I’ve been thinking about cannabis history for a while, and it started while I was pulling together the episode on mutual aid, making edibles for someone who can’t, and the one about DIY as an act of rebellion. I kept landing on the same question. Why does making food for your community, growing your own medicine, using a plant that people have been using for 10,000 years to take care of each other, feel radical right now?
Ten thousand years. Say that out loud a few times. It stops sounding like a stat and starts sounding like what it is, which is nearly the entire span of human agriculture.
So today I want to put cannabis in context. Not the “cannabis is having a moment” context you get from every industry newsletter. The real context. The one that stretches back to the beginning of farming, runs through ancient medicine cabinets, gets colonized out of entire communities, resurfaces in Alice B. Toklas’s kitchen, and lands in a pair of waterproof hemp shoes that I happen to own four of.
I am not a historian. I’m someone who has spent years thinking about why this plant matters so much to so many people across so much time. And after 359 episodes, I figured it was about time I gave that story its own episode.
Listen to this episode:
Where Cannabis History Actually Starts
The oldest evidence we have of humans cultivating cannabis comes from China, around 8,000 BCE. That’s not a typo. That’s eight thousand years before the Common Era. And they weren’t only getting high, or maybe weren’t getting high at all. They were growing hemp for fiber, making rope, weaving cloth. The seeds went into food. This plant was, by any measure, a survival crop.
By 2700 BCE, the Chinese pharmacopoeia known as the Shennong Bencao Jing references cannabis as a medicine for pain, inflammation, and what roughly translates as absent mindedness, which is honestly maybe the earliest documented case of someone thinking about dose and effect together. Microdosing before anyone called it that.
From there, cannabis moved west. It shows up in ancient India, woven into Vedic tradition as a sacred plant. In Egypt, there’s cannabis pollen documented on the mummy of Ramses II, and medical papyri describing its use for inflammation and pain. The Greeks and Romans knew about it. Herodotus documented the Scythians, a nomadic people who ranged across Central Asia, using cannabis in ritual steam baths and crying out with joy. Which, honestly, tracks.
This plant traveled with people. It fed them, clothed them, healed them, and helped them connect to something bigger than the everyday. That’s not a modern story dressed up to sound ancient. That’s the oldest story we have.
Hemp Was Infrastructure
Before plastics, before synthetics, before industrialized agriculture, hemp was everywhere. Ropes on ships. Canvas sails, and yes, the word canvas likely comes from the Latin cannabis. The sails that carried explorers across oceans were hemp. So were the ropes that rigged the ships and the paper the maps were drawn on.
In colonial North America, hemp cultivation was at various points legally required. Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all had laws obligating farmers to grow it, and it functioned as currency in some colonies. This wasn’t a fringe crop. It was foundational.
And it’s coming back. Hempcrete, a building material made from the woody core of the hemp stalk mixed with lime, is lightweight, carbon negative, naturally insulating, and gets harder over time. Builders in Europe have used it for decades, and it’s picking up steam in North America now. We’re also seeing hemp in insulation, bioplastic, and car panels. BMW and Mercedes have both used hemp fiber composites. And yes, shoes. I wear hemp shoes from 8000Kicks, an affiliate partner of mine, because I had their CEO on the show once to talk about building waterproof hemp footwear, and I’ve been wearing them ever since. Hemp is infrastructure, and it always was.
The Part Of Cannabis History That Gets Left Out
When cannabis history comes up in mainstream conversation, the clock usually starts around the 1960s. Counterculture, Woodstock, Reefer Madness as a punchline. That framing does a lot of work to erase a much longer, much more complicated story.
Cannabis and hemp prohibition in the 20th century wasn’t just about the plant. It was about who was using it. In the United States, criminalization was explicitly and deliberately tied to racist enforcement. Harry Anslinger, who ran the Federal Bureau of Narcotics through the 1930s, built the case against marijuana on newspaper campaigns linking the plant to Mexican immigrants and Black jazz musicians. His public statements from that era are well documented and genuinely ugly, and I’m not going to repeat them here. You’ve probably heard them if you’ve spent any time in this community.
