1997 The New England Journal of Medicine endorses medical marijuana, calling its prohibition “misguided, heavy-handed and inhumane.”
1996 Medical-marijuana initiatives pass in California and Arizona.
1995 600,000 Americans are arrested for marijuana by state and local law enforcement, the largest number in US history, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report; 86% percent of busts are for simple possession.
1995 In the UK, Channel 4 dedicates 8 hours of programming to Cannabis on Pot Night. 10 millionth cannabis arrest in the US in July.
1994 American Pot busts hit almost 500,000, breaking the 1977 record.
1993 Drs. Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar publish Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine, the definitive book on therapeutic cannabis use.
1993 The San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club opens. It will eventually have more than 11,000 members.
1993 Hempcore become the first British company to obtain a license to grow Cannabis as the Home Office lifts restrictions on industrial hemp cultivation.
1992 San Francisco activist “Brownie Mary” Rathbun busted for giving pot brownies to AIDS patients. DA refuses to prosecute.
1992 Candidate Bill Clinton tells the American public that while he tried marijuana in college, as an asthmatic he “didn’t inhale.”
1992 Department of Health & Human Services cancels the medical marijuana program.
1991 Cypress Hill releases their first album. Shortly afterward they appear on the cover of HIGH TIMES with marijuana, and introduce the term “blunt” to the American vernacular.
1991 80% of San Francisco voters vote to legalise medicinal use of marijuana.
1990 Bill Bennett suggests drug dealers should be beheaded, while L.A. police chief Darryl Gates calls for execution of casual users.
1990 The California Drug Advisory Board recommends legal cultivation.
1990 The Cannabis Action Network is founded, taking the Hemp Tour around the country as a cannabis educational tool.
1990 The discovery of THC receptors in the human brain is reported in Nature magazine.
1989 The DEA’s Operation Green Merchant targets indoor gardeners purchasing supplies from companies advertising in HIGH TIMES and Sinsemilla Tips. One of the first to be raided, an orchid grower in Raleigh, NC, whose supplier advertised in several magazines, including HT, had no marijuana.
1989 For the first time, drug-law violators outnumber violent criminals among new state-prison inmates.
1989 Jack Herer, Ben Masel, Steve DeAngelo, Debby Goldsberry and a handful of college students create the Hemp Tour.
1989 At the conclusion of his office President Reagan declares victory in the War.
1988 Freedom Fighters are founded by HIGH TIMES Editor-in-Chief Steven Hager and make their first appearance at the Madison Harvest Festival, which draws 15,000.
1988 The First Annual Cannabis Cup Award, held in Amsterdam, goes to Skunk #1.
1988 Jack Herer sets the hemp revolution in motion with The Emperor Wears No Clothes, extolling “the greatest plant on earth, the only plant capable of making all the paper, fiber and fuel we need on a sustainable basis without pesticides and herbicides.”
1988 Anandamide, the brain’s own THC, discovered by St. Louis University Medical School researcher William Devane, who names it from the Sanskrit root for “pleasure.”
1988 Elvy Musikka, who suffers from glaucoma, becomes the first woman to receive federal marijuana through the Compassionate IND program.
1988 In Washington, DEA Judge Francis Young concludes at the end of a lengthy legal process that "Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man". He recommends that medical use of marijuana should be allowed, for certain life- or sense-threatening illnesses. The DEA administrator rejects the ruling. In responding to NORML’s suit to reschedule marijuana for medical use, Judge Francis Young also calls the government’s continued prohibition of it “unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious.”
1986 The Drug Policy Foundation, the black-tie set of the reform movement, is founded.
1985 Nancy Reagan institutes her Just Say No crusade
1983 The first Ask Ed column appears in HIGH TIMES.
1983 The US government instructs American Universities and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research work.
1983 UK convictions for cannabis possession exceed 20,000, a rise of 5000 in three years.
1982 The National Academy of Sciences publishes complete review of cannabis research to date, Marijuana and Health, from their Institute of Medicine. It completely debunks Nahas-era pseudomedical propaganda, outlining in detail proven therapeutic applications of pot and pure THC.
1980 Tom Alexander of Eugene, OR begins Sinsemilla Tips, an authoritative magazine on growing marijuana.
1980 Paul McCartney is jailed for ten days in Japan for possession of cannabis.
1978 New Mexico becomes first US state to make Cannabis available for medical use.
1978 Stone Age magazine publishes the first extended, illustrated how-to article on indoor hydroponic marijuana horticulture.
