Introduction

During my earlier life, the term cannabis (“marijuana” or  “weed”) had a stigma, specifically in the modern Western culture in the United States, where I grew up. When I used to hear the term in young adulthood, I would picture the 60’s and 70’s, imagining free-spirited, perhaps rebellious, folks who challenged the social norm. However in recent years, I’ve perceived this plant differently. I began seeing things from another perspective, learning through podcasts and documentaries about plant medicine and its health benefits. Additionally, as I matured, I began to see things more objectively, recognizing the influence from society that labels things as good or bad. My curiosity emerged: What’s the history & discovery of cannabis? Why does it get political attention? What led to its negative perception? Might the perception someday be changed? 

To be clear, I am not a cannabis user (and if I were, take note of any stories or narratives that just emerged based on that idea). I simply find plant medicine, herbs, psychedelics, and its effects on humans from an emotional, spiritual and physiological level fascinating.

Datasets & Tools

I knew I was going to use TimelineJS to build this visualization timeline. I had to get data that provided a clean history of the topic I chose. It was difficult to find one resource that provided the history and modern introduction to cannabis that I was looking specifically for. Therefore I had to use multiple sources to validate timelines, as well as combine the information from the different sources that filled in some of the holes that I was looking for in order to tell a story to the audience. I derived the timeline using a number of the references, listed at the end of this document.

The TimelineJS is an open-source tool that allows you to build an interactive timeline simply by utilizing a Google spreadsheet – essentially a “plug and go” for the user. The spreadsheet comes with all of the columns that may need to be filled. The instructions for using the spreadsheet must be followed exactly, or it may not work (I had to troubleshoot an issue a few times when the TimelineJS was not giving me my expected results).  

Methods & Process

As mentioned before, I had to use several sources of information to gather the data points in order to tell a story that flowed to the user who may not know of the history of the topic. I found an article that provided a lot of historical and modern context on the discovery of marijuana. I began branching out to other articles and found several ones that provided a timeline of marijuana use. I used many of those timelines along with other articles to tell the story of the earlier beginning uses (as we know it) of cannabis, all the way to how it’s used today in Western society, specifically United States. 

It was difficult to find images that were both visually interesting and helped tell the story based on the content. My goal was to choose images that promoted a visceral reaction while supplementing the text in a substantive way. Furthermore, I decided to use symbolism in my background color choices given the content. During the initial history data points in the timeline, cannabis was regarded with positive health ailments, used in life, perhaps sporadically when needed. In this regard, I felt like cannabis held a neutral point of view. Once the negative perception began to take hold, I wanted to call that out with background colors that were harsher, so that it was symbolic of the content. For example, I used dark red in the data point regarding the marijuana stigma, which can  symbolize aggression. Similarly, I used green when denoting a positive connotation for when cannabis was approved to be used for medical purposes. I wanted to call out the content that had negative perception and positive changes via the background colors to showcase turning points in history. 

Findings & Timeline

I was not expecting to find such a rich history, further clouded with political agenda in modern culture. Prior to the medicinal use of cannabis, several sources noted that ropes and other materials were used from the plant. Starting around 2800 BCE medicinal use of cannabis was documented in China in an emperor’s pharmacopeia. Other ancient cultures ranging from Indian Hindus, Assyrians, Greeks, and Roman, all mention the medicinal benefits of cannabis in their respective ancient texts. In the beginning of the Common Era (CE), a well-known Roman philosopher and Greek physician both noted cannabis in respected text: Naturalis Historia (encyclopedia), and De Materia Medica (pharmacopeia). There was a lot of history between the beginning CE and 1800s, however more notable to the introduction of cannabis to the Western culture was O’Shaughnessy (1839) and Moreau (1845). The physician, O’Shaughnessy, learned about cannabis’s medical uses in his travels to India. From his own experiments he wrote a book on benefits of cannabis for rheumatism, convulsions, and muscular spasms of tetanus and rabies. During a similar timeframe, psychiatrist Moreau published work about his learnings of cannabis. As stated by him: “…I saw in hashish, more specifically in its effects on mental abilities, a powerful and unique method to investigate the genesis of mental illness”. Both these medical professionals from Europe influenced the awareness and medical ailments of cannabis to Western society, ultimately reaching United States.  In 1850, the United States added cannabis and its healing uses to the pharmacopeia. However, the cultural perception of this plant took a turn in the early 1900s in America. Recreational use began during that time. With the Great Depression occurring in that period, resulting in high unemployment and unease, fear about the misuse of cannabis further reigned. Public concern rose to political concern, which ultimately changed the outlook of cannabis – 29 states outlawed use of cannabis. Shortly after, the Marijuana Tax Act Law passed in 1937, increasing the barriers of cannabis use, even for medicinal purposes. In 1941, the Supreme Court deemed cannabis federally illegal, and gave right to each state on the use of cannabis. The plant was removed from the US pharmacopeia at that time, as well.  Aside from all of this stigma, there were still objective medical uses for cannabis. In 1996, California passed the Compassionate Care Act, or Proposition 215, allowing medical use of the plant. Other states soon followed, allowing marijuana for medical use. Many years later, states began legalizing marijuana for recreational use. By 2019, 11 states legalized marijuana recreationally. 

Reflection

Upon reflection, I feel like the history and story of cannabis into the Western culture was clear via the TimelineJS tool. I find that the information flowed well starting from ancient history’s use of cannabis, into understanding how it was introduced to the Western culture, and finally to the stigma that started in the United States along with its other turning points. I found the political aspect, that stemmed the negative perception of cannabis, very interesting, since I actually had no idea what stemmed the initial stigma. The research helped answer a lot of my initial questions regarding this topic. However, there is so much information, given the rich history, that it required a lot of sifting through the timelines and content, in order to make the storytelling succinct and understandable to anyone who doesn’t know the topic. Ultimately, because this tool is straightforward, it helped make decisions easy on what data to keep or remove. I think that if the tool were more complex (i.e. allowing for more interaction and flexibility), I imagine that it could change my decisions of what information I chose to share and display. All in all, I found this tool very neat, producing a professional looking timeline with no programming experience. 

References