For more than a century, cannabis was not merely misunderstood; it was vilified. A plant once revered in medicine, industry, and ritual was turned into a symbol of vice and criminality. The world’s relationship with cannabis became one of contradiction, a natural compound capable of healing pain and anxiety, yet branded a gateway to moral collapse. What began as colonial propaganda hardened into international law, and what followed was a global war on both plants and people.
The story of cannabis is the story of power: who defines truth, who controls knowledge, and who profits from ignorance. Its criminalization was never grounded in science. It was a political decision dressed as morality, a war declared not against a substance but against communities who used it.
The Colonial Roots of Prohibition
The origins of cannabis stigma trace back to empire. When British and French colonial authorities encountered local hemp and cannabis use in Africa, India, and the Caribbean, they viewed it through the prism of control. Indigenous plants became instruments of social regulation. Colonial medical officers described cannabis users as “degenerate” and “idle,” using pseudo-scientific reports to justify suppression. The British Indian Hemp Commission of 1894, one of the earliest systematic studies of the plant concluded that moderate use caused little to no harm. But that evidence was ignored. The narrative had already been decided.
By the early 20th century, this moral panic had crossed the Atlantic. In the United States, industrial and racial politics fused to create the cannabis demon. The campaign of Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics, branded cannabis as “Marihuana — the assassin of youth.” Newspaper magnates like William Randolph Hearst weaponized hysteria, publishing sensational headlines linking cannabis to violence and insanity. Science became the first casualty of fear.
The Architecture of Global Suppression
The global prohibition of cannabis was institutionalized through the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which lumped cannabis alongside heroin and cocaine — an absurd classification that still haunts public policy today. Decades of international law enforcement followed, led by the U.S. and mirrored across developing nations, particularly in Africa and Asia.
This system of control created more damage than the plant ever could. Millions were imprisoned, marginalized, and executed in the name of “drug control.” The plant itself was stripped from medicine, its therapeutic compounds forgotten. Decades later, researchers rediscovered what traditional medicine had known for centuries: that cannabis interacts with the body’s endocannabinoid system, a complex network of receptors responsible for mood, pain, appetite, and immunity — what Hanuš and Hod described as “the universal regulators of life.”
Read also: Part 1: Decoding the Plant — The Science of Cannabis
The Scientific Resurrection
Science fought its way back into the conversation through persistence, data, and the courage of patients. In the 1990s, the discovery of cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2 revolutionized pharmacology. Researchers began to uncover how tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) could modulate pain, anxiety, and inflammation at a cellular level.
By the 2010s, controlled clinical trials demonstrated cannabis’s potential in managing epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, PTSD, and chronic pain. Crippa and colleagues found measurable neural effects of CBD on anxiety disorders, confirming what anecdotal medicine had long claimed. Simultaneously, Russo’s work on the “entourage effect” revealed that cannabinoids and terpenes — the aromatic molecules that give strains their distinctive scent — work synergistically, explaining why whole-plant formulations often outperform synthetic isolates.
This convergence of evidence forced a global reckoning. Cannabis, once condemned as a narcotic, was reemerging as a therapeutic ecosystem. In 2019, the World Health Organization formally recommended the rescheduling of cannabis, acknowledging its medical use. The following year, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted to remove cannabis from the most restrictive global control schedule — a quiet but historic admission that decades of prohibition had been scientifically indefensible.
The Economic and Policy Renaissance
As policy began to follow science, an industry was born. From Colorado to Cape Town, legal cannabis became a laboratory for innovation, and taxation. By 2021, over 50 countries had legalized medical cannabis, and nearly two dozen U.S. states had legalized recreational use. Yet the shift was more than economic; it was cultural.
Cannabis entered mainstream healthcare and academia. Leading research centers, from the National Academies of Sciences to major universities, began publishing evidence-based reviews of its therapeutic potential. Meanwhile, agricultural scientists like Chandra and ElSohly explored the genetics of Cannabis sativa, unlocking pathways for bioengineering specific cannabinoid profiles. For the first time, cannabis was treated as both medicine and molecule, an object of study rather than fear.
But the renaissance is uneven. The same countries, once coerced into prohibition are now excluded from its profits. African nations with rich cannabis heritage — Nigeria, Malawi, Lesotho — remain entangled in outdated laws drafted under colonial influence. The irony is profound: nations that supplied the world with the plant are now criminalized for growing it.
The Ethics of Rediscovery
The global awakening is not only scientific — it is moral. The cannabis debate has evolved into a confrontation between historical injustice and medical truth. Legalization is no longer merely a matter of public policy; it is a question of reparative justice.
Zlas and his colleagues have shown that the endocannabinoid system exists in all vertebrates, underscoring cannabis’s role in biological evolution. Yet human societies have spent a century fighting against their own physiology. The stigmatization of cannabis reveals less about the plant and more about our collective denial of science when it threatens ideology.
The UNODC’s 2021 World Drug Report estimates that over 200 million people worldwide use cannabis annually. Most do so responsibly, many for therapeutic reasons. The data shows what policy has refused to admit: the world’s most criminalized plant is also its most commonly used medicine.
The Road Ahead
Today, cannabis stands at the crossroads of medicine, economics, and ethics. Hall and Stjepanović’s work in The Lancet Psychiatry warns that legalization without regulation can reproduce harm — just as prohibition did. The challenge for governments is not whether to legalize, but how to integrate evidence-based policy into public health, ensuring quality, education, and access.
The real awakening is not in the plant itself but in our perception of it. Cannabis never changed; what changed was our understanding of biology and truth. The stigma that once fueled incarceration is now eroding under the weight of empirical evidence. From laboratories to legislatures, the same phrase echoes across disciplines: science wins.
In the end, the cannabis story is not about rebellion but restoration. It is humanity returning to what it once knew — that nature, when studied with humility and respect, offers not sin, but salvation.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
👉 https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
Bibliographies
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Chandra, S., Lata, H., & ElSohly, M. A. (Eds.). (2020). Cannabis sativa L. – Botany and biotechnology. Springer.
Crippa, J. A. S., Zuardi, A. W., Freitas-Ferraz, A. L., & Hallak, J. E. C. (2018). Neural basis of the anxiolytic effects of cannabidiol (CBD) in generalized social anxiety disorder: A preliminary report. Neuropsychopharmacology, 43(1), 121–132.
Hall, W., & Stjepanović, D. (2021). Public health implications of legalising the recreational use of cannabis. The Lancet Psychiatry, 8(10), 846–853.
Hanuš, L. O., & Hod, Y. (2020). Cannabinoids: The universal regulators of life. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, 104, 109959.
Russo, E. B. (2019). The case for the entourage effect and conventional breeding of clinical cannabis: No “strain,” no gain. Frontiers in Plant Science, 9, 1969.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). (2021). World Drug Report 2021. United Nations Publications.
World Health Organization (WHO). (2019). Critical review of cannabis and cannabis-related substances: Expert Committee on Drug Dependence 41st report. World Health Organization.
Zlas, J., Ben-Shabat, S., Mechoulam, R., & Sarne, Y. (2021). Endocannabinoid signaling in human health and disease. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 22(8), 518–532.
