Cannabis

• 1. Introduction

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  Cannabis is a genus of flowering plants with a history stretching back roughly 12,000 years, to the early Neolithic period in East Asia. Long before it became a subject of courtroom battles and legislative debates, it was already woven into the fabric of human life across continents. A shaman buried in the Yanghai Tombs of northwest China lay with 789 grams of the plant placed near his head and feet, preserved so well that an international team of researchers later confirmed it still contained THC. That burial happened around 2,700 years ago. The Greek historian Herodotus recorded Scythian steam baths fueled by cannabis around 440 BCE. And the oldest known pollen thought to come from this plant was deposited in Ningxia, China, roughly 19.6 million years ago. What is this plant, exactly? How many species does it contain? Who decides what to call it, and why does that question have legal consequences? And how did a single genus come to serve as fiber, food, medicine, sacrament, and recreational drug, sometimes all at once?

• 2. A Plant Divided Against Itself

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  Carl Linnaeus classified the genus Cannabis in 1753, treating it as a single species he named Cannabis sativa L. He was familiar with European hemp, widely cultivated at the time, and considered the genus monotypic. That simple picture began to fracture in 1785, when evolutionary biologist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck published a description of a second species, Cannabis indica, based on plant specimens collected in India. Lamarck noted that C. indica had poorer fiber quality than C. sativa but greater utility as an inebriant, and he also described it as smaller, with woodier stems and narrower leaflets. The debate did not stay in herbaria. By the 1970s in North America, it had moved into courtrooms. Laws in the United States and Canada specifically prohibited products of C. sativa, so defense attorneys argued that seized cannabis might be a different species entirely and thus not covered by statute. Botanist Ernest Small testified for the prosecution; Richard E. Schultes and others testified for the defense. The botanists argued heatedly outside of court, and each camp questioned the other's integrity. Defense attorneys rarely prevailed, because the intent of the law was clear. In 1976, Small and American taxonomist Arthur Cronquist proposed a resolution: one species, two subspecies (hemp or drug, defined by THC and CBD levels), and two varieties within each. Schultes reached the opposite conclusion from the same era's research, arguing that stable morphological differences supported at least three separate species. His framework was embraced by cultivators and cannabis aficionados, who began routinely distinguishing narrow-leafed "sativa" from wide-leafed "indica." McPartland's subsequent review found the Schultes taxonomy inconsistent with earlier botanical work, and partly responsible for the confusion that followed in popular usage.

• 3. What the Chemistry Reveals

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  There are 483 identifiable chemical constituents known to exist in the cannabis plant, and at least 85 distinct cannabinoids have been isolated from it. Cannabinoids are secreted by glandular trichomes, which are most abundant on the floral calyxes and bracts of female plants. Cannabis plants produce these compounds as part of their defense against herbivory. Only one cannabinoid, Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is psychoactive; cannabidiol (CBD) is typically produced in the greatest abundance alongside THC, but produces no intoxicating effect on its own, though it is thought to reduce the anxiety-inducing effects of high doses of THC. Since the early 1970s, plants have been categorized by their chemical phenotype, or "chemotype": the overall amount of THC produced and the ratio of THC to CBD. The THC/CBD ratio is genetically determined and stays fixed throughout a plant's life, even as overall cannabinoid production shifts with environmental conditions. Non-drug plants produce relatively low THC and high CBD; drug plants do the reverse. When plants of these two chemotypes cross-pollinate, the first filial generation produces intermediate amounts of both compounds. A 2015 analysis of single-nucleotide polymorphisms found a clear divide between drug and hemp varieties, lending credence to the botanic classification scheme developed by Small. A 2020 SNP analysis from a Canadian university came to a different conclusion, identifying five distinct clusters. The two studies, both conducted at Canadian universities, used opposite nomenclatural concepts: one applied botanic terminology, the other used folk taxonomy based on subjective effect.

• 4. Sex, Genetics, and the Farm

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  K. Hirata first reported in 1924 that cannabis uses an XY sex-determination system, based on studies of sex reversal in hemp. Cannabis has been described as having one of the most complicated mechanisms of sex determination among dioecious plants. Schaffner disputed Hirata's interpretation and published findings suggesting that an X:A system was in use and that sex was strongly influenced by environmental conditions. Both positions have been debated ever since, with multiple models proposed and contested across the following decades. The genus is predominantly dioecious, meaning male and female flowers occur on separate plants. The ancient Chinese recognized this early: the third-century BCE Erya dictionary defined separate words for male and female cannabis. Dioecious varieties are preferred for drug production because female flowers are the raw material used. Inducing sex reversal is agriculturally useful because it allows hybridizing plants of the same genetic sex, producing seeds that are genetically single-sexed. The most common masculinizing agents are silver compounds, including silver thiosulfate, silver nitrate, and colloidal silver. Feminizing compounds include ethephon, an ethylene releaser. Induced sex-reversal does produce defects, particularly decreased pollen viability, but enough viable pollen is generated for the technique to be practically useful. Cannabis's genome was sequenced in 2011 by a team of Canadian scientists; the genome is estimated to be 820 megabases in size.

