Few plants in the world are as misunderstood as cannabis. The history of this plant is the history of agriculture, of medicine, of religion. Indeed, it is the history of humankind.

Cannabis arrived in Sydney on the First Fleet in 1788. It was one of Australia's main crops until it was made illegal as a result of the 1925 Geneva Convention, which sought to control dangerous addictive substances such as opium and cocaine. Cannabis was a last-minute inclusion due to a lack of education around its uses and properties, and it is only in recent times that the movement for legalisation has gained momentum.

The past century, however, is but a grain of sand in the hourglass of time. For millennia before that, it was grown and utilised around the entire world.

Moral Panic

While the afore-mentioned 1925 Geneva Convention was the first step towards cannabis becoming illegal worldwide, since the late 19th Century it had become associated with the lower classes in Egypt and Turkey. These counties were undergoing rapid industrialisation, and keen to demonstrate modernity to their international neighbours. Stigma around social class and race led to suspicion around cannabis.

In the United States, propaganda campaigns claimed that Mexicans and African-Americans became drug-crazed rapists under the influence of cannabis, with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics pursuing plans to ban the plant after they needed a new focus following the end of Alcohol prohibition. Elsewhere throughout the world, a variety of reasons from Temperance crusaders to mistaken associations with the opium trade meant that cannabis fell out of favour with governments from India to Greece, South Africa to Brasil. For an in-depth perspective on the subject, please read this well-researched report by The Transnational Institute (TNI).

By the early 1960s, cannabis was illegal almost everywhere. Opposition to the Vietnam War was building, and youth culture in both America and Europe began to align itself with cannabis. Indeed, this is much of the reason why the Baby Boomers have embraced cannabis so whole-heartedly in the United States of today – they were enjoying cannabis at the same time that they were protesting against their government’s violent interference in South-East Asia, which didn’t end until 1975. It was U.S. servicemen on leave, and indeed the involvement of their ANZAC counterparts, which is credited with bringing cannabis into widespread recreational use here in Australia. Many young soldiers consumed large amounts of cannabis to deal with the boredom and horror of war, and later, in response to Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).