Historical background.

The use of the drug type of marijuana began more than 4.000 tears ago in China. It has been attributed to the Chinese emperor and pharmacist, Shen Nung, whose work on pharmacy advocated the use of the plant as a sedative and all-purpose medication. The first indication that cannabis was being used by large number of people for its mind-altering effects rather than strictly as a medication is found in the Indian subcontinent. About 2000 B.C., cannabis was considered a holy plant to be used in religious rites. Priest cultivated the plant in temple gardens, harvesting the leaves, stems, and flowering tops for brewing into a highly potent liquid called bhang. Originally this liquor was supposed to be used only for religious purpose but it did not take long for others to realise that the plant could be found growing wild in many places, and that bhang could be brewed at home.

Moreover, it was discovered that the psychoactive effects of cannabis could be achieved more easily by smoking a chopped -up mixture of the plant tops as by drinking bhang. As a result, an orderly system for growing, preparing, and distributing cannabis extracts, was soon worked out. Thus, from occasional medicine or religious elixir, cannabis became readily available and widely used as an inexpensive, mind altering. From India cannabis spread to the Middle East. Once again, religion played a prominent role in its introduction to the populace. Since the Muslim faith specifically and strictly forbids the use of alcohol, there was an immediate and lively interest in a substitute that could produce a similar euphoric effect without burdening the user with mortal sin. The Arab invasion of the ninth through the twelfth centuries introduced cannabis into North Africa, from Egypt to the east to Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco in the west. First extolled by the intellectuals and poets of the time, the drug quickly found acceptance among the people. Cannabis came into Western medicine via Sir William O'Shaughnessy Brook, a physician serving in the Bengal Medical Service of Britain's East India Company. In 1839, after observing the use of the drug in India, he wrote a long article in a Calcutta medical Journal reporting his successful use of cannabis in treatment of rabies, rheumatism, epilepsy, and tetanus. He found it to be an effective analgesic, anticonvulsant, sedative, and muscle relaxant At the same time it was for the purpose of scientific experiment rather than a desire to blot out the reality that Jacques Joseph Moreau contributed to introduce cannabis to the Western man. Moreau, which is regarded by many as the father of clinical psychopharmacology, deliberated ingested hashish in 1840 in order to experience and describe the effects of cannabis intoxication. Moreau experienced euphoria, hallucination and incoherence, accompanied by an extremely rapid flow of ideas