4 ms·

Toxicological analyses reveal the use of cannabis in Milan in the 1600's

64 points by Hooke 3y ago

reactordev 3y ago
Everyone from the Greco-Roman’s to ancient Chinese (oldest record at 4,000BC) have used cannabis in some form. America declared war on cannabis not because “it’s a drug” but because it was something enjoyed by migrant laborers (Mexicans) during the Great Depression and outlawing it was thought to cause them to become outlaws and white folk would have jobs again. Except no white workers wanted to work those jobs as it didn’t pay enough for their standards. There’s been plenty of research and history around this. Every civilization in history has had some connection to cannabis, whether medicinal, religious, ceremonial, aromatic, or industrial use. Ropes, Spices, Trade of agricultural goods, definitely included some hemp and cannabis. It’s cool to see them actually isolate and target it in samples.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  > America declared war on cannabis not because “it’s a drug” but because it was something enjoyed by migrant laborers (Mexicans) during the Great Depression and outlawing it was thought to cause them to become outlaws and white folk would have jobs again. To be fair, it was both. If you look at contemporary writing among lay Americans, they earnestly thought it made Mexicans crazed and dangerous. It's good to look at history through economic and political lenses because that's often the steering wheel or gate control, but (in approximate-democracies) it's also good to acknowledge what everyday sentiment was among lay citizens. A country can be calculating and moralizing/prude at the same time, and America's biggest historical moments almost always hinge on getting those two things to align. Even today.
  - riversflow 3y ago
    > If you look at contemporary writing among lay Americans, they earnestly thought it made Mexicans crazed and dangerous. Yes, but where did that idea originate from? I think the insinuation here is that the reason it was thought of that way was because that image was being propagated by the media. See: reefer madness, which a comment below indicates was a production of Hearst.
    - swatcoder 3y ago
      It's nearly impossible to make that kind of attribution for folk knowledge, and its arguable that there's so much of an interdependent feedback loop between calculating aristocrats and public opinion that neither is meaningfully causal or original. Tracking down the source of widespread folk ideas about marijuana is like trying to figure out who invented "the floor is lava". If you're very very lucky, you might be able to find a political source that predates your earliest known popular mention, but that's still not very authoritative. And if you can't trace some plausible epidemic-like spread over time and geography, which you almost certainly can't, you really just can't make a strong causal determination. Even with Hearst (or Murdoch, or any other media titan), you can easily paint them as savvy amplifiers, cranking up the volume of existing rumors to the benefit of their own vision.
      - reactordev 3y ago
        Mmm that 3rd image is golden. You say this like people haven’t already done this. Stop dismissing and start accepting. This is fact. This happened. It’s real and it was a hysteria perpetrated by racism. https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350 https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  > Except no white workers wanted to work those jobs as it didn’t pay enough for their standards. Your knowledge of this era of history is incorrect. You are correct about the cause of marijuana criminalization but wrong about White laborers in farming during the early 20th century. Whites alongside Hispanic were very common as laborers during the great depression and up to the 60s. https://www.loc.gov/collections/todd-and-sonkin-migrant-workers-from-1940-to-1941/articles-and-essays/the-migrant-experience/ https://www.loc.gov/collections/todd-and-sonkin-migrant-work...
- permo-w 3y ago
  every time I hear about the US outlawing weed there's a different explanation given with absolutely certainty of truth. "it was the paper industry". "it was a way to oppress African-Americans". "it was a way to take jobs from Mexicans". "it was seen as being linked to crime". etc etc etc
  - fzeroracer 3y ago
    Those aren't different explanations, they're all part of the same explanation. It was initially criminalized because minority groups were using it during the time of prohibition and it was a way of targeting them specifically. Randolph Hearst ran a series of yellow journalism hit pieces which is one of the origins of reefer madness comes from. He also ran the largest newspaper at the time. Then once it was criminalized it was trivial to link it to crime because, well, now only criminals were growing, selling and using marijuana.
    - permo-w 3y ago
