Cannabis Column - #33

Jon Gettman is a long time contributor to HIGH TIMES. A former National Director of NORML, Jon has a Ph.D. in public policy and regional economic development and consults with attorneys, advocates, and non-profits on cannabis related research and public policy issues. On October 8, 2002, along with a coalition of organizations, he filed a new petition to have cannabis rescheduled under federal law. This column will track that petition's progress.
Cannabis: The Herb of the 21st Century

The Cannabis Column is about cannabis. Efforts to reform the marijuana laws depend, in part, on shedding the light of truth on the common misconceptions about the cannabis plant, many of which are bound up in marijuana’s derisive and distorted reputation. These linguistic prejudices not only permeate the culture but also affect the legal status of cannabis in the United States. Marijuana is categorized under U.S. law as a worthless and dangerous drug. Changing this status, a process known as rescheduling, requires a challenge to this widely held premise. And this challenge must begin with an understanding of the terminology involved.

Marijuana is just another of many words the American language has borrowed from Spanish, according to H.L. Mencken. Spanish words were “indeed, coming in all the time” in that era. Marijuana popped up in 1894, about the same time as mañana (1885), chili con carne (1895), and wrangler (1888). It took a while longer for rodeo to pop up in 1914, but by then the linguistic legacy of Manifest Destiny had been set.

Decades earlier in 1839, W.B. O’Shaughnessy, a physician in the service of the British in India, wrote about the medical properties of the Hemp plant, defined further as the plants cannabis sativa and cannabis indica, and also known as Gunjah. In 1857 John Bell wrote in the Boston Medical Journal about what in Arabic was known as Haschisch, which he also identified as Cannabis Indica or Indian Hemp.

Tod Mikuriya’s has collected numerous articles from the 19th and early 20th century in his book Marijuana: Medical Papers. The medical community in the United States began to use the term cannabis as early as 1860 in a report of the Ohio State Medical Community on Cannabis Indica. By the turn of the century cannabis was well established as the objective scientific term for what had been referred to as Indian Hemp.

While minor research on cannabis took place during the early and mid 20th century, usage of the term cannabis became overshadowed by the emergence of the evil weed and its acceptance by middle class youths in the 1960s. The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins from 1971 provides the late 20th century perspective that is still very much with us today:

“It’s interesting to note that assassin itself comes from the name of a secret band of fanatics who were called hashashin because they fired up their fanaticism by eating or smoking hashish before making their attacks. And hashish is none other than dried hemp, which, under the name marijuana and such nicknames as pot, reefers, and muggles, is still very much with us today . . .for centuries hashish, the same marijuana that today’s devotees call pot, has served to sublimate and at time inflame its users beyond reality.”

An interesting pattern emerges from the linguistic history. When studied in a calm detached, objective manner the drug is referred to as cannabis. However either slang or indigenous terms are used to refer to the use of this drug by people from Mexico, India, or the Arab World, and usually in an inflammatory way. In a similar manner, today, marijuana use is characterized as dangerous and deviant behavior by those who support criminal penalties for its use and cultivation. Hashish, ganja, marijuana, pot, reefer, all of these are virtually interchangeable in the sense that as far as the drug warriors are concerned they’re all names for an evil weed used by lowlifes, deviants, slackers, or people with wandering attention spans who can’t be taken seriously.

Marijuana is a term of propaganda. We don’t have to accept it as such, and clearly the marijuana reform movement has directly attacked the propaganda associated with its use over the last thirty years and more. But the fact remains that despite the name, for reform of marijuana laws there exists a wider challenge to reform the way society refers to and thinks about the plant itself.

Marijuana is a slang term loaded with controversial and primarily derisive connotations. The 1930’s movie title Reefer Madness describes what the police thought of potheads, as they frequently called them, then and now. It is surprising that the sacrilegious nature of the term is not widely appreciated; marijuana is a combination of Maria and Juan, or, that is, Mary and John, the names of two of the most popular Catholic saints. While some users of cannabis exalt its spiritual qualities, this is not what law enforcement had in mind when they demonized this herb.

Cannabis is the objective, scientific, and linguistically proper term that the American language uses to refer Indian Hemp. And while marijuana is a term that must be used in some contexts, cannabis should be recognized as the preferred term by the reform movement. We need to attend to the needs of medical cannabis users. We need to reform the cannabis laws. We need to encourage federal research on the industrial uses of cannabis hemp. We need to educate the public about both the benefits and potential harm involved with recreational use of cannabis. All of these challenges can be met through an effort to reschedule cannabis under US law, and any such effort can be successful if it meets these objectives. And the place to start is by putting the last century behind us.

Enough with 19th and 20th century slang. We need to make cannabis the herb of the 21st century. And that’s why this is and continues to be a column about cannabis.