by Brittiany Ralls
Growing up in America in the 1990’s some of us might have thought there would never be a time when cannabis is legal in more states than it isn’t. But here we are and I wouldn’t want to be alive any other time. Existing in this part of our changing cultures within America is such an excitingly monumental experience.
With cannabis being such an important aspect of my life and health I wouldn’t want life any other way.
Cannabis hasn’t always been available as we know since the war on drugs, but there was even a time early on in our nation’s history when cannabis for the use of medicine wouldn’t have been available. But as with most things for a part of that history we had a trade off in what we used cannabis for more often.
Cannabis was such an important crop back in the 1600’s that Virginia passed a law requiring every farm in the colony to grow hemp. The crop was even accepted as currency in certain states. Hemp was used to make fabrics, ropes, press woods and many other products. Starting in the 19th century is when you started to see a more prevalent use of cannabis in the US and not just for industrial hemp purposes only anymore.
Around 1860 the peak in industrial hemp manufacturing had run its course and the use of cannabis for medicine was on the rise.
Primarily being processed into tinctures and elixirs of different sorts to help with numerous ailments just as we use it today. Starting in 1910 Mexican refugees were fleeing the Mexican revolution and brought cannabis with them, introducing cannabis to more communities than ever before. When the Great Depression came about bureaucrats looking for the next focus latched onto cannabis. Since it was primarily still being used in black and mexican communities this allowed them to criminalize people in those communities. Which is something we are still trying to change today on a federal level.
Throughout the majority of the country we see that most Americans agree that the legalization of cannabis is what they want. At least in the ways of medicinal use. But just like it was back in the 1600’s we need to be producing hemp on a much larger scale. Hemp has the capabilities of creating plastics that biodegrade leaps and bounds quicker than plastics we currently use. Hemp, if created and used in larger quantities would, drive down the cost of it over time and eventually not only make it the most affordable option but in some instances more durable also.
My American dream is one that combines the use of hemp just like back in the 1600’s with the cannabis legalization of today.
An American life where I wear hemp clothing, while living in my home that was created using hemp, drinking out of my water bottle that is made of hemp plastics, smoking my cannagar that I was able to buy at a cannabis dispensary. Then when my grandkids talk of the use of cannabis in the US I can tell them of a time when none of it would have been allowed, and how the community that their grandmother is a part of worked really hard to change it all for the better.