      sure, but the explanations, like here, are always given in isolation, seemingly as the be all and end all, and while it may well be true that they're all a little part of the truth, that is interesting in itself
      - reactordev 3y ago
        It started with migrant mexicans and America piled on more racism to include African Americans and European outsiders (Rus, pol, etc). America has and continues to have, a racism problem. Policies targeting minorities for no good reason other than racism and hate. fzeroracer is correct, it’s all part of the bigger picture ban against anything “un-american” at the time. Reefer Madness, hit pieces in the news/media, blaming crazy on marijuana, and not understanding. Policy through bigotry is not good policy. I linked this elsewhere in the thread but here’s a law university study. https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350 https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350
        deleted 3y ago
- hcks 3y ago
  Or maybe it’s just a dumb drug that stinks and makes you into a schizo?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  > Every civilization in history has had some connection to cannabis Hyperbole? Pacific Islander civilizations? Inuit? etc.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    Sad, you mentioned the Inuit so. The Inuit are at war with Marijuana. They are blaming it (propaganda campaign) on the decline of their heritage and culture when the reality is it’s the globalization of the world. Canada legalized marijuana consumption (rightfully so) and tribes of the Inuit have slowly succumbed to subsistence abuse. Tragic that they are taking the same playbook as pre-ww2 America. Anyway, here’s a Wikipedia page that goes into more cultures and histories of civilizations and their cannabis connections: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenic_use_of_cannabis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenic_use_of_cannabis
    - jjtheblunt 3y ago
      Interesting!
pierat 3y ago
What? Are US policymakers wanting to now arrest skeleton remains and demand drug-war fines for return?
- pipeline_peak 3y ago
  Rent Free
ulizzle 3y ago
Paraphrasing liberally from the study, looks like it wasn't used as a medicinal herb in the past, but recreationally. I'm assuming that's because opiates and alcohol use were widespread, and those are stronger analgesics and anesthetics than cannabis. For anxiety, tobacco was the preferred drug. That does put a question on the whole modern medical cannabis industry. But of course, cannabis today is much stronger, so who knows? I don't think I could survive an amputation on modern cannabis alone, however. Or even ignore lancing a blister.
- jamesakirk 3y ago
  > I don't think I could survive an amputation on modern cannabis alone, however. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. My dad was a cancer patient with severe chronic pain. Cannabis did not eliminate the need for opiates for chronic pain, but reduced the amount of opiates he needed by about half. Using cannabis actually allowed him to be MORE lucid.
  - ulizzle 3y ago
    I had a motorcycle accident a few years back that left me hooked on opiates for a while, so I have some first-hand experience there. You can cut your use about 50% pretty nicely a couple of times at first, but the lower you go the more that hurts, and I couldn't mask it with cannabis. At that point, you're going to have to get some medical help or go through pure hell. I think in your father's case, it was cutting the opiates by half, but cannabis does help smooth anxiety and helps with nausea, it's just not as strong as getting some xanax, for instance, which would explain why medicinally cannabis wasn't and isn't used (like at hospitals). The more meds you take, the more it can give you side effects, so it does make sense for people to switch to cannabis to help out
    - asveikau 3y ago
      Off topic but that sounds like a stressful ordeal you went through, and I'm sorry to hear it. Hope things are well now.
parhamn 3y ago
Im a bit surprised this is a speculative matter. If 2 in 7 samples had it, it surely would've been in some of the many pieces of art we have from the period and if it was in the art it wouldn’t be so speculative. Are there paintings of people smoking pot in 17th century Italy? If not why not.
- ulizzle 3y ago
  That's a good point, and I think it is because it wasn't as powerful as other drugs. Cannabis today is far stronger than even 20 years ago if you go by old hippie lore. We do know people ate magic mushrooms and used psychedelics all the time, and that alcohol and tobacco were used widely as soon as discovered. Maybe that's a truly modern thing. The 420 art.
  - Baeocystin 3y ago
