Cannabis is a curious plant. It has led vastly different lives—as a raw material, intoxicant, pain reliever, and artistic enhancer. It has become a conduit of bohemian creative enterprise, exoticism, xenophobia, juvenile delinquency, mass incarceration, social justice, AIDS activism, and cutthroat capitalism. It has touched broad swaths of the population, from mystical shamans in Asia to suburban mothers in the United States.
Yet, marijuana’s multifunctionality meant that it was often subject to the whims and whimsies of the world around it—that it could mean very different things to very different people. In the United States this was especially true; as America changed, marijuana changed with it. Ultimately, the history of marijuana—how it is used, by whom, and to what end—can shed light on a culture’s social and political priorities. What a society valued, feared, and desired at a given point in time was in part channeled through marijuana.
Not your typical history course, Medicine, Recreation, and the Long History of Cannabis chronicles the history of our world from the colonial period to the present day through cannabis reception, activism, and policy. In 12 lectures led by cannabis history expert Emily Dufton, you will examine the origins of cannabis, following the plant from its emergence in the ancient Hindu Kush foothills to its cultivation on hemp plantations in colonial America. You will explore the science behind cannabis intoxication, unpacking the molecular chemistry of cannabinoids like CBD and THC. You will explore the rise of medicinal cannabis elixirs in the 19th century. You will investigate links between orientalism and marijuana through the rise of Turkish smoking parlors in early 20th century America. You will investigate the causes and effects of a series of marijuana crackdowns, from turn of the century prohibition to President Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs. Finally, you will look to the future, surveying where cannabis policy ought to go next.
