by Jane Goodall
It was not until the nineteenth century that addictive substances such as heroin, cocaine, and mescaline were extracted from these plants, and for a while they were completely unregulated. They were perceived as medicinal, were prescribed by physicians, and could be bought anywhere. During the American Civil War, for example, morphine was freely administered to wounded soldiers, who were provided with a supply and syringes. And then, increasingly, such substances were used for “recreational” purposes, and the ugly scenario of drug addiction arrived. But it grew slowly and quietly: not until the early 1900s, when there were thousands of addicts worldwide, did countries gradually realize what had happened and introduce laws to try to deal with the problem.
The “War on Drugs,” which began with President Nixon in 1971, continues to be fought relentlessly as the US government persecutes and fights illegal drug use and sales within its borders. And of course the United States also offers military aid to collaborating countries, trying to reduce illegal drug trafficking into the United States. In Mexico today, armed conflict between rival drug cartels—as well as between the cartels and the Mexican government—has escalated. The illegal cannabis and cocaine markets in the United States are now completely dominated by drug cartels in Mexico.
I have never in my life experimented with any drugs. The thought of becoming addicted—to drugs or anything else—has always horrified me. But as an adolescent I read a good deal of poetry, and I was intrigued by those Romantic poets, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who became hopelessly addicted to opium. I used to fantasize about the dimly lit opium dens where intellectual young men lay around smoking pipes and translating their extraordinary experiences into writing. I wondered whether my imagination, stimulated by opium, would produce wonderful and original poetry. It was purely academic curiosity—there was no way I could have got ahold of opium even had I wanted to. Nor were these young men smoking opium, of course—they were taking laudanum (an herbal tincture that contained about 10 percent opium), as I later discovered.
Marijuana, of course, is much easier to obtain, but I was never tempted to even try a “joint.” Nor, to my knowledge, have I eaten a laced cookie. But hundreds of people I know have used “weed” at one time in their lives. And I know of so many families that have been torn apart by drug addiction.
Marijuana, Weed, Pot—Cannabis sativa
Cannabis originated in Central and South Asia, possibly first in the mountainous region northwest of the Himalayas. It has a very ancient history of ritual and recreational use. Archaeologists even found charred cannabis seeds in a third-millennium burial site belonging to the Kurgan people of Romania. For thousands of years it has been used in religious ceremonies in India and Nepal. And in 450 BC, Herodotus, that renowned Greek historian, described how it was inhaled as a vapor in religious rituals and also for personal pleasure: “They have also discovered a kind of plant whose fruit they use when they meet in groups… they get intoxicated from the smoke, and then they throw more fruit onto the fire and get even more intoxicated, until they eventually stand up and dance, and burst into song.”
A leather basket of leaf fragments and seeds was recently uncovered beside a shaman who was buried in China 2,700 years ago. And it is certain that it was widely used by traditional healers in India and other Eastern countries during British colonial times, especially for nausea and vomiting, the control of muscle spasms, and as a sedative and relaxant. An Irish physician who was working in India took note of this and other medical usages, and took some samples back to the United Kingdom. As a result of this “discovery,” cannabis became widely prescribed by physicians and sold in pharmacies throughout the English-speaking world, including America, during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Cannabis arrived in France by a different route. French scientists and scholars who accompanied the French army during the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt in 1809 took note of its psychoactive effects. They collected, in 1878, samples to send back to France, where many studies were made of the effect on users of smoking the drug, particularly on a group of writers and poets who maintained that it was “a route to aestheticism and self-realization.” That was one hundred years before similar observations were documented in America.
Although the use of cannabis as a recreational drug spread far and wide, its use by physicians dropped. Newer drugs that had longer shelf lives and more consistent quality gradually began to displace cannabis. In the early twentieth century, as countries started cracking down on the use of recreational drugs in general, the growing, possession, and use of cannabis was criminalized in many parts of the world. And this included its use for medicinal purposes.
Today there is a great deal of controversy over cannabis. As soon as one study concludes that there are few harmful effects, another study is published that contradicts it. Some argue that cannabis does not cause addiction and does not lead to the use of “hard” drugs, while others maintain that in certain situations this is not true.
However, whatever one concludes about the use of cannabis as a recreational drug (and I have to say I personally am not in favor), there is some evidence that it is helpful in alleviating symptoms in a number of different medical conditions. Thus medical trials indicate that it reduces neuropathic as well as cancer pain, improves appetite and caloric intake, and may relieve spasticity and pain in multiple sclerosis.
The controversy about the use of cannabis, for both medical and recreational purposes, is ongoing, but in the United States and the United Kingdom there is mounting pressure on governments to legalize its use. Already several US states have legalized its medical use, and Colorado and Washington both legalized recreational marijuana in their November 2012 elections. Nonetheless, in most of the United States and throughout the United Kingdom, possession of marijuana is still a criminal act that can lead to serious legal consequences.