    In SE Asia in the 70's and early 80's, I remember folks using weed as part of a larger medicinal-plant system, more than a thing by itself. My Mom used to get an oily balm to rub on her joints for arthritis pain that had it as one of many ingredients. I don't remember a lot of smoking or using it specifically to get high, though. FWIW.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  Preserved art always represents very specific, very narrow slices of life. Ignoring aesthetic choices by artists themselves, it starts with who can afford to collect and preserve the work, and what their tastes are, and then gets filtered through moral and political fashions decade after decade. It’s a boon to find work that escaped those factors and somehow got preserved anyway, like the graffiti in Pompeii, but it’s the exception by a mile. You can’t expect to get the complete picture of a past culture just through it’s surviving art.
- coffeecantcode 3y ago
  Interestingly enough, as researched by Mike Jay in his newest book Psychonauts, cannabis consumption in the 19th century and before rarely took the form of cultivating and smoking the flower of the cannabis plant like we have seen in the last century and was more so focused around creating the tar-like hashish which was sometimes smoked but often times cooked into food and consumed in that way. It was also, as it has been through most of history, a drug that had a reputation tied to social class which in turn could have led to fewer artistic renditions of its everyday use surviving to this day. Not taking away from the fact that there does seem to be a lack of blatant art focusing on the consumption of cannabis from this region in this time frame, just an interesting note.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Georgelemental 3y ago
Remember: modern cannabis is many times more potent than the pot of 50 years ago. Not the same drugs
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- riffic 3y ago
  lol that trope is about 50 years old as well and it just means you need less to get high (self-titration). https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/weed-limit-pot-prohibitionists-regurgitate-tired-tropes-from-the-bygone-days-of-the-war-on-drugs/Content?oid=30642122 https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/weed-limit-pot-prohibiti... > Bowers' claims of higher THC content in what is available now compared to the good old days is a refrain that prohibitionists have used for decades, according to Paul Armentano, deputy director of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. .. > Likewise in the 1960s and '70s, public officials claimed "Woodstock weed" was so uniquely powerful that smoking it would permanently damage brain cells and mere possession needed to be heavily criminalized to protect public health. https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/08/15/armentano-marijuana-potency-warrants-more-education-regulation/ https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/08/15/armentano-marijuana-... > Looking back, it is apparent that each of these previous generations’ claims was nothing more than hyperbole. Nonetheless, these sensational claims had a lasting influence on marijuana policy. The latest recycling of the “It’s not your parents’ pot” claim is a little different.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    The "trope" has been around for 50 years because selective breeding has been around for 50 years, so THC content had been going up constantly throughout that period. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312155/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312155/
npunt 3y ago
My mind immediately went to 'was this one of the creative inputs of the renaissance?' Found this article [1] which tries to make the case and contains something to ponder: > After all, in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII had banned the practice of smoking cannabis as sacrament during mass — so ask yourself, how bad did the practice have to get before the Pope himself had to step in and stop it? Also TIL cannabis in italy was apparently quite a thing. The wikipedia entry [2] discusses among other things hemp's industrial importance during the time, as well as cannabis' use in food: > Furthermore, hemp seeds have been used for food for several centuries, especially by the poorer social classes, since they were inexpensive, rich in nutrients, and available even during droughts. In fact, several centuries-old Italian recipes use cannabis sativa as the main ingredient, and these recipes include... [1]: https://lithub.com/why-does-da-vincis-jesus-look-so-stoned/ https://lithub.com/why-does-da-vincis-jesus-look-so-stoned/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Italy
mionhe 3y ago
The Renaissance was lit.
fuzzfactor 3y ago
Toxicological analysis is a very respectable endeavor, it's just the wrong moniker when analyzing something that's not actually toxic. Kind of like "intoxication" you can't truly be intoxicated by something that's not toxic. Influenced maybe, or even impaired, but not intoxicated.