The communities most targeted by criminalization were the same communities that had the longest relationship with this plant as medicine, as food, as ritual, and as connection. That’s not a coincidence. Hemp prohibition also wiped out an agricultural sector that had sustained farming communities for generations, and there were financial interests on the other side of that outcome. DuPont had a stake in synthetic fiber. William Randolph Hearst owned timber interests used for newsprint. The story of cannabis prohibition is, in large part, a story about capital and racism working together to eliminate a plant that threatened certain profit structures.
I can’t wrap that up neatly, because it doesn’t wrap up neatly. But I think it matters that when we call cannabis radical or rebellious, we understand what it was rebelling against and who bore the cost of that fight.
Your kitchen is a site of knowledge, of care, and of resistance, if you want it to be. And it always has been.
Margaret, Cannabis History
Alice B. Toklas and the Kitchen as Resistance
Which brings me to Alice B. Toklas. I did a short episode on her cookbook last week, so go back and listen if you haven’t. Her 1954 cookbook included a recipe for what she called Hashish Fudge, submitted by her friend Brion Gysin. It made it into the American edition seemingly by accident, and it became one of the most famous recipes in cannabis history. It also got the book banned in some places, which feels like an achievement honestly, though not a surprising one. When British publishers discovered the recipe after the American edition printed it without much fanfare, they pulled it. Someone somewhere clutched their pearls about the children.
But here’s what I find meaningful about Alice B. Toklas beyond the fudge. She was a woman. She was Jewish. She was queer. She was cooking in Paris at a time when none of those identities made life easy. Her kitchen was a gathering place for writers and artists and thinkers, and her cookbook is, at its core, a record of a life built on her own terms through food, hospitality, and community. That feels very familiar to me.
Robin Swan, who I had on the show recently, understands this in a deep way. She works with plants as medicine and carries a real awareness of how much traditional knowledge has been suppressed, who held it, and what it cost when it was taken away. Herbalism, which Robin represents, is largely a women’s history. Women as healers, women as keepers of plant knowledge, women burned as witches for knowing what plants could do. That’s well documented history. The kitchen was often where that knowledge survived, because it looked like cooking.
Cannabis has always lived in that space, in the hands of people who weren’t supposed to have it, weren’t supposed to know it, and weren’t supposed to pass it on. They passed it on anyway.
So Where Does That Leave Us
Cannabis is legal in Canada, where I am. It’s legal recreationally in a growing number of US states, and medicinally in even more states and countries. There’s more research happening now than at any point in the last century. Hemp is back as a crop, a material, and a protein source.
And yet the people building wealth in the legal industry are largely not the communities that bore the cost of prohibition. Expungement of cannabis convictions is slow and incomplete. Access to legal cannabis is still shaped by economic barriers and geography. Hempcrete is real, but it’s not in every building code yet. Hemp fabric is real, but fast fashion still dominates. The system that replaced this plant with petroleum and synthetic fiber didn’t disappear just because hemp is technically legal again.
I’m not saying any of this to be discouraging. I’m saying it because the people doing the work of home growing, home cooking, and community care are continuing a 10,000 year lineage of people who looked at this plant and said, this helps, let’s share it.
Your kitchen is the best dispensary you’ll ever have. By extension, your garden is too, if you have the privilege to grow one, indoors or out. I mean that practically, in terms of cost and knowing exactly what’s in your edibles. But I also mean it as something bigger. Your kitchen is a site of knowledge, of care, and of resistance, if you want it to be. It always has been.
If you’re making edibles, growing your own cannabis, sharing your medicine, or giving away seeds somewhere it isn’t legal to do so, I’m thinking of you.
If you want to keep pulling on any of these threads, I’d start with the mutual aid episode, the Alice B. Toklas episode, and Robin Swan’s episode, which is a must listen. Links to all three are below.
And if you’re building your own batches at home, don’t skip the math. The free Bite Me Dosage Calculator takes the guesswork out before you start, and the Bite Me Dose Diary gives you somewhere to track what you make so you’re not starting from scratch every single batch. Some information is always better than no information. I learned that the hard way from a few too many mystery edibles handed to me with zero context.
