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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Notable Figures

Dennis Peron: The AIDS activist who built American medical cannabis

He watched his partner die of AIDS. He opened America's first dispensary in 1992. He wrote California's Proposition 215 in 1996 — the first state-legal medical cannabis law. Every medical cannabis patient in America is a legatee of his work.

8 min read

Notable Figures

Raphael Mechoulam: The Israeli Chemist Who Quietly Built Cannabinoid Science

He isolated CBD in 1963. He isolated THC in 1964. He discovered the first endocannabinoid in 1992. He worked from a lab in Jerusalem with material supplied to him by the Israeli police. He died in 2023, at 92, having largely invented the field.

7 min read

Notable Figures

Mr. X: How Carl Sagan Wrote the Smartest Cannabis Essay of the 20th Century — Anonymously

In 1971, an anonymous scientist contributed an essay to a Harvard Press book defending cannabis. He described how the plant had shaped his thinking, his appreciation of music, and his scientific insights. The author was Carl Sagan. Almost no one knew until 1999.

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"