When the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs relegated cannabis to Schedule IV, categorising it alongside heroin as a substance with no medical value, it did not merely ignore biological science. It mandated historical amnesia. To accept the prohibitionist narrative, one must pretend that a continuous, five-thousand-year thread of written medical evidence simply does not exist. The assertion that cannabis lacks therapeutic utility is not a medical consensus. It is a political decree. Long before it was a scheduled narcotic, it was a staple of the global pharmacopoeia.
The prohibition era is not a scientific epoch. It is a political aberration: a brief, violent dark age situated within five thousand years of continuous therapeutic documentation. The plant appears in the Ebers Papyrus of ancient Egypt, dated to approximately 1550 BCE. It appears in the Atharva Veda, composed between 1500 and 1200 BCE. It appears in the Chinese pharmacopoeia of Shennong, recorded around 2700 BCE. It appears in the work of Dioscorides, the Roman army's chief pharmacologist, in 70 AD. It appears in the British Pharmacopoeia from 1850. It appears in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2017. The thread is unbroken. What broke, in 1961, was not the evidence. What broke was the willingness of international institutions to acknowledge it.
5,000 Years of Cannabis History
Documented medicinal use vs. the prohibition era · Approximate years
Cannabis has been documented as a therapeutic agent for approximately 4,935 years, from the Shennong pharmacopoeia of ancient China (circa 2700 BCE) to the present. The period of international prohibition under the UN Single Convention began in 1961, representing approximately 65 years. On a five-thousand-year scale, the prohibition era constitutes 1.3 percent of the total documented history of the plant as medicine. The remaining 98.7 percent is a continuous record of therapeutic use.
The Unbroken Thread of Evidence
cannabis medical literature history Dioscorides 70AD O'Shaughnessy 1839 British Pharmacopoeia Queen Victoria Lancet New England Journal
The documentation of the plant's medical efficacy is woven into the foundational texts of every major medical tradition on earth. The following records are not folklore. They are documented, verifiable, and in most cases accessible in digital archives. The reader is invited to check every one of them.
The Shennong Bencao Jing
The Chinese pharmacopoeia attributed to Emperor Shennong, one of the oldest medical texts on earth, documents cannabis as a treatment for more than 100 ailments including rheumatism, malaria, and disorders of the female reproductive system. It distinguishes between different preparations and doses with clinical precision that anticipates modern pharmaceutical thinking by nearly five thousand years.
The Ebers Papyrus
The Ebers Papyrus, one of the oldest and most comprehensive medical documents in the world, references cannabis as a treatment for inflammation. It is one of the earliest documented examples of cannabis being prescribed for a specific clinical condition in a written medical record. The same Egypt whose delegate Mohammed El Guindy proposed adding cannabis to the 1925 Geneva Convention's international controls had, 3,475 years earlier, listed it as a legitimate therapeutic agent in its official medical literature.
The Atharva Veda
The Atharva Veda names cannabis among the five sacred plants given to humanity for healing and protection. The Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita, the two foundational texts of Ayurvedic medicine, document cannabis as a therapeutic agent for pain, appetite stimulation, and digestive conditions. The Indian medical tradition's relationship with this plant predates every Western medical institution by more than three thousand years.
De Materia Medica · Dioscorides
Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician serving in the Roman army, documented the medical efficacy of cannabis in his seminal five-volume work De Materia Medica. This was not a collection of folk remedies. It served as the supreme authority and foundational bedrock of Western pharmacology for more than 1,500 years. His text was copied, translated, and used as the standard pharmaceutical reference across the Byzantine, Islamic, and European medical traditions. When a politician says cannabis has no documented medical history, they are arguing against the Roman army's chief pharmacologist.
O'Shaughnessy and the Western Reintroduction
Irish physician Sir William Brooke O'Shaughnessy published rigorous clinical trials on cannabis following his tenure in Calcutta. He formally introduced its anticonvulsant, antiemetic, and analgesic properties to the Western medical establishment, demonstrating its efficacy in treating tetanus and the muscle spasms of cholera. His work is recognised as the foundational paper of Western cannabis medicine. It was published in the Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Bengal, a peer-reviewed scientific publication.
The Official Pharmacopoeias
Cannabis extracts and tinctures were officially listed as standard, legitimate medicines in both the British Pharmacopoeia and the United States Pharmacopeia from 1850. They remained listed for 82 years, until 1932, when international prohibition pressure forced their removal. During those 82 years, major pharmaceutical companies including Eli Lilly and Parke-Davis (now Pfizer) mass-produced cannabis tinctures sold in high-street pharmacies across Britain and America. These were not fringe remedies. They were mainstream medicines manufactured by the companies that still dominate global pharmaceutical markets today.
Queen Victoria, The Lancet, and Sir Russell Reynolds
Sir J. Russell Reynolds, personal physician to Queen Victoria, prescribed a cannabis tincture to the monarch to treat severe dysmenorrhoea. He subsequently published a review in The Lancet, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious medical journals, declaring cannabis to be "one of the most valuable medicines we possess." The Lancet review documented cannabis's efficacy across a range of conditions including neuralgia, migraine, dysmenorrhoea, and convulsive disorders. The paper is publicly accessible in The Lancet's archive. When the state tells a Mauritian woman that cannabis has no medical value for menstrual pain, it is arguing against the physician who treated the head of the British Empire.
The Political Erasure
Driven by American geopolitical pressure and the drug policy architecture constructed by Harry Anslinger, the UN Single Convention successfully removed cannabis from global pharmacopoeias and placed it in Schedule IV alongside heroin. Two thousand years of Western medical literature and five thousand years of global documentation were deliberately ignored to serve an international political agenda. The plant was reclassified not because the evidence changed, but because the politics did. It is the most consequential act of institutionalised historical amnesia in the history of medicine.