Meanwhile, cannabis has become a highly lucrative black-market cash crop. As a result of the frequent raids on marijuana crops in the United States, growers began to cultivate the plant indoors, where there was less likelihood of detection by the authorities. The renowned botanist Michael Pollan, who wrote the foreword to this book, vividly spells out the consequences of indoor cultivation in his book The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World. Suddenly marijuana growing was put into the hands of botanist types who were willing to monitor the plants obsessively while using advanced technology and state-of-the-art grow rooms to ensure the most optimal growing conditions and highest potency levels. And so, he concludes, “It stands out as one of the richer ironies of the drug war that the creation of a powerful new taboo against marijuana led directly to the creation of a powerful new plant.”
In the United Kingdom there was a recent exposé of the methods of illegal marijuana growers. They rent apartments in the less respectable areas of town, revamp the interiors so that, in essence, they become indoor greenhouses, and then, before they can be discovered, they move on, leaving no address and no way for the landlord to recover the cost of expensive reconstruction.
Before we leave the subject of cannabis, I want to emphasize the difference between hemp and recreational marijuana. The subspecies grown for industrial hemp contains between 0.3 and 1 percent of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the psychoactive ingredient that makes marijuana appealing to users—whereas the species grown for recreational marijuana has as much as 2 to 60 percent THC. Moreover, the marijuana plant has low fiber content, whereas hemp is very rich in fiber content.
At one time hemp was grown widely in America and in other parts of the world, and for many different purposes. However, because of its association with cannabis, it became illegal to grow it in the United States—although recently certain states and individuals are working to change the law. This is because the often-maligned and even demonized hemp is, in fact, one of the most helpful of plants to humans, and can be used for many different products, such as rope, clothing, bricks, and oil extracts. It’s also
one of the best of the “mop crops”—a kind of plant that actually absorbs toxins from the environment and can be used to clean up polluted areas.
The Opium Poppy—Papaver somniferum
Beautiful and dangerous, but with many healing gifts for us, the opium poppy originated in India. It is harvested when the seedpod has reached full size but is still green. When the pod is scraped, a white latex oozes out. This is removed and dried, and it is this final goo-like product that is known as opium. A friend of mine told me that he heard the seedpod described as a container for the “dreams of the damned.” Opium has up to 12 percent morphine, and it is from the morphine that heroin—with twice the potency of opium—has been produced. Codeine is another derivative of morphine.
The opium poppy has been cultivated—for medicinal, ritual, and food purposes—from Neolithic times. Opium poppy seeds dating from about 5500 BC have been found at archaeological sites in western and central Europe. The use of opium in ancient Egypt is mentioned in the Ebers and Smith Papyri of 1550 BC. The Egyptians used it, in very small doses, as a sedative for infants, especially during teething. They even made it into a wine for adult pleasure. According to the Venetian physician Prosper Alpinus, who traveled to Egypt in 1591, it was called “cretic wine” and was flavored with pepper and hot aromatics.
Opium was also used for medical purposes in Europe until the years of the Inquisition, in the twelfth century, when everything that came from “the Orient” was suspect, and the use of opium was discontinued for two hundred years. As it was the only anesthetic known at the time, this must have resulted in much suffering. When it was finally reintroduced into Europe, in 1527, for medicinal purposes, it was widely and enthusiastically prescribed for all manner of conditions, including sleeplessness, diarrhea, and pain relief, especially during surgery.
By the 1700s physicians in England began prescribing laudanum—an alcoholic herbal preparation containing varying amounts of opium (often cheaply imported from the East)—for almost every condition under the sun. It was mixed with just about everything, including coral, ground-up bits of Egyptian mummies, cloves, saffron, honey, licorice, and benzoic acid. Because it was prescribed so frequently, and for such a plethora of ailments, many people became addicted.
Among the many Romantic writers and musicians who became addicted to opium were Lord Byron, Shelley, Keats, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Brahms—the list is very long. And at least some of them acquired the habit after taking laudanum medicinally. Thomas De Quincey’s famous autobiographical book, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, was widely read. In it he explains how the drug, which had been prescribed for excruciating intestinal pains, became addictive and gradually destroyed him. I found it very harrowing to read.
In fact, the use of processed opium as a drug, in one form or another, predates written history. It was introduced to China, most likely by an Arab trader, probably in AD 400, but not used as a recreational drug until the fifteenth century. At first almost no one could afford it, but the British East India Company became active in the 1600s and eventually began to import opium from India. Soon it was being smoked in pipes, mixed with tobacco—the term pipe dream was first coined to refer to the fantasies that arose from smoking these pipes. Gradually more and more people became addicted, and during the late 1700s, the emperor of China tried to prohibit its import and use.
An opium den in Manila’s Chinatown somewhere between 1900 and 1920. The clothing and hairstyles of the smokers identify them as ethnic Chinese. Under their “bed” is a cache of equipment, including four opium pipes and two opium lamps. The horrors of opium addiction were not fully understood until the early twentieth century—and by then there were thousands of hopelessly addicted, lost souls throughout many parts of the world. (CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE STEVEN MARTIN COLLECTION/ASIAN AMERICAN COMPARATIVE COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO)
The British, however, were not prepared to give up such a profitable business, and found ways to smuggle the drug into the country. Eventually the emperor ordered all opium in the country destroyed. The British continued to bring in the drug, and relations between China and Britain became increasingly hostile. This led to the First Opium War, in 1839–42.
