And this feeling would, especially in the case of bhang, undoubtedly be shared to some extent by the people at large. Regarding Southern India, the same remarks apply with this reservation, that the difference between ganja and bhang as materials for smoking and drinking respectively is much less marked there, and the distinction between the two forms of the drug is much less clearly recognised, although by the term "bhang" is generally meant the drug as used for drinking, and by "ganja" the drug as used for smoking.'
Ch.9 Social And Religious Customs, Vol.1, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894-1895,
https://digital.nls.uk/74464868
'Even among other deaf people, American Sign Language isn't up to weed. That's where a Boulder nonprofit, ECS Therapy Center is stepping in to help create new cannabis-related vocabulary of signs for the deaf community.'
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/boulder-nonprofit-working-on-marijuana-sign-language
'The Kochunni Nada has a typical Muslim touch, with its tomb-like structure painted in green. The offerings the devout make for Kochunni are also unique. These include everything from candles and agarbathis, to betel leaves, pan, arecanuts and tobacco, right up to liquor and ganja (Marijuana).'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/legendary-thief-now-a-deity-at-kerala-temple/article8001757.ece
Legalization of marijuana worldwide for adult recreational use and home growing will become a reality when the following facts register in the human consciousness:
- The plant's many medicinal properties far outweigh its alleged drawbacks. Deaths due to its non-availability and the ineffectiveness of substitute medicines increases everyday.
- Millions of people are being imprisoned and punished for growing, selling and consuming the plant. The cost and damage to society from this increases worldwide
- The plant has great economic and ecological value. Success of entities engaging in the plant related legal activities and sustainable development become known worldwide.
'Drug- taking, it is significant, plays an important role in every primitive religion. The Persians and, before them, the Greeks and probably the ancient Hindus used alcohol to produce religious ecstasy; the Mexicans procured the beatific vision by eating a poisonous cactus; a toadstool filled the Shamans of Siberia with enthusiasm and endowed them with the gift of tongues. And so on. The devotional exercises of the later mystics are all designed to produce the drug's miraculous effects by purely psychological means. How many of the current ideas of eternity, of heaven, of supernatural states are ultimately derived from the experiences of drug-takers?' - from Aldous Huxley's A Treatise on Drugs (1931)
Medical use of marijuana is a term introduced by entities that want the medical and pharma systems to get a slice of the marijuana pie. Recreational use is medical use. The split in definitions is artificially created. Marijuana should be first legalized for recreational use especially through legalized home growing which is essentially universal healthcare for a nation giving maximum access to its people. On top of this, after sufficient time has been given for cultivation and access to become widespread and local strains of the plant to revive and establish themselves, after a strong enough seed base and plant diversity bank has been created, commercial businesses and pharma companies could come in to create their products but the strains of marijuana that are indigenous to a country must be protected as a national heritage for the greater goal of plant diversity protection. Many politicians and big businesses would like to gain economic advantage through the plant first and corner it for their benefit...
'“This study advances our understanding of why attitudes changed through an empirical examination of a range of plausible explanations,” the study authors wrote. “As cannabis becomes legal in more places, it is likely to remain an important topic, and Americans’ views are likely to liberalize further.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/whats-really-behind-americans-increased-support-for-marijuana-legalization-study-sheds-light/
Do religious institutions fear the ganja because when a person consumes it he or she becomes more aware of the inter-connectedness and oneness of all things? Such awareness may lead a person to recognize the divinity within and what is meant when it is said that the body is the temple and the living god resides within as much as without. Such awareness may lead a person to become self sustainable when it comes to religion, thus depriving a religious institution of its hold over the person who is till then led to believe that the institution holds a special position as the intermediary to the divine. Religious institutions may thus oppose ganja for fear of loss of their primary sources of funding. i.e. the religious individual. This may be an unwarranted fear as the heightened awareness is as likely to draw an individual to a religious institution as it is to take him or her away from one. Maybe the individual who partakes the ganja and speaks is the elixir that renews the flesh and blood of the religious institution and the spirit that it is said to represent like the founding fathers probably initially did?