The New England Journal of Medicine
The highest echelons of peer-reviewed medicine validated the plant once more. The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of a rigorous Phase 3 randomised controlled trial demonstrating the efficacy of a cannabis-derived CBD formulation for severe paediatric epilepsy. The trial used the gold standard of pharmaceutical research: double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-site methodology. The results led directly to FDA approval of Epidiolex in June 2018. The plant the UN had declared to have no medical value in 1961 was approved as a paediatric medicine by the FDA fifty-seven years later, on the basis of evidence published in the most cited medical journal in the world.
Years of Documented Medical Use by Civilisation
From first written record to 2026 · Approximate minimum figures
Figures represent the minimum number of years each civilisation's documented medical literature has recorded cannabis as a therapeutic agent, calculated from the date of the earliest verified written record to 2026. These are conservative estimates; oral traditions and undocumented use predate all written records. Sources: British Museum (Ebers Papyrus); Library of Congress (De Materia Medica facsimile editions); Wellcome Collection (British Pharmacopoeia archive); PubMed (New England Journal of Medicine, 2017).
Major Medical Journals That Have Published Cannabis Efficacy Research
Peer-reviewed publications with documented cannabis therapeutic findings · Illustrative sample
This chart represents a sample of major peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals that have published peer-reviewed research documenting the therapeutic efficacy of cannabis or cannabinoid compounds. The list is illustrative, not exhaustive: PubMed lists more than 30,000 papers on cannabinoids published since 1990. Every journal named above is included in the UN Single Convention's signatory nations' own scientific infrastructure. The law that says cannabis has no medical value is enforced by governments whose own funded researchers publish cannabis medical evidence in these journals.
When a politician asserts that cannabis is a dangerous narcotic devoid of therapeutic use, they are demanding that you ignore the Roman army's chief pharmacologist, the editors of The Lancet, the British Pharmacopoeia, Queen Victoria's physician, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
cannabis prohibition historical amnesia 5000 years medicine 65 years prohibition political aberration pharmacopoeia verdict
The Meridian Science Desk · Chapter Two Conclusion · June 2026
The prohibition era is a brief, violent dark age situated within five millennia of continuous therapeutic application. The state did not discover a danger in the twentieth century. It chose to outlaw a medicine.
The Dangerous Drugs Act 2000 criminalises a plant that Dioscorides prescribed in 70 AD, that the British Pharmacopoeia listed for 82 years, that Queen Victoria's physician published on in The Lancet, and that the New England Journal of Medicine validated in a Phase 3 randomised controlled trial. Every one of these sources is publicly available. None of them have been cited in any Mauritian parliamentary debate on drug policy. The evidence exists. The decision to ignore it is not scientific. It is political. And political decisions can be changed.
Primary Sources · The Reader Can Verify Every Claim
The Pharmacopoeia: Verified Sources in the Public Record
Shennong Bencao Jing: Chinese materia medica attributed to Emperor Shennong, circa 2700 BCE. Documented in: Russo EB, "History of Cannabis and Its Preparations in Saga, Science, and Sobriquet." Chemistry and Biodiversity, 2007, 4(8), 1614-1648. doi:10.1002/cbdv.200790144.
Ebers Papyrus: Egyptian medical papyrus, circa 1550 BCE. German transliteration: Ebers G, "Papyros Ebers: Das hermetische Buch uber die Arzneimittel der alten Aegypter," 1875. Digitised at: archive.org. Reference to cannabis at column 81.
De Materia Medica: Dioscorides P, De Materia Medica, circa 70 AD. Five-volume pharmacological reference. Facsimile editions available at the Library of Congress and the Wellcome Collection, London. Cited as the foundational text of Western pharmacology for 1,500 years by Riddle JM, "Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine," University of Texas Press, 1985.
O'Shaughnessy: O'Shaughnessy WB, "On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah." Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Bengal, 1839. Reprinted in: Provincial Medical Journal, 1843. Available at: archive.org.
British Pharmacopoeia: Cannabis indica listed as a therapeutic preparation in the British Pharmacopoeia from 1850. Removed under international pressure in 1932. Archive copies held at the Wellcome Collection, London.
Russell Reynolds in The Lancet: Reynolds JR, "Therapeutical Uses and Toxic Effects of Cannabis Indica." The Lancet, 1890, 135(3473), 637-638. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(02)18723-X. Available in The Lancet's digital archive at thelancet.com.
New England Journal of Medicine: Devinsky O et al., "Trial of Cannabidiol for Drug-Resistant Seizures in the Dravet Syndrome." New England Journal of Medicine, 2017, 376, 2011-2020. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1611618. The Phase 3 trial that led to FDA approval of Epidiolex.
All sources above are publicly available. The Lancet archive, the New England Journal of Medicine, and PubMed are freely searchable. The O'Shaughnessy paper and the Ebers Papyrus translation are available at archive.org. The British Pharmacopoeia archive is held at the Wellcome Collection in London.
This is the tenth article in The Colonised Plant: The Cannabis Edition, June 2026, and the final article in Chapter Two: The Science. Chapter Three, The Criminalisation, opens with an examination of how the world moved from five thousand years of documented medical use to the first international prohibition in 1925. The complete edition is published at themeridian.info/june-2026.
The Meridian Science Desk
Chapter Two: The Science · The Colonised Plant · June 2026
The Meridian · 1 June 2026
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