Episodes Mentioned:
- Alice B. Toklas Cookbook: The Cannabis Recipe a Major Publisher Almost Missed
- What Granny Knew About Cannabis That the Industry Still Hasn’t Figured Out With Robin Swan
- Making Edibles For Someone Who Can’t: Mutual Aid In The Kitchen
- 8000Kicks Is Breaking New Ground: Inside The Making Of Waterproof Hemp Shoes with Bernardo
That’s it for cannabis history friends. Please reach to me, I love hearing from listeners! Direct messages to stayhigh@bitemepodcast.com, or leave a voice message on the podcast hotline.
Support the show by subscribing, sharing, leaving a review or buying me a cookie! Whatever way you choose, I’m grateful that you’re listening.
Stay high,
Margaret
FAQ On Cannabis History
How far back does cannabis history actually go? The oldest evidence of cultivation comes from China around 8,000 BCE, with documented medicinal use by 2700 BCE. Its spread through India, Egypt, and the Mediterranean world happened over thousands of years after that.
Was hemp really used to build ships and colonial economies? Yes. Hemp rope and canvas sail were standard maritime materials for centuries, and colonial governments in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut legally required farmers to grow it. It was also used as currency in some colonies.
Why was cannabis criminalized in the United States? Criminalization in the 1930s was tied to racist enforcement led by Harry Anslinger, and it intersected with financial interests in synthetic fiber and timber that stood to benefit from hemp’s elimination as a crop.
What is Hashish Fudge and why is it significant? It’s a recipe from Alice B. Toklas’s 1954 cookbook, submitted by her friend Brion Gysin, that made it into the American edition and became one of the most famous cannabis recipes in history. It was later removed from British editions of the book.
Is hemp actually used in modern building and manufacturing? Yes. Hempcrete is a real, carbon negative building material already in use across Europe and gaining traction in North America, and hemp fiber composites have been used by automakers including BMW and Mercedes.
(0:00:00) Welcome to episode 359. And today we're talking about the weed that built civilizations. We're going to be looking through 10,000 years of cannabis history, but thankfully only in about 15 to 20 minutes. Don't you worry. I'm your host, Margaret.
(0:00:23) a certified Ganger and TCI certified cannabis educator. And I believe your kitchen is the best dispensary that you'll ever have. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles. Grab a snack or a drink and let's dive in. Now, before we get into today's episode, which I'm really looking forward to because...
(0:00:40) I always look forward to these episodes. I just want to mention that by the time I'm recording this, but by the time this comes out, the Bite Me Cannabis Club will have a new home and I want to invite you to come over and check it out.
(0:00:54) It has recently migrated to bitemepodcast.com forward slash club. It is on my website now and I'm really excited about it because I love this community that I've built with a whole bunch of really cool cannabis friendly people. And the other thing I love about it is that it really makes me feel like I have a home because I do love doing the podcast, but I can feel very lonely sometimes.
(0:01:21) And this is a way to interact and learn from other really amazing cannabis people. And of course, because it's not a social media platform, there's no censorship. There's no restrictions. There's no surveillance. I'm not collecting and selling your data.
(0:01:36) I don't even know how to do that, but bite me podcast.com forward slash club. And I hope to see you there. Friends. I want to talk about something that I've been, you know, thinking about a little bit for a while.
(0:01:55) And it started honestly during the episode that I did on making edibles for someone who can't, the one about mutual aid and DIY as an act of rebellion. Because while I was pulling that episode together, I kept coming to this same idea, which is why does that feel so radical right now? Making food for your community, growing your own medicine, using a plant that people have been using for 10,000 years to take care of each other. 10,000 years.
(0:02:22) So today I want to put cannabis in context. Not that cannabis is having a moment context that you get from every industry newsletter. The real context, the one that stretches back to the beginning of human agriculture, runs through ancient medicine cabinets, gets colonized out of whole communities, resurfaces in the kitchen of Alice B. Toklas, and lands in Robin Swan's herb garden and a pair of waterproof hemp shoes that I love, that I own four pairs of.
(0:02:50) This isn't going to be a lecture. I am not a historian, but I am someone who has spent years thinking about why this plant matters so much.