64 points by Hooke 3y ago

Everyone from the Greco-Roman’s to ancient Chinese (oldest record at 4,000BC) have used cannabis in some form. America declared war on cannabis not because “it’s a drug” but because it was something enjoyed by migrant laborers (Mexicans) during the Great Depression and outlawing it was thought to cause them to become outlaws and white folk would have jobs again. Except no white workers wanted to work those jobs as it didn’t pay enough for their standards. There’s been plenty of research and history around this. Every civilization in history has had some connection to cannabis, whether medicinal, religious, ceremonial, aromatic, or industrial use. Ropes, Spices, Trade of agricultural goods, definitely included some hemp and cannabis. It’s cool to see them actually isolate and target it in samples.

swatcoder 3y ago
> America declared war on cannabis not because “it’s a drug” but because it was something enjoyed by migrant laborers (Mexicans) during the Great Depression and outlawing it was thought to cause them to become outlaws and white folk would have jobs again. To be fair, it was both. If you look at contemporary writing among lay Americans, they earnestly thought it made Mexicans crazed and dangerous. It's good to look at history through economic and political lenses because that's often the steering wheel or gate control, but (in approximate-democracies) it's also good to acknowledge what everyday sentiment was among lay citizens. A country can be calculating and moralizing/prude at the same time, and America's biggest historical moments almost always hinge on getting those two things to align. Even today.
- riversflow 3y ago
  > If you look at contemporary writing among lay Americans, they earnestly thought it made Mexicans crazed and dangerous. Yes, but where did that idea originate from? I think the insinuation here is that the reason it was thought of that way was because that image was being propagated by the media. See: reefer madness, which a comment below indicates was a production of Hearst.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    It's nearly impossible to make that kind of attribution for folk knowledge, and its arguable that there's so much of an interdependent feedback loop between calculating aristocrats and public opinion that neither is meaningfully causal or original. Tracking down the source of widespread folk ideas about marijuana is like trying to figure out who invented "the floor is lava". If you're very very lucky, you might be able to find a political source that predates your earliest known popular mention, but that's still not very authoritative. And if you can't trace some plausible epidemic-like spread over time and geography, which you almost certainly can't, you really just can't make a strong causal determination. Even with Hearst (or Murdoch, or any other media titan), you can easily paint them as savvy amplifiers, cranking up the volume of existing rumors to the benefit of their own vision.
    - reactordev 3y ago
      Mmm that 3rd image is golden. You say this like people haven’t already done this. Stop dismissing and start accepting. This is fact. This happened. It’s real and it was a hysteria perpetrated by racism. https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350 https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
> Except no white workers wanted to work those jobs as it didn’t pay enough for their standards. Your knowledge of this era of history is incorrect. You are correct about the cause of marijuana criminalization but wrong about White laborers in farming during the early 20th century. Whites alongside Hispanic were very common as laborers during the great depression and up to the 60s. https://www.loc.gov/collections/todd-and-sonkin-migrant-workers-from-1940-to-1941/articles-and-essays/the-migrant-experience/ https://www.loc.gov/collections/todd-and-sonkin-migrant-work...
permo-w 3y ago
every time I hear about the US outlawing weed there's a different explanation given with absolutely certainty of truth. "it was the paper industry". "it was a way to oppress African-Americans". "it was a way to take jobs from Mexicans". "it was seen as being linked to crime". etc etc etc
- fzeroracer 3y ago
  Those aren't different explanations, they're all part of the same explanation. It was initially criminalized because minority groups were using it during the time of prohibition and it was a way of targeting them specifically. Randolph Hearst ran a series of yellow journalism hit pieces which is one of the origins of reefer madness comes from. He also ran the largest newspaper at the time. Then once it was criminalized it was trivial to link it to crime because, well, now only criminals were growing, selling and using marijuana.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    sure, but the explanations, like here, are always given in isolation, seemingly as the be all and end all, and while it may well be true that they're all a little part of the truth, that is interesting in itself
    - reactordev 3y ago
      It started with migrant mexicans and America piled on more racism to include African Americans and European outsiders (Rus, pol, etc). America has and continues to have, a racism problem. Policies targeting minorities for no good reason other than racism and hate. fzeroracer is correct, it’s all part of the bigger picture ban against anything “un-american” at the time. Reefer Madness, hit pieces in the news/media, blaming crazy on marijuana, and not understanding. Policy through bigotry is not good policy. I linked this elsewhere in the thread but here’s a law university study. https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350 https://libguides.law.uga.edu/c.php?g=522835&p=3575350
      - deleted 3y ago
hcks 3y ago
Or maybe it’s just a dumb drug that stinks and makes you into a schizo?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jjtheblunt 3y ago
> Every civilization in history has had some connection to cannabis Hyperbole? Pacific Islander civilizations? Inuit? etc.
- reactordev 3y ago
  Sad, you mentioned the Inuit so. The Inuit are at war with Marijuana. They are blaming it (propaganda campaign) on the decline of their heritage and culture when the reality is it’s the globalization of the world. Canada legalized marijuana consumption (rightfully so) and tribes of the Inuit have slowly succumbed to subsistence abuse. Tragic that they are taking the same playbook as pre-ww2 America. Anyway, here’s a Wikipedia page that goes into more cultures and histories of civilizations and their cannabis connections: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenic_use_of_cannabis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entheogenic_use_of_cannabis
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    Interesting!

