The earliest known documentation was in 3727 BC, in China, which is also, as far as can be traced, the country of origin. (Courtesy of Marijuana-Seeds.net)
Conditions approved for medical marijuana in California
AIDS, anorexia, arthritis, cachexia, cancer, chronic pain, glaucoma, migraine, persistent muscle spasms, including spasms associated with multiple sclerosis, seizures, including seizures associated with epilepsy, severe nausea; Other chronic or persistent medical symptoms.
Famous Users
George Washington?
According to Friends of Cannabis (citing Dr. Burke, president of the American Historical Reference Society), "Early letters from our founding fathers refer to the pleasures of hemp smoking."
Sir Paul McCartney
CannabisFacts.ca attributes this to Sir Paul: "I think the 'Just say no' mentality is so crazed. I saw a thing in a women's magazine the other day. 'He smokes cannabis, what am I to do? He laughs it off when I try to tell him, he says it's not really harmful...' Of course you're half hoping the advice will be, 'Well, you know it's not that harmful; if you love him, if you talk to him about it, tell him maybe he should keep it in the garden shed or something,' you know, a reasonable point of view. But of course it was, 'No, no, all drugs are bad. Librium's good, Valium's good. But cannabis, ooooh!' I hate that unreasoned attitude."
Art Garfunkel
The "fake bud" site Legal-Buds.com quotes Art as saying "If John Lennon is deported, I'm leaving too...with my musicians..and my marijuana."
Industrialized Country with the highest percentage of marijuana smokers...
Canada?
Yes, according to the 2007 World Drug Report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Canada has the dubious honour of leading the industrialized world in marijuana use, at least when calculated as a percentage of population.
According to the UN report, which is a staple of police forces around the world, 16.8 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 15 and 64 smoked pot or ingested one of its derivatives last year. (Courtesy of Mostly Water)
"For marijuana, only New Zealanders reported using the drug at levels comparable to Americans'. Other countries in the survey had rates of less than 20 percent. Fewer than 2 percent of Japanese and Chinese reported using marijuana."