(0:02:58) to so many people across so much time and so many places. And I think that story deserves at least one episode. I mean, I've been doing, this is episode 359, so maybe it's about time I touched on this. And I will mention there was a period of time where I had a segment on the show. It was called Things You Can Make With Hemp. And if that didn't point to the incredible usefulness of this plant,
(0:03:24) which had nothing to do with consuming it as a medicine or for stress relief or any of the ways that we consume it today. And just...
(0:03:35) as a textile or as a building material or whatever, this plant is incredible. So let's go. The oldest evidence we have of humans cultivating cannabis comes from China. And around 8,000 BCE, and that's not a typo, that's 8,000 years before the Common Era,
(0:03:58) And they weren't getting high, or well, they weren't only getting high, they were growing hemp for fiber, making rope, weaving cloth, the seeds went into food, the plant was by any measure a survival crop.
(0:04:10) By 2700 BCE, there's a reference in a Chinese pharmacopoeia, the Shenong Benkeo Jing, which I am, apologies for that pronunciation, to cannabis as a medicine for pain, inflammation, and what roughly translates as absent-mindedness, which honestly is maybe the earliest documentation of microdosing.
(0:04:32) And I will point out here that Robin Swan does mention the references to ancient Chinese texts in the conversation we had together.
(0:04:45) Cannabis moved west. It showed up in ancient India, where it was woven into Vedic traditions as a sacred plant, described in texts that are thousands of years old, in the Middle East, in Egypt, where there's evidence of cannabis pollen on the mummy of Ramses II, and where medical papyri document its use for inflammation and pain.
(0:05:08) Ancient Egypt, friends. The Greeks and Romans knew about it. The Scythians, a nomadic people who ranged across Central Asia, are documented by Herodotus as using cannabis in ritual steam baths. And he described them as crying out with joy, which does kind of track. The point is this plant traveled with people. It fed them, it clothed them, it healed them, and it helped them connect to something beyond the everyday.
(0:05:36) That's not a modern story. That's the oldest story we have. It sounds like a modern story, almost. And so here's something that I think is interesting to think about for a second. Before plastics, before synthetics, before industrialized agriculture, hemp was everywhere.
(0:05:54) Ropes on ships, canvas sails, the word canvas likely comes from the Latin cannabis. The sails that carried explorers across the oceans were made of hemp. The ropes that rigged those ships, the uniforms, the maps were written on hemp paper. In North America, hemp cultivation was at various points required by colonial governments. Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, farmers were legally obligated to grow it. And it was used as a currency in some colonies.
(0:06:23) and now we're using it to build houses hemcrete is a real thing and it's having a moment it's a building material made from the inner woody core of the hemp stock mixed with lime it's lightweight carbon negative naturally insulating mold resistant and gets harder over time builders in europe have been using it for decades it's picking up in north america now and i find that really exciting not just as a cannabis advocate
(0:06:52) but someone who thinks a lot about sustainability. And there was a period of my life where I was super interested in one day being able to build a straw bale house. And the hempcrete actually seems like a very similar process to that with a lot of the same incredible principles and benefits of using these alternative building materials.
(0:07:20) We're seeing hemp in insulation, bioplastic, car panels. BMW and Mercedes have used hemp fiber composites. And yes, shoes. I wear hemp shoes. I am an affiliate for 8,000 Kicks, which makes waterproof hemp sneakers. I'll link to those in the show notes because I love them. And also because it feels like a small act of putting my money where my mouth is.
(0:07:41) hemp is infrastructure and it always was. And if you're interested, the reason I became an affiliate for them a while ago is because I had the CEO on the show to talk about using hemp as a material, the challenges that it presents and how he went about making these hemp, waterproof hemp shoes and accessories, because they also do a line of backpacks as well.
(0:08:08) And I think if we want to see more examples of hemp being used in things like clothing and textiles and other areas, then it behooves us to go out and support the companies that are making them.
(0:08:22) When we talk about cannabis history in mainstream culture, we tend to start the clock somewhere around the 1960s. The counterculture, Woodstock, maybe Reefer Madness as a punchline. And that framing does a lot of work to erase a much longer, more complicated story.
