Browse History articles

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

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 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 month ago

Roger Adams

The American chemist whose 1940s lab work first isolated cannabidiol and laid the groundwork for modern cannab...

11 sources 2 weeks 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 1 month 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 1 month ago

Seattle Hempfest

The world's largest cannabis policy reform rally, held annually in Seattle since 1991 and known for its 'prote...

8 sources 2 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 3 months ago

South Africa's Private Use Ruling (2018)

How a Constitutional Court judgment in September 2018 decriminalised private adult cannabis use in South Afric...

9 sources 2 weeks ago

Spanish Cannabis Social Clubs

How a legal grey zone in Spain produced thousands of member-only cannabis associations starting in the 1990s.

15 sources 2 weeks ago

Subcool

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

6 sources 4 weeks ago

Switzerland's Cannabis Pilot Programs

How Switzerland used a 2021 law change to launch the world's most rigorous government-sanctioned adult-use can...

9 sources 2 weeks 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 month 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 1 month ago

The Extradition of Marc Emery

How a Canadian cannabis seed seller and activist ended up in a US federal prison after a 2005 DEA operation.

9 sources 1 month ago

The First Billion-Dollar Cannabis Company

How Canopy Growth became the first cannabis company to cross a $1 billion valuation in 2016, and what that mil...

12 sources 2 weeks ago

The First Legal Recreational Cannabis Sale in Colorado (January 1, 2014)

On New Year's Day 2014, Colorado became the first U.S. jurisdiction to sell cannabis legally to adults for non...

11 sources 1 month ago

The Founding of High Times Magazine

How a smuggler's parody of Playboy became the longest-running cannabis publication in the world.

6 sources 2 months ago

The League of Nations and Cannabis

How a 1925 international convention quietly pulled cannabis into the global drug control system that still sha...

9 sources 1 month ago

The Ogden Memo (2009)

A Department of Justice memorandum that signaled federal forbearance toward state-legal medical cannabis — and...

13 sources 2 months ago

The Origin of Girl Scout Cookies

How a Bay Area cross became one of the most influential — and most disputed — cannabis cultivars of the 2010s.

9 sources 2 months ago

The Origin of Haze (Original Haze)

How a pair of brothers in 1970s Santa Cruz produced the sativa hybrid that reshaped global cannabis breeding.

7 sources 2 months ago