Marijuana Is The Most Common Sobriquet Of Cannabis

Marijuana is the most common sobriquet of cannabis, a plant indigenous to Central and South Asia. It is widely known for its psychoactive properties and its usage can be reliably traced as far back to the 3rd millennia BCE. Marijuana has been used for both recreational and medicinal purposes and, according to studies done by the United Nations, is consumed by approximately 4% of the adult population. In the United States, possession and sale of marijuana is illegal under federal law. The illegality of the marijuana, along with the piercing, negative stigma attached to it, has polarized Americans profusely for much of the 20th century up to now. Advocates of the drug heap praise on its medical benefits and stress its relative harmlessness†¦show more content†¦George Washington, among other presidents, grew hemp as one of his three primary crops. It was used for the manufacturing of rope, sails, cloth, and even oil (â€Å"Hemp Education†). So valuable was hemp that, in 1619, the Virginia Assembly promulgated a requirement for farmers to grow it; a colonist could face imprisonment if he refused to grow hemp on his property. Steady hemp cultivation continued into the 19th century until the means of production of other materials, like cotton, became more efficient and less expensive. Hemp required extensive manual labor and was processed at a slower and lower rate, comparatively (Will). Conversely, it was during this time, when its industrial utility lessened, that the medicinal usage of cannabis increased. Cannabis was integrated into Western medicine after William Brooke O’Shaughnessy, and Irish doctor, discovered its therapeutic effects in 1839 while using plant resin on patients suffering from painful spasms; about a decade later, medicinal cannabis could be found in American pharmacies (Meyers). Contemporaneously, the recreational use of cannabis became in vogue. Labeled a â€Å"fashionable narcotic†, both sexes of the upper class frequented parlors providing hashish, a preparation of cannabis resin (â€Å"Our Fashionable Narcotics†). Recreationally smoking cannabis cigarettes, or â€Å"marijuana† as it was termed in Mexico, was popularized by Mexican immigrants that escaped the fighting of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and