pierat 3y ago

What? Are US policymakers wanting to now arrest skeleton remains and demand drug-war fines for return?

pipeline_peak 3y ago
Rent Free

ulizzle 3y ago

Paraphrasing liberally from the study, looks like it wasn't used as a medicinal herb in the past, but recreationally. I'm assuming that's because opiates and alcohol use were widespread, and those are stronger analgesics and anesthetics than cannabis. For anxiety, tobacco was the preferred drug. That does put a question on the whole modern medical cannabis industry. But of course, cannabis today is much stronger, so who knows? I don't think I could survive an amputation on modern cannabis alone, however. Or even ignore lancing a blister.

jamesakirk 3y ago
> I don't think I could survive an amputation on modern cannabis alone, however. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. My dad was a cancer patient with severe chronic pain. Cannabis did not eliminate the need for opiates for chronic pain, but reduced the amount of opiates he needed by about half. Using cannabis actually allowed him to be MORE lucid.
- ulizzle 3y ago
  I had a motorcycle accident a few years back that left me hooked on opiates for a while, so I have some first-hand experience there. You can cut your use about 50% pretty nicely a couple of times at first, but the lower you go the more that hurts, and I couldn't mask it with cannabis. At that point, you're going to have to get some medical help or go through pure hell. I think in your father's case, it was cutting the opiates by half, but cannabis does help smooth anxiety and helps with nausea, it's just not as strong as getting some xanax, for instance, which would explain why medicinally cannabis wasn't and isn't used (like at hospitals). The more meds you take, the more it can give you side effects, so it does make sense for people to switch to cannabis to help out
  - asveikau 3y ago
    Off topic but that sounds like a stressful ordeal you went through, and I'm sorry to hear it. Hope things are well now.

parhamn 3y ago

Im a bit surprised this is a speculative matter. If 2 in 7 samples had it, it surely would've been in some of the many pieces of art we have from the period and if it was in the art it wouldn’t be so speculative. Are there paintings of people smoking pot in 17th century Italy? If not why not.