• 5. Fiber, Food, and Industry

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  Cannabis sativa cultivars grown for fiber can reach more than six metres tall, and their long stems are the source of hemp, a durable soft fiber used in tens of thousands of commercial products. Hemp is stronger and longer-lasting than cotton. Hemp textile products include paper, cordage, construction materials, and clothing, and the plant is also a source of food products such as hemp milk, hemp seed, and hemp oil, as well as biofuels. Civilizations from China to Europe and later North America relied on hemp across the last 12,000 years. In 1545, Spaniards introduced cannabis to Chile specifically for its use as fiber. In the United States, "industrial hemp" is legally defined as cannabis containing no more than 0.3 percent THC by dry weight. That classification was established in the 2018 Farm Bill and later extended to include hemp-sourced extracts, cannabinoids, and derivatives. The legalization of cannabis in Canada has been expected to spur private-sector research into strain diversification, and Canadian government oversight through Health Canada was anticipated to produce more accurate testing and labeling. Dutch researcher E.P.M. de Meijer and colleagues found an "extremely high" degree of genetic polymorphism between and within cannabis populations, suggesting a high degree of variation available for selection even in heavily selected hemp cultivars. In 2013-60,400 kilograms of cannabis were produced legally worldwide.

• 6. Sacred Plant, Ancient Roots

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  The earliest evidence of cannabis smoking comes from the 2,500-year-old tombs of Jirzankal Cemetery in the Pamir Mountains of western China, where cannabis residue was found in burners alongside charred pebbles possibly used during funeral rituals. Cannabis is first referenced in the Hindu Vedas between 2000 and 1400 BCE, in the Atharvaveda. By the 10th century CE, some in India referred to it as "food of the gods." Cannabis use became a ritual element of the Hindu festival of Holi. One of the Tamil Siddhas, a mystic healer named Korakkar, is among the earliest recorded practitioners to use the plant medicinally; the plant is still known in Tamil as Korakkar Mooli, meaning Korakkar's herb. Sufi communities have incorporated cannabis into ritual practice since at least the 13th century CE, particularly in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Pakistan's Shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sindh province is especially known for cannabis use at its annual Urs festival and Thursday evening dhamaal sessions. In ancient Germanic culture, the plant was associated with the Norse love goddess Freya. In the modern era, the Rastafari movement treats cannabis as a sacrament, and the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church, founded in the United States in 1975, considers it the Eucharist, claiming an oral tradition from Ethiopia dating to the time of Christ. The oldest written record of cannabis use as a pharmacologically active agent remains the Yanghai shaman's grave, which also contained a wooden bowl, a large leather basket, and what researchers confirmed to be a well-preserved supply of THC-containing plant material.

• 7. Medicine and Recreation Today

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  Cannabinol (CBN) was the first compound isolated from cannabis extract, in the late 1800s, and its structure and chemical synthesis were achieved by 1940. Medical cannabis is used to reduce nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy, to improve appetite in people with HIV/AIDS, and to treat chronic pain and muscle spasms. Two cannabis extracts, dronabinol and nabilone, are approved by the FDA as medications in pill form for treating the side effects of chemotherapy and AIDS. Research into cannabinoids' potential to affect stroke is ongoing but still preliminary; evidence is lacking for depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Tourette syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, and psychosis. In 2014, an estimated 182.5 million people worldwide used cannabis, representing 3.8 percent of the global population aged 15 to 64; that percentage did not change significantly between 1998 and 2014. In the United States alone, over 100 million Americans are believed to have tried cannabis, with roughly 25 million having used it within a given year. A Delphic analysis by British researchers in 2007 found that cannabis carries a lower risk factor for dependence compared to both nicotine and alcohol, though everyday use may correlate with psychological withdrawal symptoms such as irritability or insomnia. CBD, which carries no intoxicating effect on its own but can show a small stimulant effect similar to caffeine, continues to attract interest alongside other recently studied cannabinoids such as cannabigerol (CBG). The word cannabis itself traces back to the Scythians, whose funeral practices the ancient Greeks observed and documented, giving the modern world both a vocabulary and a window into the plant's long entanglement with human ceremony.