AHC/WI: Marijuana widespread in Europe

What would it take to have marijuana become a "normal" part of the European postcolumbian botanical kit, along with tobacco and tea and what-not? Why did this never happen in OTL?

And if it did happen, what would be the consequences?
 
What would it take to have marijuana become a "normal" part of the European postcolumbian botanical kit, along with tobacco and tea and what-not? Why did this never happen in OTL?

And if it did happen, what would be the consequences?

It kinda-sorta is, one could say. By the way, it was known in Europe way before Columbus or de Gama.
 
It kinda-sorta is, one could say. By the way, it was known in Europe way before Columbus or de Gama.

Not exactly : the european cannabis contain very few pshycothropic substance and was essentially used for textile, or in pharmacopea for its abortive reputation. Another species as sativa or indica began to appear in Iron Age Middle-East, but didn't seem to have growth in Europe (for many reasons : wine was as effective, bad acclimatation of seeds).
Some european people seems to have used these seeds, having access to them via trade.

Giving the few pshycotropic effect (compared to modern cannabis), I wonder if it wasn't more of a palliative due to absence of more widespread cultures (as wine). Anyway it doesn't have a "recreative" use before Islamic Middle-Ages, with the really first use is depicted by Marco Polo, as a beverage : maybe you need to have a distillation technique (as for strong alchool) to have a widespread usage of cannabis. It's at the same time that the seed is forbidden in Islamic world.
 
Not exactly : the european cannabis contain very few pshycothropic substance and was essentially used for textile, or in pharmacopea for its abortive reputation. Another species as sativa or indica began to appear in Iron Age Middle-East, but didn't seem to have growth in Europe (for many reasons : wine was as effective, bad acclimatation of seeds).
Some european people seems to have used these seeds, having access to them via trade.

Giving the few pshycotropic effect (compared to modern cannabis), I wonder if it wasn't more of a palliative due to absence of more widespread cultures (as wine). Anyway it doesn't have a "recreative" use before Islamic Middle-Ages, with the really first use is depicted by Marco Polo, as a beverage : maybe you need to have a distillation technique (as for strong alchool) to have a widespread usage of cannabis. It's at the same time that the seed is forbidden in Islamic world.

I read somewhere that Carthaginians and Romans made a tea out of Marijuana, and that entire ships have been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean filled with the stuff.
 
I read somewhere that Carthaginians and Romans made a tea out of Marijuana, and that entire ships have been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean filled with the stuff.

Well, I'm skeptical on this. The cannabis used in the northern and western part of Roman world, as you can find in Roman Gaul a main producer, isn't sativa or indica variety, but a local one. As other plants, it often entered in preparation of beverages : infusions or even beers.

From that to say they drank a cannabis infusion to get stoned, something not really possible with european seeds, it's another stuff : from what I know there were relativly rare founds as the "Marsala" but that is a war ship and with cannabis probably used by rowers.
I don't think a recreative use of cannabis is impossible in roman antiquity, but there's really few proofs of that.
 
Well, I'm skeptical on this. The cannabis used in the northern and western part of Roman world, as you can find in Roman Gaul a main producer, isn't sativa or indica variety, but a local one. As other plants, it often entered in preparation of beverages : infusions or even beers.

From that to say they drank a cannabis infusion to get stoned, something not really possible with european seeds, it's another stuff : from what I know there were relativly rare founds as the "Marsala" but that is a war ship and with cannabis probably used by rowers.
I don't think a recreative use of cannabis is impossible in roman antiquity, but there's really few proofs of that.

I didn't say they used it to get high. I have no idea how turning the stuff into tea would affect a person. It's just something I read.
 
Supposedly the Scythians were into smoking weed, although I can't remember my source on that. It was some primary source I read as a freshman in college but I can't remember what now.

From what I understand the psychotropic effects of cannabis were discovered in northern India several thousand years BC; the theory I read was that farmers would harvest the cannabis plants by hand, for use in textiles. Over the course of a day's work, their hands would become covered in sticky pollen which would become pressed down into a primitive form of hashish which they could lick off their hands to get stoned at the end of the day.

Until modern times most people who were trying to get high smoked hashish; since the cannabis buds themselves were so weak, they were viewed as a mere ingredient of hashish. I don't really know why hashish didn't become more widespread in Europe but it certainly wasn't unknown at least in antiquity.

Europeans have been using industrial hemp for this whole time; this was exported to the colonies and I know that at least Thomas Jefferson smoked, so I'm sure people from the 'lower orders' did as well, especially if they worked anywhere in the hemp industry.
 
Supposedly the Scythians were into smoking weed, although I can't remember my source on that. It was some primary source I read as a freshman in college but I can't remember what now.

It's in Herodotus's Histories, 4:74. "They take some hemp seed, creep into the tent, and throw the seed onto the hot stones. At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapor unsurpassed by any vapor-bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure."

I'm not sure if this custom could be brought West, though; the Greeks thought of Scythians as the ultimate barbarians and even thought drinking wine "Scythian style" (undiluted) could drive you mad.
 
Supposedly the Scythians were into smoking weed, although I can't remember my source on that. It was some primary source I read as a freshman in college but I can't remember what now.
Herodotus, I think, mentions that Scythians (but as well Thracians and Dacians by their influence) used to fumigate hemp for religious purposes.

I don't really know why hashish didn't become more widespread in Europe but it certainly wasn't unknown at least in antiquity.
Because the hemp used in Europe was a different seed of Indian, having far less THC.
The sativa or indica seeds weren't cultivated past the steppes (and when I say cultivated, I mean Scythes planted some seed near camp grounds) or Middle-East.

The first mentions of a *recreative* usage of cannabis in Europe and Mediterranean basin are appearing only in the XII/XIII centuries after that Arabo-Muslims apparently not only made it widespread (probably with crossing it with different species and distillating the result) but forbade in the same row.
Before that, you do have a usage of european seeds in beverages, as beer, but it's always associated with other plants and less for the search of an 'effect" than taste or more prosaicly, "cheat" on houblon proportion.

You do have usage of cannabis that is or religious (as mentioned) or "energetic" (not unlike the coca in Andes), it's still really limited and efficiently rivaled by wine that was more customary and more present (probably cheaper to produce).
 
Top