'“When research is misrepresented to uphold and perpetuate the worst myths about people of color and people with mental illness, we are required to speak up,” the letter states. “We urge policymakers and the public to rely on scientific evidence, not flawed pop science and ideological polemics, in formulating their opinions about marijuana legalization.”
The scholars who signed on to the letter include academics from NYU, Harvard Medical School, and Columbia University as well as clinicians ranging from addiction medicine doctors to psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers.'
http://www.drugpolicy.org/press-release/2019/02/100-scholars-and-clinicians-refute-inaccurate-claims-new-book-tell-your
'While THC makes you feel high, CBD targets receptors in your body that make you feel self-satisfied and smug. You’ll recognize the sensation as soon as someone asks what you’re putting in your coffee. Side effects of CBD include talking about CBD, posting about CBD on social media, and saying, “Oh, my God—WHAT?!” when other people say they haven’t tried CBD.'
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/so-you-have-some-questions-about-cbd
https://www.facebook.com/ComedyCentralEveryDamnDay/posts/2033675766936355
#hashtag?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKxzr_3-iQg
'Support for legal marijuana hit 61 percent in 2018, up from 57 percent two years ago, according to the General Social Survey, a widely respected trend survey that has been measuring support for legal marijuana since the 1970s. An analysis of the survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the General Social Survey staff finds that increased backing of legalization cut across all age groups and political parties.'
https://apnews.com/8eb58810be2642b3a2c81e9da247ff80
The propaganda against ganja in the last 80 or so years has been so effective that deep rooted bias against the plant remains in the minds of many. In the recent past there has been an interesting shift in the bias. Everybody now knows about CBD and THC. Hardly anything at all is known about all the other compounds in the plant. Recent messaging has been that CBD is beneficial and does not get you 'high' like THC. People who were earlier biased against the whole plant have now reduced it down to two entities, the good CBD and the bad THC. So the attack is now redirected against THC. Little do people realize that THC is as beneficial as CBD if not more, that the ability to make you high is what makes the plant such a popular recreational pursuit in the first place. Getting high is the aspect of the plant that increases one's self awareness and consciousness. It is the mind study feature of the plant. Getting high is to ganja based health what pleasurable sex is to reproduction. As we try and free the plant from its wrongful confinement, let us hope that the duality in the minds of the people who oppose the plant gets resolved, that they recognize that what appears good and what appears bad are matters of perspective and most often ignorance. Underlying it all is the one reality.
https://norml.org/marijuana/fact-sheets/item/societal-impacts-of-cannabis-dispensaries-retailers
https://norml.org/marijuana/fact-sheets/item/marijuana-regulation-impact-on-health-safety-economy
Along with the legalization of marijuana, its normalization also needs to happen in society. The plant has been suppressed for so long that its presence sometimes creates anxiety for the user who worries about social and legal discrimination. Its presence creates panic, fear, distrust and anger in the non-user due to the negativity that has been built around it. The consumption of the plant should become once again a natural part of social life. That would be normalization. With continuous exposure, increasing information and awareness normalization should happen eventually.
'Diving into the results as broken down by generation signals that legalization is a trend that will only accelerate in the future. Seventy-four percent of millennials back ending prohibition, as do 63 percent of those in Generation X. Only the Silent Generation opposes legalization overall, but Pew reports that its members “have become more supportive in the past year.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/support-for-marijuana-legalization-grew-again-in-2018-pew-poll-finds/
What is it about marijuana that causes fear in people who don't use it? Is it the fear that they will lose control over the empires that they have built based on threats, manipulation and force? Is it the fear that individuals all over the world may become free to choose to take control over their means of medication, recreation and livelihood? Is it the fear that contented, healthy and peaceful individuals cannot be exploited and manipulated easily and so are dangerous to today's systems? Is it the fear that marijuana will make the individual more conscious of what is happening in the world and she will not quietly accept the status quo? Is it the fear of losing one's self-control and letting one's most deepest madness take over sometimes? Is it the fear of being labelled a non-conformist, insane or a criminal and ridiculed by society? Is it the fear of losing all your possessions in this world? Is it the fear of death? Is it the fear of the unknown, the void, the great spirit of the universe? If you examine your fears closely, you will probably realise that these things are bound to happen anyway...the plant may in fact help you handle your fears better...