ulizzle 3y ago
That's a good point, and I think it is because it wasn't as powerful as other drugs. Cannabis today is far stronger than even 20 years ago if you go by old hippie lore. We do know people ate magic mushrooms and used psychedelics all the time, and that alcohol and tobacco were used widely as soon as discovered. Maybe that's a truly modern thing. The 420 art.
- Baeocystin 3y ago
  In SE Asia in the 70's and early 80's, I remember folks using weed as part of a larger medicinal-plant system, more than a thing by itself. My Mom used to get an oily balm to rub on her joints for arthritis pain that had it as one of many ingredients. I don't remember a lot of smoking or using it specifically to get high, though. FWIW.
swatcoder 3y ago
Preserved art always represents very specific, very narrow slices of life. Ignoring aesthetic choices by artists themselves, it starts with who can afford to collect and preserve the work, and what their tastes are, and then gets filtered through moral and political fashions decade after decade. It’s a boon to find work that escaped those factors and somehow got preserved anyway, like the graffiti in Pompeii, but it’s the exception by a mile. You can’t expect to get the complete picture of a past culture just through it’s surviving art.
coffeecantcode 3y ago
Interestingly enough, as researched by Mike Jay in his newest book Psychonauts, cannabis consumption in the 19th century and before rarely took the form of cultivating and smoking the flower of the cannabis plant like we have seen in the last century and was more so focused around creating the tar-like hashish which was sometimes smoked but often times cooked into food and consumed in that way. It was also, as it has been through most of history, a drug that had a reputation tied to social class which in turn could have led to fewer artistic renditions of its everyday use surviving to this day. Not taking away from the fact that there does seem to be a lack of blatant art focusing on the consumption of cannabis from this region in this time frame, just an interesting note.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Georgelemental 3y ago

Remember: modern cannabis is many times more potent than the pot of 50 years ago. Not the same drugs

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
riffic 3y ago
lol that trope is about 50 years old as well and it just means you need less to get high (self-titration). https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/weed-limit-pot-prohibitionists-regurgitate-tired-tropes-from-the-bygone-days-of-the-war-on-drugs/Content?oid=30642122 https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/weed-limit-pot-prohibiti... > Bowers' claims of higher THC content in what is available now compared to the good old days is a refrain that prohibitionists have used for decades, according to Paul Armentano, deputy director of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. .. > Likewise in the 1960s and '70s, public officials claimed "Woodstock weed" was so uniquely powerful that smoking it would permanently damage brain cells and mere possession needed to be heavily criminalized to protect public health. https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/08/15/armentano-marijuana-potency-warrants-more-education-regulation/ https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/08/15/armentano-marijuana-... > Looking back, it is apparent that each of these previous generations’ claims was nothing more than hyperbole. Nonetheless, these sensational claims had a lasting influence on marijuana policy. The latest recycling of the “It’s not your parents’ pot” claim is a little different.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  The "trope" has been around for 50 years because selective breeding has been around for 50 years, so THC content had been going up constantly throughout that period. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312155/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312155/

npunt 3y ago

My mind immediately went to 'was this one of the creative inputs of the renaissance?' Found this article [1] which tries to make the case and contains something to ponder: > After all, in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII had banned the practice of smoking cannabis as sacrament during mass — so ask yourself, how bad did the practice have to get before the Pope himself had to step in and stop it? Also TIL cannabis in italy was apparently quite a thing. The wikipedia entry [2] discusses among other things hemp's industrial importance during the time, as well as cannabis' use in food: > Furthermore, hemp seeds have been used for food for several centuries, especially by the poorer social classes, since they were inexpensive, rich in nutrients, and available even during droughts. In fact, several centuries-old Italian recipes use cannabis sativa as the main ingredient, and these recipes include... [1]: https://lithub.com/why-does-da-vincis-jesus-look-so-stoned/ https://lithub.com/why-does-da-vincis-jesus-look-so-stoned/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Italy

mionhe 3y ago

The Renaissance was lit.

fuzzfactor 3y ago

Toxicological analysis is a very respectable endeavor, it's just the wrong moniker when analyzing something that's not actually toxic. Kind of like "intoxication" you can't truly be intoxicated by something that's not toxic. Influenced maybe, or even impaired, but not intoxicated.