1977 On August 2nd Jimmy Carter, in his address to congress, becomes the first president to publicly endorse decriminalisation.
1976 Jimmy Carter, on the campaign trail, promises (falsely) to support federal decriminalization legislation once he’s in the White House.
1976 In the UK disturbances erupt at the end of the Notting Hill carnival. BBC News reports: 'Scores of young black men roamed the streets late into the night, openly smoking marijuana joints and listening to the non-stop pounding of reggae music'.
1976 Ford’s chief advisor on drugs, Robert Dupont, declares that Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and urges for it's decriminalization.
1976 Robert Randal becomes first American to receive Cannabis from Federal supplies under a Investigational New Drug (IND) program.
1976 Holland adopts policy of tolerance to Cannabis users.
1976 The Ford Administration bans government funding of medical research on Cannabis.
1975 Alaska Supreme Court strikes down law against possessing or growing small quantities.
1975 FDA establishes the Compassionate Use Program from medicinal marijuana.
1975 Hundreds of Doctors call on US Government to instigate further research on Cannabis. Supreme Court of Alaska declares that 'right of privacy' protects Cannabis possession in the home. Limit for public possession is set at one ounce.
1974 The Indoor Outdoor Highest Quality Marijuana Grower’s Guide, by Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal, is published.
1974 HIGH TIMES hits the stands.
1974 President Gerald Ford’s son, Jack, admits smoking pot.
1973 The Office for Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE), Bureau of Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs and the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence merge to form the Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.)
1973 US Pot busts pass 400,000.
1973 Oregon becomes the first state to take steps towards legalisation.
1973 President Nixon declares "We have turned the corner on drug addiction in America”.
1972 Northern California, particularly Mendocino and Humbold Counties, emerges as the center of US outdoor cultivation, as techniques for growing sinsemilla are developed.
1972 Dennis Peron opens the notorious Big Top “pot supermarket” in the Castro district of San Francisco.
1972 Consumers Union study recommends “the immediate repeal” of all federal and state marijuana laws and calls for “the cultivation and orderly marketing of marijuana–subject to appropriate regulations.”
1972 NORML launches lawsuit to have marijuana rescheduled so that it can be made available as medicine.
1972 The White House passes a $1 billion anti-drug bill and Nixon again declares drugs America's "public enemy No.1".
1971 After Mexican border is stifled by Operation Intercept, far-superior Jamaican and Colombian weed instantly flood the US market.
1970 Canadian Le Dain Commission recommends decriminalizing marijuana, declaring that the damage done by jailing users “far outweighs any potential for harm which cannabis could conceivably possess.”
1970 First Washington, DC Smoke-In.
1970 Keith Stroup forms the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)
1969 Texas black activist Lee Otis Johnson gets 30 years in jail for passing a joint. Michigan White Panthers radical (and MC5 manager) John Sinclair gets nine years for two joints.
1969 Supreme Court strikes down federal marijuana-tax law, the result of a lawsuit brought by Timothy Leary.
1969 Cheech & Chong join forces.
1969 Woodstock Festival, the pinnacle of the hippie counterculture, overwhelms Bethel, NY.
1968 Life magazine puts a photo of a man smoking a joint on the cover.
1967 In New York, on Valentines Day, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies mail out 3000 joints to addresses chosen at random from the phonebook. They offer these people the chance to discover what all the fuss is about, but remind them that they are now criminals for possessing cannabis. The mail out was secretly funded by Jimi Hendrix, and attracted huge publicity.
1967 One of the most famous cannabis busts takes place at the home of Rolling Stone, Keith Richards. Richards and Mick Jagger were sentenced to prison for respectively three months and one year. The convictions were quashed on appeal.
1967 The Summer of Love: San Francisco and New York teem with Human Be-Ins. President Lyndon Johnson appoints commission to study the “problem.” Johnson Commission once again condemns the policy of treating marijuana like opiates and repudiates the “steppingstone” theory.
1967 In July over 3,000 people hold a mass 'smoke-in' protest in Hyde Park, London.
1966 In Israel, Dr. Raphael Mechoulam of Hebrew University isolates and synthesizes THC (delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol).
