10 very interesting facts about cannabis that you probably didn’t know

The moment someone talks about “marijuana” at a meeting of friends, our hibernated minds are activated immediately. And when you become a well-informed person, your heart instantly fills with pride for this new superiority. But are you really someone who “knows everything” about this plant?

1- The word ‘marihuana’ comes from the indigenous term ‘‍pipiltzintzintlis’.

Steve DeAngelo’s book, ‘The Cannabis Manifesto’, details how indigenous Mexicans originally referred to hemp flowers (which had been introduced by the Spanish to make ropes and candles) as ‘pipiltzintzintlis’, meaning “the noblest princess” in the Nahuatl language and that these indigenous people used for medicinal purposes in colonial times. Only when the Spanish banned its use did the pipiltzintzintlis disappear from the markets in Mexico and hide among the people. In response, according to DeAngelo, participants in civil disobedience who chose to continue using pipiltzintzintlis simply called it ‘marijuana’, which in Nahuatl means “things of Mary” or religious possessions, as a colloquial term to avoid punishment for his possession.

2- The first marijuana dealers go back 5,000 years.

The Yamnaya were nomads who entered Europe some 5,000 years ago from the eastern steppe region, in what is now Ukraine and Russia. They brought with them metallurgy, grazing and possibly Indo-European languages. They were also responsible for the first transcontinental cannabis trade, as they discovered the versatility of the plant, using it as medicine, raw material and even exploiting its hallucinogenic properties. The Yamnaya already knew the wheel and the domestication of the horse, which put at their disposal a revolutionary invention then: the cart pulled by animals, which allowed them to cover great distances with lots of luggage and supplies, leading one of the most significant population movements in history. They popularised as well the use of cannabis as they spread across Europe.

3- Hemp was used to move the heads of Easter Island.

In 2012, archaeologists created reproductions of the Easter Island moai, trying to figure out how the ancients may have moved the iconic 4.35-ton heads from their quarry to current locations. Theorists had suggested that, in order to complete the task, they used log rollers or even alien help, but in 2012, California State University archaeologist Carl Lipo showed that all that was needed was hemp rope. By tying three hemp ropes to the statue and having a team of 18 people rock it back and forth until it “walked”, they were able to move the stone heads 100 meters in less than an hour.

4- The first e-commerce sale was a bag of marijuana.

In a 2005 book by John Markoff, entitled ‘What the Dormouse Said: How the 60 s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry’, the following paragraph appears: “In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students used accounts from the university’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to conduct a business transaction with their counterparts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Before Amazon and eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal, as students used the ARPANET network to quietly agree to the sale of an indeterminate amount of marijuana”. ARPANET was a computer network created by the U.S. Department of Defense that built the backbone of the Internet until 1990.

5- Richard Nixon unknowingly helped Louis Armstrong smuggle cannabis through U.S. Customs.

According to Roger Stone (biographer of Richard Nixon) in his book ‘Nixon’s Secrets’, the former president was a great admirer of Louis Armstrong, who in the late 1950s had been named “Goodwill Ambassador”, performing a concert tour in Europe and Asia. But when he landed in New York in 1958 after one of those concerts, he was directed to the customs line because the agents believed that he could smuggle: he had about 1 kg of marijuana in his suitcase. Once Armstrong realised he was about to be arrested, he started sweating profusely. Just then the doors opened and Vice President Richard Nixon entered the room, followed by a group of reporters and photographers. “Satchmo, what are you doing here?” Nixon asked in surprise. “Well, I just got back from my goodwill ambassador tour in Asia and they told me I had to clear customs”. Without hesitation, Nixon grabbed his two suitcases. “Ambassadors don’t have to go through customs and the vice president of the United States will gladly carry their bags,” Nixon said, playing Armstrong’s mule without even knowing it.

6- The ‘pipe-weed’ smoked by hobbits in the trilogy of ‘Lord of the Rings’ could be marijuana.

If you’ve ever read JRR Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’, you probably remember that the hobbits of Middle-earth love to smoke so-called ‘pipe-weed’. It receives names like Longbottom Leaf, Old Toby and Southern Star, names that much later would use some cannabis breeders for their varieties. According to the appendices to the book, Tolkien was talking about tobacco, not cannabis. What is clear is that in the film version Peter Jackson presented this herb as if it had psychotropic effects. In fact, it can be seen clearly in several scenes, but especially in the one in which Saruman condemns the smoking habit of Gandalf with this tone: “Your love for the leaf of the middle has clearly clouded your mind”.

7- Japanese ninjas were training jumping on hemp plants.

The ritual use of hemp in Japan was (and still is) very important. For example, the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan, known as samurai, manifested the inspiration of cannabis fibre in arts such as aikido (a martial art), kyudo (archery) and chanoyu (tea ceremony). The strong bond of hemp with these traditional Japanese arts is reflected in an adventure story in which ninjas (warriors) use cannabis plants to increase their jumping skills. So, they planted hemp when they started training, striving to jump on it every day. At first it is not a challenge, but hemp grows rapidly and so does the jumping ability of the ninja. At the end of the season, the warrior could jump hemp 3 meters high.

8- The most expensive joint in the world is valued at €24,000.

The most expensive joint of all time is shaped like an elephant Tusk almost 1 meter long and was commissioned by a company called Stone Road Farms, specialised in organic pre-rolled joints. It was created for a charity auction in support of the African Wildlife Foundation in 2018. According to Forbes magazine, the joint was rolled by Weavers, a prominent ‘stoner’ artist (Weavers already holds the record for one of the largest joints-not the largest bud in the world-in the form of rocket launchers) when a Hollywood prop designer couldn’t complete the project. In addition to almost 1 kg of grass and hashish, it features three layers of 24-carat gold Shine rolling paper.

9- The famous trapped Chilean miners received cannabis through the rescue well.

Remember the accident at the San José mine in Chile in 2010, in which 33 miners were trapped underground for 69 days? Well, according to The New York Times reporter Jonathan Franklin’s book “33 Men”, some of them received marijuana in their wives’ letters to help them cope with the ordeal. They were smoking so much that the government considered using a drug-sniffing dog to intercept the cannabis letters sliding down the rescue well. However, this would have caused “more tension than relief,” as some survivors report that cannabis did not have the calming effects it was supposed to have, as it was taken over by a select group of miners who refused to share it.

10- After the murder of Tupac Shakur, his gang members mixed his ashes with cannabis and smoked them.

The one considered by many as one of the most important rappers of all time, was killed in Las Vegas in 1996. But at the memorial held in his honour shortly after, members of his hip-hop group, Outlawz, took the lyrics of his song ‘Black Jesus’ literally and mixed his ashes in a marijuana cig. His bandmate, EDI Mean, explained: “I came up with that shit. If you listen to ‘Black Jesus’, he says: ‘Last wishes, niggas smoke my ashes’. That was a request in the song. “And we took it very seriously, because we mixed it with grass and smoked it in his honour!”. The revelation came during the 15th anniversary of the death of Tupac in 2011, which provoked a violent reaction from the family of the late rapper, who claims that they were not aware of the smoking session. Despite opposition, the family refused to take legal action against their fellow gang members.