Daily Fact

⚖️Despite 24 states legalizing adult use, the illicit market still accounts for roughly half of all U.S. cannabis sales.— WifiTalents / Hefestus Tech

Culture · History

The roots run deep.

A Chinese emperor prescribed it in 2737 BCE. George Washington grew it at Mount Vernon. Louis Armstrong smoked it every day for 46 years and changed American music. Carl Sagan wrote about it under a pseudonym. The U.S. government holds a patent on its medicinal properties while classifying it as having none.

Cannabis has been medicine, sacrament, commodity, and contraband — sometimes all four at once. These are the stories they left out of the textbook.

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Deep Roots

The Surprisingly Verifiable Origin Story of 420

Police radio code. A Bob Dylan lyric. Hitler's birthday. The number of chemicals in cannabis. None of these are right. The real story involves five high school kids, a statue of Louis Pasteur, and an abandoned grow that no one ever found.

6 min read

Deep Roots

Scythian Steam Tents: Cannabis as a 2,500-Year-Old Grief Ritual

Around 440 BCE, Herodotus described nomads on the Eurasian steppe throwing cannabis seeds onto hot stones inside small tents. For centuries we assumed he was exaggerating. Then we found the tents.

6 min read

Deep Roots

How Hemp Built the Age of Sail

Every European warship from the 16th to the 19th century ran on hemp. The sails were hemp. The rigging was hemp. The caulking was hemp. When the British Empire ran low, it nearly lost the seas.

6 min read

Did you know?

The word "canvas" comes from "cannabis." For most of recorded history, sails, ropes, and rough cloth were made from hemp fiber.

— Oxford English Dictionary, etymology of "canvas"