The history of cannabis

Hemp, Latin cannabis, is considered one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world. Because of bans in the 20th century, its importance as a crop has largely been forgotten. Here you can read how hemp was used as food, medicine and raw material and why it was banned.

As early as around 10,000 BC, hemp was cultivated in China as a crop and medicinal plant. The nutrient-rich seeds were an important food, the fibres a raw material. From China, hemp spread around the world. As the “Deutscher Hanfverband” reports, the oldest finds of hemp seeds in Europe are about 5,500 years old and come from the Tübingen area.

From antiquity to modern times, hemp was an important raw material. Around 800 AD, Charlemagne issued an estate ordinance that also regulated hemp cultivation. From the 13th century, paper was made from hemp in Europe. The first paper mills were built.

Criminalisation and the end of the ban

How did cannabis come to be discredited as a «dangerous drug» after humanity had used the plant for all kinds of purposes for thousands of years? The origin of cannabis criminalisation lies in the USA of the 1920s and 30s.

In 1937 the «Marihuana Tax Act» came into force, allegedly to fight drugs. It placed an absurdly high tax of 100 dollars per ounce on the purchase of cannabis. The cannabis tax did not bring a single dollar into the treasury, but that was not the point of the exercise either.

As we know today, cannabis criminalisation was not a concern of medical policy makers and doctors. The marijuana tax was pushed through Congress bypassing the «American Medical Association (AMA)» on 14 June 1937 with a documented lie («The AMA fully agrees!»).

The central figure of cannabis prohibition was Harry J. Anslinger, son of a Swiss immigrant. As «Commissioner of Narcotics» from 1930 to 1962, Anslinger lobbied for comprehensive international outlawing of cannabis.

Corporate interests against cannabis

Harry J. Anslinger acted in the interests of his uncle by marriage Andrew W. Mellon. Mellon was US Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932. Under his influence, the «Federal Bureau of Narcotics» was created in 1930 and Anslinger was made its head. In this role, Anslinger served and used both Mellon's financial dealings in the automotive and oil industries and the corporate interests of Du Pont (chemicals) and General Motors (automobiles), both owned or controlled by Pierre S. du Pont.

Du Pont produced synthetic fibres and plastics (such as nylon, patented in 1938) as well as additives for petrol and sulphites for wood pulp paper. This in turn coincided with the economic interests of the publisher William R. Hearst. Hearst owned the largest newspaper chain in America as well as forests and paper mills. When new harvesting machines promised profitable paper production from hemp, the Hearst press unleashed a gigantic disinformation campaign. It claimed, for example, that Black and Mexican men under the influence of marijuana raped white women. The real aim of cannabis criminalisation was to eliminate industrial hemp as a supplier of paper, bio-fibres and bio-energy. That the medical landscape was also ploughed up in the process was merely collateral damage.

Between 1850 and 1942, the official American pharmacopoeias listed cannabis as a medicine. These preparations disappeared in the course of cannabis criminalisation.

In Switzerland, cannabis was still a monograph of the official pharmacopoeia until the early 1970s. You can read how hemp cultivation developed in this country in our article on the history of hemp in Switzerland.

Cannabis rules are changing worldwide. In Switzerland, hemp only counts as a narcotic from a total THC content of 1.0 percent (BetmVV-EDI, FDHA Ordinance on the Narcotics Lists, SR 812.121.11, Annex 5, list d, as of 13 March 2026). Hemp flowers below this value are sold as CBD flowers.

A well-known example of the campaigns of the 1930s is the 1936 film «Reefer Madness».