Cannabis Companions and Human-Plant Relationships

von Dr. Jontahan Newman, University of Sussex

Artikel auf Deutsch: www.hanf-magazin.com/jn7

As we witness the blooming relationship between a microscopic virus, COVID-19, and a mammal known as the ‘human being’, it is clear that the way we live with other species affects how we live together in human society.

Being human is a highly relational existence, we develop relationships with everything we encounter, whether that is other humans, animals, microorganisms, food, furniture, fear or governance. We even develop relationships with plants. If we can explore cannabis as part of a relationship between humans and plants, then we can understand more about how we shape cannabis and how cannabis shapes us. Cannabis connects to many different aspects of human life. For example, the technologies and infrastructure of industrial horticulture create large and medium scale cannabis businesses whose purpose is to grow cannabis for eventual sale at a retail level, whether through licensed outlets or illegal sale. Cannabis, in this context, is a commoditised object amongst other commodities. In contrast to the owner of the industrial greenhouse, a person who grows cannabis in their garden and uses it to alleviate the symptoms of their own medical condition develops a different type relationship with their plants. The patient and the entrepreneur have different values and uses for cannabis, probably use different technologies to grow and process it, and also bond with their plants in different ways - one is more personal, the other more alienated.

Meanwhile, on a mountain in the Himalayas, away from the footpaths and villages, are undisturbed cannabis plants yet to encounter the human being. As cannabis meets with humans, it is absorbed into human ways of life that include economy, politics, bodies and feelings. As people meet with cannabis, the plant influences their life path, affecting how they develop a business or keep a medicinal garden.

Human spend much of their time describing what they have discovered about the world, they do this in everyday conversation and through grander narratives like science, philosophy and religion. Because all these stories, which describe the meaning of the world around us, are created by people they reflect a perspective that only humans can see and understand. We do not understand the world from the point of view of a plant. Indeed, during the last few hundred years, in mainstream North European and North American societies, there has been a movement to enforce that the ’truth’ about the world must be a human truth. Thus, we privilege human impacts on plant worlds above plant impacts on human worlds.

Under this regime of knowledge, cannabis becomes a story about our ability to domesticate and breed the plant - how we can exploit its qualities and create value from it. This value takes many forms, for example, there is a cannabis economy with different types of finance, labour, production, processing, extraction, distribution, consumption. We also give scientific or anecdotal value by labelling cannabis as a medicine, making it something we take for our bodies. Value is also found for those who proudly, and collectively, identify as cannabis consumers. What all these stories have in common is that they describe a world where the human being is centre stage and the plant is nothing more than a servile prop whose existence is purely for the human drama.

To help understand that the plant is another actor rather than a prop, first consider the worlds inhabited by animals. For example, although a mouse might live in the same house as a human, because of size, senses, anatomy and disposition, the mouse experiences a very different house. The door handles are unreachable terrain and the curtains a surface to climb up. The mouse’s understanding of the world is as real as human understandings of the world are for the human: Both perspectives are valid.

Similarly to humans and mice, plants exist and interact with their environments. They feed, absorb and release gases (a variation of breathing), use their surroundings to make energy, breed and grow and, eventually, they die. Because plants sense and react to their world they have a form of knowledge about that world. It is hard for humans, and probably mice too, to imagine what a plant experiences of their world or what form of knowledge they hold. The knowing of plants is unlikely to be what we call ‘consciousness’, nevertheless, plants are neither passive nor docile, instead they are interactive.

Plants do not follow human plans easily, their genetics can change, they are fussy about light, food, temperature, and carbon dioxide levels. Moreover, plants form non-human relationships with other plants, microorganisms, insects, and fungi. Sometimes these relationships support the human plans and sometimes they do the opposite. A high level of technical intervention is needed for a large grow to be a reliable commercial success. Cannabis emerges from the interplay between humans, plants and other species, each following their own senses of how to exist within their world.

The stories that humans tell about cannabis have little to do with the earth, sun and rain. Instead, they obsess about letters, like CBD and THC, or numbers attached to symbols like $ or %. Plants do not know these worlds of numbers or letters.

The narrow interpretation of cannabis as a collection of ‘exciting’ extracts with ‘great potential’ fractures the plant and reduces it into a collection of scientific tags that satisfy the human obsession with human desires.

The plant, however, continues to act as a player upon the human, forming a strong bond. This magazine is one example of how cannabis creates an affectionate relationship with humans. For many people, their relationship with cannabis is as strong as it is with other humans, they even have times when they would prefer to be with cannabis than people. Under political regimes, which exploit cannabis to create illegal economies and social oppression, people living in brutalised and marginalised communities have been violently killed through their relationship with the plant. In many countries, people have been arrested, lost their jobs, been refused custody of their children, been evicted from their homes and served years in prison because that relationship with cannabis was so strong, yet many came out of those experiences still loyal to the plant.

The plant profoundly affects humans in many ways. For example, when humans start to use cannabis they make alterations to the clothes they wear, the music they play and listen to, the way they dance and move, the way they design and build, think about politics and work, enjoy sport or a night out, make and view art, generate ideas, understand philosophy, metaphysics and spirituality, and they might become more friendly with other cannabis users. Cannabis induces creative and innovative thinking and making, amplifies experience and meaning, and expands perception of interconnections; for the same reasons, it can also induce fear, anxiety and paranoia. Cannabis changes the human who, in turn, changes cannabis. We are affecting each other, moving each other’s bodies, and forming our very differ ent worlds together. To understand more about human relationships with cannabis, it helps to move the human from the centre of the stage and then to respect and learn to understand, on its own terms, the other party in this relationship – the plant. Moreover, you could do this with any relationship including rolling papers, hemp clothing, viruses, the sound of coughing, people on screens, skin, soap and air. Even during this time of isolation and social distancing, the human is a mass of relationships, they are intimately and constantly connected – take the time to explore your connections and understand the other parties in your relationships.