1966 Price of pot across USA drops dramatically, as low as $100 a kilo.
1966 San Francisco Oracle begins publishing.
1966 Donovan becomes the first celebrity hippy to fall foul of the law.
1965 East Village Other, Berkeley Barb, Detroit Fifth Estate begin publishing.
1964 Los Angeles Free Press begins weekly circulation.
1964 LeMar (Legalize Marijuana) founded, the nation’s first legalization organization.
1964 The first head shop is opened by the Thelin brothers in the United States.
1962 HELP! Magazine provides the first national exposure for underground-comics pioneers R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton.
1962 JFK establishes a group to study narcotics. They later conclude : "It is the opinion of the panel that the hazards of marijuana per se have been exaggerated and that the long criminal sentences imposed on an occasional user or possessor of the drug are in poor social perspective.”
1962 Anslinger is sacked by President Kennedy.
1961 Anslinger heads US delegation at UN Drugs Convention. New international restrictions are placed on Cannabis aiming to eliminate its use within 25 years.
1958 Paul Krassner begins The Realist, inventing underground journalism.
1955 Allen Ginsberg writes “Howl,” the Beat epic-poem manifesto hailing those “who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York.”
1952 First UK Cannabis bust takes place at the Number 11 Club, Soho, London.
1951 In Senate testimony, Dr. Harris Isbell of the US Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, KY–the grandfather of modern addiction theory–opposes the Boggs Act: “Marijuana smokers generally are mildly intoxicated, giggle, laugh, bother no one and have a good time. They do not stagger or fall, and ordinarily will not attempt to harm anyone. It has not been proved that marijuana smoking leads to crimes of violence or to crimes of a sexual nature. Smoking marijuana has no unpleasant after-effects, no dependence is developed on the drug and the practice can easily be stopped at any time. In fact, it is probably easier to stop smoking marijuana cigarettes than tobacco cigarettes.”
1951 UN bulletin of Narcotic Drugs estimates 200 million Cannabis users worldwide. Congress passes the Boggs Act, increasing penalties for narcotics offences and providing uniform penalties for both the Marijuana Tax Act and the Narcotic Drug Import & Export Act.
1949 Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady go on the road.
1948 Actor Robert Mitchum busted for pot. “No mass murderer could easily get as much publicity, most of it bad,” wrote British biographer. Gets 60 days in jail; charges later dismissed.
1948 Anslinger declares that using Cannabis causes the user to become peaceful and pacifistic and could be used as a communist weapon.
1945 Reports suggest that over 100,000 Americans use Cannabis.
1944 New York Mayor LaGuardia's Marijuana commission reports that Cannabis causes no violence at all and cites other positive results. Anslinger responds by denouncing LaGuardia, doctors are threatened with prison sentences if they dare carry out independent research on Cannabis. The report concludes: “The publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marihuana smoking in New York City is unfounded.” The report also shoots down the “gateway theory” generations before the phrase is even coined: “The use of marihuana does not lead to morphine or heroin or cocaine addiction, and no effort is made to create a market for these products by stimulating the practice of marihuana smoking.”
1943 Both the US and German governments urge their patriotic farmers to grow hemp for the war effort.
1941 Cannabis dropped from the American Pharmacopoeia. Popular Mechanics Magazine reveal details of Henry Ford's plastic car made using Cannabis and fuelled from Cannabis. Ford continues to illegally grow Cannabis for some years after the Federal ban, hoping to become independent of the petroleum industry.
1938 More cannabis inspired jazz music when Sidney Bechet records “Viper Mad”.
1938 The February edition of 'Popular Mechanics Magazine' (written before the Marijuana Transfer Tax was passed) declares 'Hemp - the New Billion Dollar Crop.'
1937 Cannabis excluded from "schedule II" drugs (demonstrative medical merit) and listed as "schedule I" (dangerous substance with no value or merit)
1937 Rosetta Howard sings “If You’re A Viper” (Dreamed about a reefer five feet long/The mighty mezz but not too strong).
1937 At the two-hour Congressional hearing on July 10 that preceded passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, the American Medical Association’s legal director, Dr. William C. Woodward, presents an inspired prophecy: “Since the medicinal use of cannabis has not caused and is not causing addiction, the prevention of the use of the drug for medicinal purposes can accomplish no good whatsoever. How far it may serve to deprive the public of the benefits of a drug that on further research may prove to be of substantial value, it is impossible to foresee.”
