Human Stories, Boldly Told

Collection
Collection
Collection
Collection
Collection
Collection
Collection
Explore All Collections
Channels
Our Story
Connect

The Hidden History of Marijuana

Curious about weed's origins on this 4/20? Well look no further. We pulled together five surprising stories about the history of marijuana to celebrate Snoop Dogg's favorite holiday.

Read Listen

The Hidden History of Marijuana

 Share
 Share

Weed. Cannabis. Pot. That smelly green stuff. Whatever you call it, you probably have an opinion on it. But where did weed come from? (Other than the ground, duh.) It wasn’t ’60s hippies who started the craze during the height of the counterculture. Cannabis was discovered way before Allen Ginsberg started preaching about it, and the long history of its use is filled with surprising stories.

500 B.C. Residue found in tombs deep in a Central Asian mountain range suggests that strong cannabis was used in ancient burial rites

Read at The New York Times: Scientists Find Ancient Humans Used Weed 2,500 Years Ago

1600s Smokeable pot’s proliferation in North America involves the Mexican Revolution, the transatlantic slave trade and Prohibition.
Late 19th to Early 20th Century NPR looks into how we came to call cannabis “marijuana,” and how US-Mexico relations shaped public  of smoking weed.

Read at NPR: Anti-Cannabis Sentiments Have a Not So Hidden Reason: Race

1970s The cure-all debate over the cannabis compound has distracted from the serious — and seriously odd — backstory of how cannabidiol conquered the country.
Read at The New York Times: A Hidden Origin Story of the CBD Craze
2016 Thanks to a loophole in Indiana’s notorious religious freedom act, one countercultural congregation asserted its right to worship the holy green ghost. But the real surprise is that this merry band of smokers, jokers and non-tokers built an entirely essential community.
2018 One of the most outrageous crime sagas of the 21st century starts with a severed penis…and only gets stranger from there.

If you enjoyed this exploration of marijuana through the ages, sign up for our Hidden History Newsletter. Every month we send out a curated list of stories covering one newsworthy topic.

You can check out all of our hidden history collections here!