Browse History articles

59 articles in this category. All sourced, evidence-labeled, and fact-checked.

DC Initiative 71 (2014)

The 2014 ballot measure that legalized personal cannabis possession and home cultivation in Washington, DC — b...

8 sources 1 month ago

DJ Short

American cannabis breeder credited with developing Blueberry and related fruit-flavored cultivars beginning in...

6 sources 1 month ago

Hashish and the Order of Assassins

How a Crusader-era rumor about a Persian sect grew into one of cannabis culture's most enduring and inaccurate...

10 sources 4 weeks ago

Hemp in Early American Flags

Examining the popular claim that the first American flags were made of hemp, and what the historical record ac...

9 sources 1 month ago

John Sinclair Freedom Rally (December 10, 1971)

The Ann Arbor benefit concert featuring John Lennon that helped free a poet jailed for ten years over two join...

9 sources 1 month ago

Leary v. United States (1969)

The Supreme Court case in which Timothy Leary's marijuana conviction collapsed the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 o...

8 sources 2 months ago

Louis Armstrong and Cannabis

How the jazz trumpeter became one of cannabis's most famous lifelong advocates and what the historical record...

8 sources 2 weeks ago

Malta's 2021 Cannabis Reform

Malta became the first EU member state to legalize personal cannabis cultivation and possession for adults in...

7 sources 2 months ago

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing for Cannabis in the United States

A timeline of federal mandatory minimums for marijuana offenses, from the Boggs Act of 1951 through modern ref...

17 sources 1 month ago

Massachusetts Question 4 (2016)

The ballot initiative that legalized recreational cannabis in Massachusetts, the first such law passed on the...

15 sources 3 days ago

Nevada Question 2 (2016)

The voter initiative that legalized recreational cannabis in Nevada, taking effect in 2017 and reshaping the s...

10 sources 1 month ago

New Mexico Cannabis Legalization (2021)

How New Mexico became the 18th U.S. state to legalize adult-use cannabis through a special legislative session...

9 sources 2 months ago

Oregon Measure 91 (2014)

The ballot initiative that legalized adult-use cannabis in Oregon, building a regulated market on top of a lon...

11 sources 1 month ago

Oregon's 1973 Cannabis Decriminalization

How Oregon became the first U.S. state to remove criminal penalties for small-scale cannabis possession, and w...

8 sources 3 days ago

Portugal's Drug Decriminalization (2001)

How Portugal became the first European country to decriminalize personal possession of all drugs, and what the...

7 sources 5 days ago

Raphael Mechoulam

The Israeli organic chemist who isolated THC, co-discovered the endocannabinoid system, and shaped cannabis sc...

11 sources 1 month ago

Reefer Madness (1936 film)

The cautionary church-funded melodrama that became, decades later, the most famous unintentional comedy in can...

6 sources 1 week ago

SAFE Banking Act: Legislative History

A decade-long effort to give state-legal cannabis businesses access to ordinary banking services that has repe...

15 sources 2 weeks ago

San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club

The first public medical cannabis dispensary in the United States, founded by Dennis Peron in 1992 to serve AI...

9 sources 3 weeks ago

Snoop Dogg and Cannabis Culture

How a Long Beach rapper became the most recognizable cannabis personality in the world, and what's real versus...

11 sources 2 months ago

Subcool

American cannabis breeder behind TGA Subcool Seeds, known for Querkle, Jack the Ripper, and the Vortex line un...

6 sources 1 week ago

The Beat Generation and Cannabis

How a small circle of mid-century American writers helped reframe cannabis from criminal vice to literary muse...

14 sources 2 months ago

The Dutch Coffeeshop: A History of Tolerated Cannabis in the Netherlands

How a 1976 pragmatic compromise produced the world's most famous cannabis retail model — and the contradiction...

13 sources 1 week ago

The Establishment of Drug Courts

How a 1989 experiment in Miami-Dade County spawned a nationwide alternative-to-incarceration model with mixed...

14 sources 2 weeks ago