Medical Cannabis Advocacy in the Middle East During the 1940s

What the 1940s Middle East actually looked like for cannabis

By 1940, hashish was already illegal across most of the Middle East. Egypt had banned cannabis importation as early as 1879 and pushed successfully at the 1925 Geneva Opium Convention to add 'Indian hemp' to the international control list ^[1][2]. Throughout the 1940s, Egypt's Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau (CNIB), founded in 1929 under Thomas Wentworth Russell Pasha ('Russell Pasha'), continued aggressive interdiction of hashish smuggled in from Lebanon, Syria, and Greece ^[3].

This is the actual policy backdrop. Claims that the 1940s saw organized medical cannabis advocacy in the region are not supported by the documentary record we can verify. No data

Lebanon and Syria: production, not advocacy

The Bekaa Valley in Lebanon was already a major hashish-producing region in the 1940s, supplying Egyptian and broader Mediterranean markets ^[3]. French Mandate authorities (Lebanon and Syria were under French Mandate until 1943 and 1946 respectively) generally treated cannabis cultivation as a smuggling and revenue problem, not a medical question.

There is no peer-reviewed historical evidence of a Lebanese or Syrian medical cannabis advocacy movement in this decade. What existed was a long-standing folk medicine tradition using hashish for pain, sleep, and gastrointestinal complaints — but folk use is not the same as organized advocacy. Weak / limited

Egypt: prohibition, psychiatry, and a complicated legacy

Egypt is where most serious 1940s-era documentation exists, and almost all of it is anti-cannabis. Russell Pasha's memoir Egyptian Service, 1902–1946, published in 1949, describes the decade as a continuation of his life's work suppressing hashish trafficking ^[3].

The Egyptian psychiatric tradition of the period — particularly at the Abbassia Mental Hospital — generally framed chronic hashish use as a cause of psychosis. This 'hashish insanity' framing dominated regional medical writing well into the 1950s ^[4]. Later Egyptian researchers like Ahmed Mohamed Khalifa would conduct more systematic epidemiological work, but this came in the 1970s, not the 1940s ^[4].

So the Egyptian medical establishment of the 1940s was, on balance, hostile to cannabis — not advocating for it. Strong evidence

Where the 'advocacy' myth comes from

Several popular online claims circulate about 1940s Middle Eastern medical cannabis advocacy. The most common ones, and what the record actually says:

• 'Arab doctors in the 1940s prescribed hashish for asthma and pain.' Folk and unregulated use existed, but no documented professional advocacy campaign has been verified. This claim appears to be a retrofitting of much older sources — particularly the 19th-century writings of figures like W.B. O'Shaughnessy (who worked in India, not the Middle East) and 13th-century Arab physicians like Ibn al-Baytar ^[5]. Disputed

• 'Israel pioneered medical cannabis in the 1940s.' Israeli medical cannabis research is real and important, but it began with Raphael Mechoulam's THC isolation work in 1964, not the 1940s ^[6]. The state of Israel didn't exist until 1948.

• 'A 1940s Lebanese medical association endorsed cannabis.' We can find no primary source for this. It appears to be internet folklore. No data

The useful historical truth is more modest: traditional Unani and Arab medicine had long included cannabis preparations, and that tradition persisted informally through the 1940s — but it was being actively suppressed by state policy, not promoted by organized advocates.

Timeline of verifiable 1940s events

• 1940–1945: World War II disrupts Mediterranean hashish smuggling routes; Egyptian CNIB reports drop in seizures during peak war years ^[3].
• 1946: Russell Pasha retires after 44 years in Egyptian service; his successors continue the prohibition framework ^[3].
• 1946: UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs is established, inheriting the League of Nations' cannabis control regime ^[2].
• 1948: State of Israel established; inherits British Mandate-era Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, which criminalized cannabis ^[7].
• 1949: Russell Pasha publishes Egyptian Service, the most-cited primary source on Middle Eastern cannabis policy of the period ^[3].

Bottom line for researchers

If you are researching medical cannabis history, the 1940s Middle East is mostly a story of prohibition consolidation, not advocacy. The genuine regional contributions to medical cannabis science come later: Mechoulam's chemistry work in Israel from the 1960s onward ^[6], and Egyptian epidemiology from the 1970s. Anyone claiming a robust 1940s medical advocacy movement in the region should be asked for a primary source — and in our research, those sources have not held up.

See also: History of Cannabis Prohibition, Raphael Mechoulam, Hashish.

Sources

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