The History
The research on CBD is growing. It’s not complete, and that’s not an accident (more on that below). But what exists is worth knowing, especially if you’ve been told CBD “doesn’t work” by someone who’s never looked at the studies.
War On Drugs
Cannabis has been used medicinally for thousands of years. It was listed in the United States Pharmacopeia from 1850 until 1942. It was a recognised medicine. And then politics intervened.
In 1930, Harry Anslinger became the first director of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics. His campaign against cannabis was built explicitly on racism. He tied cannabis use to Black, Hispanic, and Filipino communities, weaponised racial fear, and popularised the term “marijuana” specifically to associate the plant with anti-Mexican prejudice. His propaganda directly led to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, which effectively criminalised cannabis despite opposition from the American Medical Association, who recognised its therapeutic value.
In 1970, the Controlled Substances Act classified cannabis as Schedule I: “high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use.” More restrictive than cocaine or methamphetamine. This classification was not based on scientific evidence. John Ehrlichman, domestic policy advisor to President Nixon, later admitted the war on drugs was deliberately designed to target antiwar activists and Black communities.
Schedule I classification created a research catch-22 that persists today. To study cannabis, researchers need government approval. To get approval, they need evidence of medical value. But the classification itself is based on the claim that there is no medical value. As a 2020 paper in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research put it: the racist policy started in 1937 should be treated the same way we treat segregated schools. Our inquiry needs to start with an acknowledgment of racial discrimination in drug policy and move toward serious evidence-based research.
The result is decades of suppressed research. Despite cannabis being one of the oldest cultivated plants on earth, with over 5,000 years of documented medicinal use, the modern clinical evidence base is still described as “emerging.” That’s not because the plant doesn’t work. It’s because the political system actively prevented us from proving that it does.
Black Americans are still arrested for cannabis offences at nearly four times the rate of white Americans, despite comparable usage rates. The legal cannabis industry is overwhelmingly white-led and white-profiting. The communities most harmed by prohibition are the least likely to benefit from legalisation. This is the context in which every CBD brand operates, whether they acknowledge it or not. We choose to acknowledge it.
Cannabis throughout history
Long before clinical trials and peer review, human beings had a relationship with this plant. That relationship spans continents, cultures, and millennia.
Ancient China (2700+ BCE)
Cannabis was one of the earliest cultivated crops in China. Emperor Shen Nung’s pharmacopoeia, considered one of the foundational texts of Traditional Chinese Medicine, documented cannabis for pain relief, digestive issues, and nervous system support. Archaeological evidence from the Turpan Basin dates cannabis burial rituals to approximately 2,400-2,800 years ago, with cannabis placed ceremonially on the chest of the deceased, indicating both medicinal and spiritual significance.
Ancient India (1500+ BCE)
Cannabis, known as bhang, appears in the Vedas and is considered one of the five sacred plants in Hindu tradition. It was a core component of Ayurvedic medicine, one of the oldest holistic healing systems in the world, used to treat pain, insomnia, digestive disorders, and anxiety. Its association with Shiva reflects a culture that understood the plant’s capacity to alter consciousness, reduce suffering, and support meditation.
Africa
Cannabis has been used across African cultures for centuries. Smoking pipes containing cannabis residue have been carbon-dated to around 1320 CE in Ethiopia. Indigenous Khoisan and Bantu peoples in southern Africa used cannabis medicinally well before European colonisation. Traditional African healers used it to treat pain, inflammation, fever, digestive disorders, and to support recovery from childbirth. The Bashilenge people of the Congo established an entire cultural system around the hemp plant.
The AmericasIndigenous peoples in North and South America cultivated and used cannabis for fibre, food, medicine, and spiritual practice long before European contact. Hemp cloth and cannabis residue have been found in burial mounds of the Hopewell Mound Builders in the Great Lakes region, dating back thousands of years. The Aztecs incorporated cannabis into ceremonies dedicated to Xochipilli, the deity of art, beauty, and healing.
The Ancient Mediterranean
The Greek physician Dioscorides documented cannabis in his medical texts for treating ear pain and inflammation. Romans used cannabis medicinally for pain, inflammation, and as a sedative. Hemp was cultivated across the Mediterranean for textiles, ropes, and maritime equipment.
This is not niche history. This is global, cross-cultural, multi-millennial knowledge. Cannabis was medicine before it was a crime. The demonisation of this plant is recent, political, and rooted in racial control. The ancestral knowledge is ancient, widespread, and grounded in thousands of years of direct human experience.
We don’t make miracle claims. We don’t pretend CBD will fix everything. But we refuse to pretend that this plant appeared out of nowhere, or that the lack of clinical research means the lack of evidence. Humans have been using cannabis for pain, sleep, anxiety, and regulation for longer than most modern nations have existed. The science is catching up. The ancestral knowledge was never behind.
Sources
The science is catching up. The knowledge was always there.
Cannabis Prohibition & Racial History Sources:
1.Solomon, R. (2020). “Racism and Its Effect on Cannabis Research.” Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, 5(1), 2-5. DOI: 10.1089/can.2019.0063
2.Bierut, T., et al. (2023). “Effects of historical inequity and institutional power on cannabis research: Moving toward equity and inclusion.” Frontiers in Psychiatry. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1264643
3.Hudak, J. (2020). “Marijuana’s Racist History Shows the Need for Comprehensive Drug Reform.” Brookings Institution.
4. NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “Redressing America’s Racist Cannabis Laws.”
5. ACLU. Racial disparities in marijuana arrests (data analysis across multiple years).
Ancestral & Historical Use Sources
6. Jiang, H., et al. (2021). “Archaeobotanical evidence of the use of medicinal cannabis in a secular context unearthed from south China.” Journal of Ethnopharmacology. DOI: 10.1016/j.jep.2021.114464
7. Clarke, R.C. and Merlin, M.D. (2013). Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany. University of California Press.
8. Wikipedia contributors. “History of cannabis.” Wikipedia. Comprehensive overview of global cannabis cultivation and use from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period onwards.
9. Wikipedia contributors. “Entheogenic use of cannabis.” Wikipedia. Documentation of spiritual and medicinal cannabis use across Chinese, Indian, African, and American cultures.
10. Stoa, R. (2021). “A Brief Global History of the War on Cannabis.” MIT Press Reader. Adapted from Craft Weed (MIT Press).
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