Fr Andria Jaghmaidze, who often puts the Church point of view across to the media, told the BBC that "LGBT propaganda promotes a drastically liberalised drugs policy that contradicts Church teachings".'
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-45563477
'The examination of jurisdictional heterotopias regarding their normalisation attempts through place branding is only one of the many ways that this triadic (legal, spatial, and social) relationship can be viewed. This paradigm can be employed in future research in order to address legal geographies of mundane activities and habits, and their influence upon the urban space and place-making practices stemming from bottom-up place branding approaches (Azuela and Meneses-Reyes, 2014; Blomley, 2016). '
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0308518X17725753
'In strong association with the efforts of scholars to connect peers’ deviance to individual deviance, we find that the peer context strongly affects the continuation of deviance, in this case, patterns of prescription drug misuse. The major implications are that the intertwined peer processes must be evaluated holistically to distill out their influence. Additionally, rather than being motivated by friends’ pressure to sustain or increase personal use, individuals are motivated by a broader peer context, especially by a positive normative context, desires to enhance experiences with friends, and network-based accessibility that facilitates misuse.'
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023117706819
One of the strange traits in parts of our society is that states of higher consciousness, the recognition and especially the public statement of one's divinity, can get one admitted to psychiatric treatment, forcefully confined and subjected to powerful chemical medications. Spiritual experiences invoke fear and panic not in the visionary but in people around the visionary, most often the people closest to the person, causing violent action to be taken against the individual. This reaction is an effort to try and restore the visionary's behavior back to what is widely believed to be normal social behavior i.e. behavior society at large is more comfortable with. In some places expanded consciousness can make you the shaman and healer while in others it can make you the patient.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/070674376901400114
Watch out..the ganja smoker might take away all your sexual partners...without even wanting to or trying to..
'Humans monitor third party behaviour, and work to have costs imposed on third parties, even when individuals' own interests are not obviously at stake (DeScioli & Kurzban 2009a). While activities such as recreational drug usage are often viewed as ‘victimless’ misdemeanours, our analysis implies that individuals' competing interests are nonetheless involved. The results described here imply that third-party morality in contexts like condemnation of recreational drug usage might be best understood in the context of strategic dynamics, with individuals influencing moral rules in a way that favours their own competitive reproductive strategies.'
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1699/3501
'It is not only a question of whether people use socially or in a solitary way, but more a case of how and why they use in groups or on their own(cf. Kandel, 1996; Chen & Kandel, 1998). Moreover, it is not only how adolescents get involved in cannabis-smoking peer groups and whether these groups dissolve in adulthood or not (cf. Simons-Morton et al., 2006), but rather the reasons for smoking in these peer groups. Finally, it is not only about control or loss of control (Decorte, 2000; Zinberg, 1984), but also about when and how cannabis is used during the day (cf. Frank et al., 2013). Daily cannabis use in adulthood can be an inclusive and non-problematic activity as well as a problematic practice.'
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2478/nsad-2013-0034
Multilingual health warning.. Apologies for grammatical and linguistic errors..
Ningalude sradheke..njaan ganjaavine kuriche samsarikimbol chelle vyakthigalil chorichil undagaan saadhyadhe unde..
Nimma sradhekagi..naanu ganjabage maathaduvaaga kelluvu vyakthigalige kajji baruva saadhyadhe idhe..
Apke sradha ke liye.. main jab ganja ke baare mein baat karta hoon tab kayi vyakthiyon mein kujjli hone ka sambhavana hai..
The study uses a narrow definition of religion where religion is incompatible with marijuana use. For many people however marijuana itself is a key part of the religious and spiritual experience..