(0:08:42) Cannabis and hemp prohibition in the 20th century was not just about the plant. It was about who was using it. In the United States, the criminalization of cannabis was explicitly and deliberately tied to racist enforcement. Harry Anslinger, who ran the Federal Bureau of Narcotics during the 1930s, built the case against marijuana on newspaper campaigns that linked the plant to Mexican immigrants and black jazz musicians.
(0:09:10) His quotes are on record and they're pretty vile. And I won't repeat them here because we've all heard them. Anybody who's been part of the cannabis community for any length of time probably knows a bit about the history of prohibition.
(0:09:25) And his words aren't hard to find, but they are important to understand. And the communities that were most targeted by cannabis criminalization were the same communities that had the longest relationship with the plant as medicine, as food, as ritual, and as a connection. And that's also not a coincidence. Hemp prohibition wiped out an agricultural sector that had sustained farming communities for generations. The DuPont synthetic fiber industry had a financial interest in that outcome.
(0:09:56) DuPont, the giant corporation.
(0:10:00) William Randolph Hearst, who owned timber interests used to make newsprint, had a financial interest in that outcome. The story of cannabis prohibition is in large part a story about capital and racism working together to eliminate a plant that threatened certain profit structures. And I'm not going to pretend that I can wrap that up neatly because I can't, but I do think it matters that when we talk about cannabis as radical or rebellious, we understand what it was rebelling against and who bore that cost.
(0:10:30) And I think that when I think about my episode on mutual aid, making edibles for the people in your community who can't get to a dispensary, who can't afford the dispensary, who've been criminalized for using this plant their whole lives and are still navigating a system that isn't designed for them, this isn't separate from history. It is continuous with it. Which brings me to Alice B. Toklas. I did an episode on her cookbook, a brief one.
(0:10:53) And if you haven't heard about it, go back and have a listen. That was just last week's episode. She is fascinating, complicated, and wonderful, and belongs in the canon. Her 1954 cookbook included a recipe that she called Hashish Fudge, submitted by her friend, Brian Geisen. The recipe made it into the American edition by accident, or so the story goes. And it became one of the most famous recipes in the cannabis history.
(0:11:19) It also got the book banned in some places, which is kind of an achievement, but also not that surprised. Some British, because it was the British, when the British discovered the recipe in the book, it had been printed first in the US without fanfare, well, that particular recipe without fanfare, and then the British publishers discovered it, clutching their pearls, no doubt, saying, oh, what about the children? And that recipe was removed from the book.
(0:11:47) But here's what I find meaningful about Alice B. Toklas beyond the fudge. She was a woman. She was Jewish. She was queer. And she was cooking in Paris at a time when none of those identities made life easy for her. Her kitchen was a gathering place for writers and artists and thinkers of the time. And her cookbook is, at its core, a record of a life built on her own terms through food, through hospitality, and through community. And that feels very familiar to me.
(0:12:17) Robin Swan, who I had on the show recently, is one who understands this in a deep way. She works with plants as medicine. She thinks about the history of plant knowledge. And she carries a real awareness of how much traditional knowledge has been suppressed, who held it, and what it cost when it was taken away. And her episode is one that I keep thinking about for a bunch of different reasons.
(0:12:38) If you haven't listened to that one yet either, it's pretty fascinating, if I do say so myself. The herbalism tradition, which Robin represents, is also largely a women's history. Women as healers, women as keepers of plant knowledge, women who were burned as witches for knowing what plants could do. That's been well documented. I've read a couple of books on that myself. The kitchen as the place where that knowledge survived because it looked like cooking.
(0:13:07) Cannabis has always lived in that space in the hands of people who are not supposed to have it, not supposed to know it, and not supposed to pass it on. And yet they did pass it on anyway. So where does that leave us now? Cannabis is legal in Canada where I am. It's legal for recreational use in a growing number of US states. It's legal for medicinal use in an even larger number of US states and around the world.