The conflict ended with the Chinese signing a treaty that was not at all to their benefit, and they found ways to ignore its terms. Eventually this led to the Second Opium War, 1856–60. The treaty that ended this second conflict plunged the Chinese into what has been described as “a century of humiliation.” By the 1880s, 6,500 metric tons of opium per year were being imported into China and countless hundreds of her citizens were addicted.
It never occurred to me, when I was learning about those wars at school, how utterly shocking and horrifying it all was. The British government was not only condoning the pushing and smuggling of drugs, it was actively engaged in the trade—a sort of monstrous nineteenth-century drug cartel operating proudly under the British flag. But, of course, the horrors of addiction were not realized—not until the early twentieth century was the true effect of addiction understood and laws put in place, in many countries, to regulate its use.
Now, as we all know, the main area of conflict is Afghanistan, but it’s a very different kind of conflict from those opium wars. The cultivation of opium poppies in the region provides income for hundreds of farmers. In 2000, the growing of opium poppies was banned by the Taliban, which led to a dramatic decline in opium production. But after their withdrawal, cultivation gradually increased, despite the efforts of America and the United Kingdom to encourage the growing of alternative crops.
It is grown in other countries too—legally and illegally. A friend of mine, Michael Watts, told me that recently he was with a group of people walking in the foothills of Mount Sinai on the Sinai Peninsula. They passed a field of beautiful flowers and some members of the group started walking in that direction, wanting to photograph them. Their guide became extremely agitated. “He caught my eye,” said Michael. “He wanted to stop everyone but didn’t know what to say. So I said, ‘Tell them!’ ” The guide then pointed out the men with guns guarding the field. It was a crop of opium poppies!
Coca—Erythroxylum coca
Coca is a small evergreen bush native to western South America. It was domesticated in pre-Columbian times and has been cultivated for its leaves for a thousand years. The leaves are picked for the first time when the plant is three years old, and from then on it is harvested, mostly by women, three times a year.
From pre-Inca times until the present, coca has played an important part in the religious ceremonies of the Andean tribes. The Incas believed that coca was of divine origin. Even after the decline of the Incas, it was still so highly revered that before planting their fields, farmers would invite a shaman to hold a ceremony, which involved chewing coca leaves and sometimes playing music.
A friend of mine, Christin Jones, was participating in an archaeology dig at a site called Tiwanaku in Bolivia. She told me, “Before we could break ground, a shaman had to come to perform a ceremony. He used coca leaves to predict the success of our dig.” Christin said she “sat around chewing coca leaves” along with the rest of the local community while the Aymara women spun yarn to wrap around a llama fetus, which was then burned as a sacrifice to Pachamama, Mother Earth.
Many people in Peru carry coca leaves with them, keeping them in little bags, often exquisitely woven. The leaves should be dried for at least three days before using. Leaves are chewed, sometimes with a little bicarbonate of soda to increase their stimulating effect. Or they may be made into an infusion of coca-leaf tea.
Initially the Spanish invaders forbade the use of coca, but then, realizing it would enable them to get more work out of their slaves, it was routinely issued to them. Coca can also be used as an anesthetic and for relieving the pain of headaches, wounds, and other ailments. Sharing leaves symbolizes solidarity among friends and partners—the Andean people sit around drinking coca tea just as we sit down for afternoon tea in Englan
d. Well, some of us still do.
In the mid-nineteenth century, soon after cocaine had been isolated from coca leaves in 1859, a variety of “coca wines” were produced in the United States and Europe and became very popular. They were sold as tonics and were appreciated by, among others, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Victoria, Thomas Edison, and Pope Leo XIII. The original Coca-Cola was among the early tonics. About this time the Dutch successfully developed coca plantations in Java, and the Japanese in Formosa (Taiwan), but efforts by other European countries to grow this plant in their colonies were not very successful.
With the isolation of cocaine from coca leaves, the story of the coca plant, once held sacred by the people of the land from which it originated, turned rather grim. The ensuing problems with drug addiction and drug smuggling caused coca to be viciously attacked (along with opium poppies and cannabis) in the War on Drugs. From 2000 on, fields of coca plants were sprayed repeatedly with toxic herbicides from planes. By 2004 the large-scale coca-growing fields had been more or less destroyed (except for those in northern Peru that produce coca leaves for the Coca-Cola company), but the overall cultivation of coca had not decreased. Instead farmers simply moved to harder-to-find places and planted again. They had few cash-crop alternatives, and they became increasingly desperate as their own food crops were eliminated along with the coca by the deadly rain of toxic chemicals. Which, of course, has had deadly consequences for the environment as a whole.
Meanwhile the violence between the government and FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the “People’s Army”) increased, as did the power of the drug traffickers and cartels. In 2008 the United Nations monitoring body, which is clearly influenced by United States policies, asked the governments of Bolivia and Peru to abolish all use of coca (including chewing leaves), and to make it a criminal offense to be in possession of coca leaves. This directive was not well received. In fact, one legislator in Peru stood up and defiantly chewed a handful of leaves during a session of Congress—dozens of politicians followed suit. I would love to have been a fly on the wall!