1937 Anslinger testifies to congress that 'Marijuana' is the most violence causing drug known to Man. The objections by the American Medical Association (The AMA only realised that 'Marijuana' was in fact Cannabis 2 days before the start of hearing) are rejected. Following action by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and a campaign by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, a prohibitive tax is put on hemp in the USA, effectively destroying the industry.(The Act is signed on August 2nd by Franklin Roosevelt)
1932 Cab Calloway records “Reefer Man”
1932 Cannabis is removed from the British Pharmacopoeia.
1931 The Federal Bureau of Narcotics is formed with H.J.Anslinger appointed its head.
1930 Louis Armstrong is arrested in Los Angeles for possession of cannabis.
1930 Milton “Mezz” Mezzrow, a saxophone player who is credited with turning on the world of New York jazz musicians to cannabis, begins selling loose joints in Harlem. According to author Albert Goldman, writing in HT (Nov.’79), “Mezz and his vipers were the tiny seed from which the whole modern dope-culture sprang.”
1928 Louis Armstrong records “Muggles.”
1928 September 28th. The Dangerous Drugs Act 1925 becomes law and Cannabis is made illegal in Britain.
1925 The 'Panama Canal Zone Report' conducted due to the level of Cannabis use by soldiers in the area, concludes that no action be taken to prevent the use or sale of Cannabis.
1924 At the second International Opiates Conference the Egyptian delegate claims that serious problems are associated with Hashish use and calls for immediate international controls. A Sub-Committee is formed and listens to the Egyptian and Turkish delegations while Britain abstains. The conference declares Cannabis a Narcotic and recommends strict international control.
1923 The South African delegate to the League of Nations claims production problems in their mines, the result of workers using 'dagga' (Cannabis) and calls for international controls. Britain insists on further research before any controls are imposed.
1920 Shortly after alcohol is prohibited by the Volstead Act, recreational use of cannabis surges and the first “tea pads” are opened in New York City.
1919 Texas outlaws Cannabis.
1916 Recognising the limited timber resource, USDA Bulletin 404 calls for new program of expansion of Cannabis to replace uses of timber by industry.
1915 California outlaws Cannabis.
1912 The possibility of putting controls on the use of Cannabis is raised at the first International Opium Conference.
1911 Hindus reported to be using 'Gunjah' in San Francisco.
South Africa starts to outlaw Cannabis.
1910 Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst has 800,000 acres of prime Mexican Timberland seized from him by Villa and his men.
1910 Mexican's reported to be smoking Cannabis in Texas.
1910 African-American 'reefer' use reported in jazz clubs of New Orleans.
1906 The Pure Food and Drug Act is the first Federal law to address cannabis, it only states that and food or drugs containing it must state as much.
1895 First known use of the word 'marijuana', by Pancho Villa's supporters in Sonora Mexico. The song "La Curaracha" tells the story of one of Villa's men looking for his stash of "marijuana por fumar"
1895 The Indian Hemp Drug Commission concludes that cannabis has some medical uses, no addictive properties and a number of positive emotional and social benefits.
1890 Queen Victoria's physician, Sir Russell Reynolds, prescribes Cannabis for menstrual cramps. He claimed in the first issue of Britain’s leading medical publication, The Lancet, that Cannabis "When pure and administered carefully, is one of the of the most valuable medicines we possess"
1860 First Governmental commission study of Cannabis and health conducted by Ohio State Medical society.
1857 'The Hasheesh Eater' by Fitz Hugh Ludlow is published.
1851 The United States Dispensatory reports that “extract of hemp causes exhilaration, intoxication, delirious hallucinations.” Among the illnesses for which it recommends its use are neuralgia, gout, rheumatism, tetanus, convulsions, hysteria and depression.
1850 The United States Pharmacopoeia admits marijuana as a recognized medicine under the name Extractum Cannabis or extract of hemp. It becomes one of the most widely used medicines in the nation and remains in the Pharmacopoeia until 1941.
1845 Psychologist and 'inventor' of modern psychopharmacology and psychotimimetic drug treatment, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours documents physical and mental benefits of Cannabis. In "Hashish and Mental Illness" he writes: “One of the effects of Hashish that struck me most forcibly and which generally gets the most attention is that manic excitement always accompanied by a feeling of gaiety and joy inconceivable to those who have not experienced it...it is really happiness that it produced."
1841 The Scottish Dr. W.B. O'Shaunghnessy works in India then introduces Cannabis to Western medicine. In the following 50 years hundreds of medical papers are written on the medical benefits of Cannabis.
1835 The Club de Hashichines is founded in Paris, its members included the poet Baudelaire.
1812 24th June Napoleon invades Russia aiming to put an end to Britain's main supply of Cannabis. By the end of the year the Russian winter and army had destroyed most of Napoleon’s invading force.