(0:13:35) There is more research happening now than at any other point in the last century. Hemp is back in a serious way as a crop, as a material, as a protein source. And yet the people who are building wealth in the legal industry are largely not the communities that bore the cost of prohibition. The expungement of cannabis convictions is slow, incomplete. Access to legal cannabis is still shaped by economic barriers and geographic inequity.
(0:14:03) Hempcrete is real, but it's not every building code yet. Hemp fabric is real, but fast fashion still dominates. The system that replaced the plant with petroleum and synthetic fiber just didn't disappear because hemp is technically legal again. And I say not all this, not to be discouraging, but I say it because I think the people who are doing the work of home growing, home cooking, community care,
(0:14:26) Or doing something that is connected to the 10,000 year lineage of people who looked at this plant and said, this helps, let's share it. The kitchen is the best dispensary that you'll ever have. By extension, your garden is too. If you have the privilege to grow either indoors or outdoors where you are.
(0:14:48) And I mean that as a practical statement about cost and customization, knowing exactly what's in your edibles. But I also mean it as something bigger. Your kitchen's a site of knowledge, of care, of resistance, if you want it to be. And it always has been. And I'm thinking of you folks who are listening right now
(0:15:06) who are making edibles, growing your own cannabis, sharing your medicine, giving away seeds, and yet you live in a place where it's not legal, I think of you. So if you wanna go deeper on any of the threads that I pulled in today, I'll link to everything in the show notes, the Mutual Aid episode, the Alice B. Toklas episode, Robin Swan's episode is definitely a must listen.
(0:15:30) The 8,000 Kicks episode, and I'll include the link for the hemp shoes. I stand by them. I have more than one pair. Actually, by now I have four pairs, I have to admit. There's a couple of slip-ons that I love, love, love, love, love. And I've tested many of these products myself personally.
(0:15:50) If you're making your own edibles and you want to track your batches and build a real reference for yourself, there's the Bite Me Dose Diary or I have the Bite Me Edibles Journal on Amazon worldwide. And I'll put the links to those in the show notes as well. I will mention here for a second, the Dose Diary is a relatively new addition to the lineup of things. There is over there, you can get free sample entries. You don't necessarily have to pay for it.
(0:16:18) You can buy a more expanded version if you choose. And this was just part of my decision to, you know, kind of move away a bit from Amazon. Because I have Amazon sometimes, how do I put this delicately? I'm trying to move away from Amazon. Honestly, even if I sell something on there, like the commission is so poor, I'd have to be really pushing a ton of stuff. And I think we collectively as a society need less stuff.
(0:16:47) Not more. So why would I try and direct people to a website that just encourages conspicuous consumption? Anyway, that's a whole other episode. And if you're not already using the Bite Me dosage calendar before you make a new batch of anything,
(0:17:04) Why not? Why aren't you? It's free. It's on my website. And if you're making edibles for someone else, which we talked about in length in that mutual aid episode, the math definitely matters. And you should not, even if you don't have an exact number, having a range or a context that people can use to make an informed choice about what they're consuming is incredibly helpful. I know this from getting edibles from people
(0:17:31) that are like, here you go. And there's absolutely no dosage information with it. I won't eat those anymore because I'm just not gonna take that chance. I'm getting too old for that shit.
(0:17:43) But if somebody hands me an edible and they're like, I've kind of calculated and I think it's around 20 milligrams, I can go from there. I can work with that. I can say thank you for that information. And if I think that's going to be too much, I can always cut it in half or in quarters and see how it works for me. At least that's some information. Some information is better than no information.
(0:18:03) I appreciate all of you so much. I'm constantly in awe that I'm still doing this podcast. I think it's seven years later. And this is a very niche podcast. I don't have huge budgets. I don't have commercials. I'm not, I haven't monetized this show. I do it for the love of it. So I appreciate you spending this time with me.
(0:18:24) And I just wanted to say that out loud because I think it's important to tell the people that you care about how you feel. And if you haven't done that in real life with somebody you do care about, do it right now. Send them a text. Pick up the phone and give them a call. Write them a note. There's all kinds of ways you can do it. If you like this episode, share it with somebody that you do care about. And until next time, my friends, I'm your host. Stay curious and stay high.
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