Pot In Pans
Why the history of eating cannabis matters. From ancient India and Persia to today’s explosive new market, cannabis, the hottest new global food trend, has been providing humans with nutrition, medicine, and solace— against all odds—since the earliest cavepeople discovered its powers. We write history books, in part, so we don’t repeat our mistakes. The history of cannabis food, rich and deep, is marred with the stains of prohibition, propaganda, and persecution— abysmal mistakes we’ve only just begun to rectify. This history is a long way from being written— though many like to say we’re now on the right side of it as centuries of fearmongering finally start to unravel. Finally, but still painfully slowly, cannabis is taking its rightful place as a unique culinary ingredient that has proven through the centuries that food is medicine.
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Locally, nationally, and globally, we’ve reached a pivotal moment in the history of a plant that has been beloved by the masses, reviled by the elite, and shrouded in conflict and secrecy for centuries. Cannabis has been outlawed and demonized since the powers-that-be first realized they could control the commoners by prohibiting a plant that they relied on for food, fiber, medicine, and mind and mood alteration. For the hard-working classes, who often lived in hopeless poverty, cannabis was magical for its ability to act as both stimulant and soporific and its promise of gentle relief from the drudgery and humiliations of daily life—a far cry from the sinister reputation foisted upon it by centuries of propaganda. We are reaching the end of a centuries-long story, born in the Mazanderan mountains in ancient Persia
in the 12th century and used throughout history in racist campaigns to prove that cannabis makes people violent, insane, and uncontrollably horny (parents, hold onto your white daughters!). The legend of Hassan-ibn-Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain who plied his disciples with splendid food, fine women, and a hashish confection so they would assassinate his enemies— popularized in the West by explorer Marco Polo— would forever associate hashish with assassins and sinister business. In the 1930s, during his successful drive toward cannabis prohibition, US Federal Bureau of Narcotics chairman Harry J. Anslinger masterfully fomented Americans’ racist and increasingly moralistic national mentality with a propaganda blitzkrieg that included a book and motion picture titled
Marihuana: Assassin of Youth—based upon his discovery of the Old Man of the Mountain legend. In testimony before Congress and in newspaper interviews, Anslinger said marijuana, a frightening “new” drug used primarily by Mexicans and African Americans, could turn upstanding, middle-class kids into helpless victims and raging monsters. His campaign resulted in cannabis being effectively outlawed through draconian taxes and regulations in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Down through the ages—through multiple prohibitions on every continent, imposed by sultans, colonialists, and a pope—cannabis had managed to somehow survive, and even thrive. But never had it faced an enemy so formidable or iron-fisted as the United States in the mid-20th century. When
ILLUSTRATION BY ECATERINA SCIUCHINA, ADOBE STOCK / OTHER PHOTOS VIA ADOBE STOCK
TEXT ROBYN GRIGGS LAWRENCE EXCERPTED FROM POT IN PANS: A HISTORY OF EATING CANNABIS FOOD