'Our results suggest that the impact of religious involvement on the likelihood of medical marijuana use is attenuated under the conditions of poor health. While these results are inconsistent with our second hypothesis, they lend support to our third hypothesis, which proposes that the moral authority and social control functions of religious institutions may be challenged by the “moral domination” of medical institutions. In this case, religious involvement is less effective in deterring marijuana use among adults in poor health.'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5989257/
Solitude is great company..
“The results suggest that the cannabis users are less sensitive to exclusion than non-drug using individuals,” added Dr. Cameron Carter, Editor of Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. “The study does not address whether this impaired processing is a core trait of cannabis users or a byproduct of the drug use itself.”
https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/young-marijuana-users-respond-differently-to-social-exclusion
It's in the genes...
'Peer pressure and other factors may encourage someone to experiment with marijuana, says Tsuang, but genetic factors keep them interested.'
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/1997/04/high-genes
Bangi...
“They forget they have native communities,” says Nicolas Mukumo Mushumbi, one of nine staffers at the Program for the Integration and Development of the Pygmy People, which lobbies for the rights of indigenous people in the Congo and maintains that Pygmies should be allowed to cultivate marijuana. “It was the tradition even before laws were written.”
At least an army thinking of peaceful things besides killing efficiency..make ganja not guns...
“[The stories] accumulate in our bodies, in our tissues, in our minds. And the accumulation of those stories, of all that people share, it feels like that’s what I’m made of now,” Johnson said. "You carry people’s stories forever.”
"The assertion that cannabis use can cause schizophrenia is not borne out by the evidence, says Matthew Hill. The 1936 film Reefer Madness depicted cannabis as a drug that provoked uncontrollable insanity, leading to manslaughter, suicide and attempted rape. This was a ridiculous characterization of the effects of cannabis, but there is a long history of associating the drug with psychotic disorders."
'Cannabis is thought to derive its name from ancient Sanskrit and Hebrew texts, where it means 'fragrant cane', and the plant has been of medicinal interest for millennia. The first clinical study involving cannabis was conducted in 19th-century Calcutta by Irish physician Sir William O'Shaughnessy, who introduced Indian hemp to Victorian medicine.'
A country with a cannabis connection as ancient as India's ..and they are not being coy about it looks like...
'These policies have served the country well. “The Israeli national medical cannabis programme is considered a success,” says Wachtel. “I see a great movement, from the United States, from Canada, from many other countries, of people who want to get into this field. We are awash with newcomers.”'
And still they poke it, prod it, probe it, peer at it, fear it and keep it locked away from the reach of the many for whom it was created. No other living being has gone through this amount of prejudice, discrimination, ill will and misunderstanding than this herb...Shiva's beloved...
'420, 4:20, or 4/20 (pronounced four-twenty) is a code-term that refers to the consumption of cannabis, especially smoking cannabis around the time 4:20 p.m./a.m. (or 16:20 in some European nations) and smoking and celebrating cannabis on the date April 20 (which is 4/20 in U.S. form).'(wikipedia)
Throw away those guns and WMDs, disband the armies, smoke a joint, sip some butter milk and watch spring unfold. Me, i want to fly like an eagle...Happy 4/20 !!
"A strong stigma in the West bullies our idea of drug culture, fueled by perceptions of mind-altering substances, man-made chemical compounds, and destroyed communities. But throughout the world, spiritual practitioners' use of entheogens—psychoactive substances applied in religious or shamanic contexts—is nothing short of a learned art, unique to the people and regions who’ve studied it for centuries. Their ultimate goal isn’t a supreme high but a realization of the supreme, wherein an individual ingests a plant with psychoactive properties in order to have a conversation with or listen to it. It’s a captivating notion, to be one with nature, driven by the need to sustain a relationship with an ancient voice and to absorb its knowledge." Nat Geo
Hopefully our sadhus are sourcing their ganja naturally and
organically and not ganja with high amounts of pesticides and toxins
supplied by drug traffickers. With the plant remaining illegal, the
difficulties and risks involved in the procurement of the plant must
surely be as high for them as it is for everybody else. Legalize the
plant, especially the home growing of it, for the self sufficiency of
both the man of this world and the one who has renounced it.
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