A cannabis Christmas thought

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. For many, a remarkable figure who gave his life for our sins and worked miracles. There’s a fair chance this guiding light was a cannabis consumer. Look at the history of cannabis use: Jesus lived in a time when the plant was widely used. The Romans were familiar with hemp. The female hemp plant was thought to help with earache and menstrual cramps. It was also customary, to lift the general mood, to offer guests hemp biscuits after a meal. I can picture Jesus holding a cosy session with his friends, all happily stoned and trying out the strangest associative stoner philosophies on each other — and then the gentleman having one edible too many…

Plenty of historical figures used our beloved plant. Traces of cannabis have been found in Shakespeare’s pipe. George Washington, first president of the United States, grew hemp in his garden. Queen Victoria’s personal physician saw it as medicine for coughs, headaches, asthma and menstrual cramps. In France there was Dr. Jacques-Joseph Moreau, who believed that — by closely observing cannabis users — he could discover more about the causes of insanity. He invited a group of writers to try it; they named themselves the Club des Hashischins. One of them was Baudelaire, who later wrote about hash and opium as a way to expand consciousness (“artificial paradises”).

These days the plant is smoked, vaporised, eaten, sung about, celebrated, worshipped, fought over, fed with all manner of growth and flowering agents, hidden in the half-light of tolerance policy, hidden in the darkness of outright prohibition — with the occasional bright spot here and there…

One thing is certain: the cannabis plant is woven into the history of humanity and will stay that way for the foreseeable future… I think.