Introduction

Abstract

Abstract Of course, these quotes can only convey three parts of a far more complex story. This book will examine all of the key figures and events in the modern history of cannabis and British government. The story starts in Chapter 2, which shows how information about cannabis drugs and medicines was slowly gathered in Asia by Europeans from the sixteenth century onwards. The men responsible for this were the Iberian doctors that accompanied the Portuguese empire-builders into India and their observations, together with those of the ancient authorities like Dioscorides, remained the basis of British writing on the subject of cannabis into the eighteenth century. In that century accounts of cannabis were embellished by British travellers returning from Asia who were eager to sell their stories of journeys abroad by filling them with lurid tales of exotic vices. It was not until the nineteenth century that scientists and doctors serving in the empire began to turn their systematic attention to the subject. While some viewed cannabis medicines and drugs through their own prejudices others seemed to have been determined to light up the subject with the full glare of Victorian science. Of the latter, perhaps William Brooke O’Shaughnessy was the most thorough and the most remarkable.