1807 Napoleon signs the Treaty of Tilset with Czar Alexander of Russia which cuts off all legal Russian trade with Britain. Britain blackmails and press gangs American sailors into illegally trading in Russian Hemp.
1800 Napoleon bans his troops from getting high: “It is forbidden in all of Egypt to use certain Moslem beverages made with hashish or likewise to inhale the smoke from seeds of the hashish."
1791 President Washington levies duties on Cannabis to encourage the domestic industry. Jefferson calls Cannabis "a necessity" and urges farmers to grow Cannabis instead of tobacco.
1783 Cannabis Indica classified by Lamarck.
1776 The early drafts of the Declaration of Independence are written on Dutch hemp paper.
1753 Cannabis Sativa classified by Carl von Linneaus in his work "Species Plantarum".
1690 The first US papermill is opened in Pennsylvania by the Rittenhouse company.
1631 Cannabis is used as a bartering currency throughout the American Colonies.
1619 Virginia colony makes Cannabis Cultivation Mandatory ordering the Jamestown colonists to "set 100 plants and the governor to set 5000”. Most other colonies follow their lead.
1611 The British start cultivating Cannabis in Virginia.
1606 The British take Cannabis to Canada for cultivation.
1564 In Spain King Philip orders Cannabis to be grown throughout his Empire, from modern-day Argentina to Oregon.
1563 Queen Elizabeth I follows Henry VIII’s lead and decrees that land owners with 60 acres or more must grow Cannabis or face a £5 fine.
1554 Spanish bring Cannabis cultivation to Peru.
1545 Spanish bring Cannabis cultivation to Chile.
1533 King Henry the VIII requires by law that farmers grow hemp.
1532 French author François Rabelais publishes The Herb Pantegruelion, giving an account of the intoxicating properties of cannabis.
1494 The English begin hemp paper production.
1492 Christopher Columbus sets sail on his voyage to the new world with 80 tons of hemp rigging and sail.
1484 Pope Innocent VIII declares cannabis an unholy sacrament of the Satanic mass.
1253 Cairo is so full of Sufis (therefore so full of Hashish) that the city authorities burn all traces of the plant in huge bonfires.
1150 The Moors use Cannabis to start Europe's first paper mill in Xativa (Sativa) in Spain. For the next 850 years most paper is made from cannabis.
1000 Moslems employ hashish for medical and social use.
1000 The first appearance of the English word 'Hempe' in a dictionary.
800 Mohammed accepts Cannabis, but forbids alcohol use.
600 Cannabis paper production is began be the Germans, Franks, and many others.
400 Cannabis cultivated for the first time in England.
400 A young Middle Eastern woman dies, apparently during childbirth. Some 1,600 years later, in 1993, a team of Israeli scientists discovers cannabis residue with her skeleton.
160 The Roman physician Galen writes that the general use of cannabis in cakes produced intoxication.
70 Dioscorides, Emperor Nero's surgeon, praises Cannabis for making "the stoutest cords" and for its medical properties.
45AD St. Mark establishes the Ethiopian Coptic Church. They claim marijuana as a sacrament has a lineage descending from the Jewish sect, the Essenes, possibly responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls.
100 BC The Chinese first make paper from cannabis.
200 BC-220 AD (variously dates) The first dictionary the "SHUO-WEN CHIEH-TZU" compiled by Hsu Shen lists 4 variations of hemp ('ma')
450 BC The Scythians of central Asia are described by Greek historian Herodotus as throwing hemp onto heated stones: 'as it burns, it smokes like incense and the smell of it makes them drunk'.
550 BC The Persian prophet Zoroaster gives hemp first place in the sacred text, the Zend-Avesta, which lists over 10,000 medicinal plants.
900 BC The Assyrians use hemp as religious incense.
1400 BC The "Athharva Veda" Text reveals Bhang to be a means to commune with Shiva.
2000 BC Hindu Atharva Veda notes cannabis as among the “kingdoms of herbs which release us from anxiety.”
2800 BC First written record of cannabis is found in the Shen Nung pharmacopoeia. He lists its uses in curing constipation, gout, beri-beri, malaria, rheumatism and menstrual problems. As Shen Nung was a mythical emperor, the treatise was probably compiled at a later date.
4000 BC Neolithic sites in the Zhejiang province of China reveal traces of hemp textiles
8000 BC Hemp cloth found at Çatal Hüyük, Mesopotamia
