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.

Filter by pillar

All Deep Roots The Science Around the World Myth vs Fact Notable Figures Art & Music

Around the World

Thailand's great cannabis U-turn: the fastest legalization-and-rollback in modern history

June 2022: Thailand became the first Asian country to decriminalize cannabis. Two years and 11,000 dispensaries later, a new coalition government is tearing it all back down. The fastest legalization-and-reversal cycle in modern drug policy — and the cautionary tale reform movements everywhere are studying.

8 min read

Around the World

Uruguay: The First Country to Fully Legalize, and What Happened Next

In 2013, a small South American country became the first in the world to legalize cannabis end-to-end. The man who signed the law lived in a farmhouse and drove a 1987 Volkswagen. The rollout has been slow, strange, and instructive.

6 min read

Around the World

Inside Barcelona's Cannabis Social Clubs

Spain didn't legalize cannabis. It didn't need to. A clever reading of the country's privacy laws produced something stranger and more durable: hundreds of members-only clubs operating in a legal gray zone that has lasted three decades.

7 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"