2737 BC: Cannabis referred to as a "superior" herb in the world's first medical text, or pharmacopoeia, Shen Nung's Pen Ts'ao, in China

1500 BC : Cannabis-smoking Scythians sweep through Europe and Asia, settling and inventing the scythe.

1400 BC : Cultural and religious use of ganga or Cannabis , and charas or hashish (resin) recorded used by Hindus in India.

600 BC : Zend-Avesta, Indian scripture, speaks of hemp's intoxicating resin.

500 BC : Gautama Buddha said to have survived by eating hemp seed. Cannabis used in Germany (Hochdorf Hallstatt D wagon burial site). First botanical drawings of Cannabis in Constantinopolitaus.

450 BC : Herodotus records Scythians and Thracians as consuming Cannabis and making fine linens of hemp.

300 BC : Carthage and Rome struggle for political and commercial power over hemp and spice trade routes in the Mediterranean.

100 BC : Chinese make paper from hemp and mulberry.

70 BC : Roman Emperor Nero's surgeon, Dioscorides, praises Cannabis for making the stoutest cords and for its medicinal properties.

30 AD : Jesus teaches :Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man (Matthew 15:11). The Gospels refer to the New Wine and declare that it is best when the clusters are ripe.

100 AD : Roman surgeon Dioscorides names the plant Cannabis sativa and describes various medicinal uses. Pliny reported of industrial uses and wrote a manual on farming hemp.

400 AD : Cannabis cultivated for the first time in the UK at Old Buckenham Mere

500 AD : First botanical drawing of hemp in Constantinopolitanus

600 AD : Germans, Franks, Vikings etc all use hemp fibre.

800 AD : Mohammed allows Cannabis but forbids the use of alcohol.

1000 AD : The English word "hempe" first listed in a dictionary. Moslems produce hashish medicine and social use.

1150 AD : Moslems use hemp to start Europe's first paper mill. Most of the paper is made from hemp for the next 750 years, including Bibles.

1379 AD : Emir Soudon Sheikhouni of Joneima prohibits Cannabis consumption amongst the poor, destroys the crops, and punishes offenders by pulling out their teeth.

1484 AD : Inquisitor Pope Innocent VIII outlaws hashish.

1494 AD : Hemp paper industry starts in England.

1545 AD : Hemp agriculture arrives in China.

1554 AD : The Spanish grow hemp in Peru.

1563 AD : English Queen Elizabeth I decrees that land owners with more than 60 acres must grow hemp or be fined 5 pounds.

1564 AD : King Philip of Spain orders hemp grown throughout his empire from modern Arhentina to Oregon.

1600 AD : Dutch achieve the "Golden Age" through hemp commerce. Explorers find "wilde hempe" in North America.

1606 AD : The British take Cannabis to Canada for maritime uses.

1611 AD : The British start growing Cannabis in Virginia.

1619 AD : Virginia colony makes hemp cultivation mandatory, followed by most other colonies. Europe pays hemp bounties.

1621 AD : The Anatomy of Melancholy claims Cannabis is a treatment for depression.

1631 AD : Hemp used as money throughout American colonies.

1632 AD : The Pilgrims take Cannabis to New England.

1637 AD : The General Court at Hartford, Conneticut, orders that all families plant one teaspoon of Cannabis seeds.

1639 AD : Massachusetts Courts follow Hartford.

1753 AD : Cannabis Sativa classified by Linneaus.

1763 AD : New English Dictionary says Cannabis root applied to skin eases inflammation.

1776 AD : Declaration of Independence drafted on hemp paper.

1791 AD : President Washington sets duties on hemp to encourage domestic industry. "Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed" ........President George Washington. (Library of USA Congress 1794 vol. 33 p.270). President Jefferson calls hemp a necessity and urges farmers to grow hemp instead of tobacco.

1800 AD : Cotton gins make cheaper fibre than hemp. Napoleon prohibits his men in Egypt from using Cannabis , but to little effect.

1835 AD : The Club de Hashichines is founded.

1839 AD : Homeopathy journal 'American Provers' Union' publishes first report on effects of cannabis.

1840 AD : "Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control mans' appetite through legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not even crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded"...........Abraham Lincoln (December 1840)

1841 AD : Dr. W.B.O'Shaughnessy, "On the Preparation of the Indian Hemp or Ganja" introduces Cannabis to western science.

1845 AD : Psychologist and inventor of modern psychopharmacology and psychotimimetric drug treatment, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours documents physical and mental benefits of cannabis.

1850 AD : Petrochemical age begins. Toxic sulphite and chlorine processes make paper from trees: steamships replace (hemp) sails; tropical fibres introduced.. USA census records 8327 hemp plantations of over 2000 acres each.

1854 AD : Bayard Taylor essay Visions of Hashish.

1857 AD : Fitz Hugh Ludlow publishes "The Hasheesh Eater"

1857 AD : Smith Brothers of Edinburgh market Cannabis indica extracts.

1860 AD : First governmental commission study of Cannabis and hashish conducted by Ohio State Medical Society. It catalogues the conditions for which Cannabis is beneficial: neuralgia, nervous rheumatism, mania, whooping cough, asthma, chronic bronchitis, muscular spasms, epilepsy, infantile convulsions, palsy, uterine hemorrhage, dysmenorrhea, hysteria, alcohol withdrawal and loss of appetite.

1868 AD : The Emir of Egypt makes the possession of Cannabis a capital offence.

1869 AD : Tales of Hashish by A.C. Kimmens

1870 AD : Cannabis listed in US Pharmacopoeia as a medicine.

1870 AD : South Africa worried about Cannabis use among Indian workers, passes a law forbidding the smoking, use or possession of hemp by Indians.

1876 AD : Hashish served at American Centennial Exposition.

1877 AD : The Sultan of Turkey makes Cannabis illegal, to little effect.

1894 AD : British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission studies social use of Cannabis and comes out firmly against its prohibition.

1895 AD : First known use of the name "marijuana" for smoking, by Pancho Villa's supporters in Sonora, Mexico.

1909 AD : Shanghai Conference: first international meeting on drugs is held to discuss opium. The USA passes an act to prohibit the buying or selling of opium for non-medicinal purposes.

1910 AD : African-American "reefer" use reported in Jazz Clubs in New Orleans, said to be influencing white people. Mexicans smoking marijuana in Texas. South Africa prohibits cannabis.

1911 AD : Hindus reported to be using ganja in San Francisco.

1911 AD : South Africa bans cannabis.

1912 AD : "Essay on Hasheesh" by Victor Rolson. Possibilities of putting controls on Cannabis use is first raised.

1912 AD : Hague Conference; second international meeting on drugs. 46 nations discuss opium, morphine, cocaine, heroin and Cannabis . The Hague Convention for the Suppression of Opium and Other Drugs, was drawn up, requiring parties to confine to medical and legitimate purposes the manufacture, sale and use of opium, heroin, morphine and cocaine; Cannabis was not included. (From Mandeson, D. From Mr Sin to Mr Big, A history of Australian Drug Laws, Oxford University Press Melbourne 1995)

1912 AD : First suggestions that Cannabis should be banned internationally, at the First Opium Conference.

1915 AD : Utah State, then California and Texas outlaw Cannabis . Cocaine banned in the USA.

1916 AD : USDA Bulletin 404 calls for a new program of expansion of hemp to replace uses of timber by industry.

1919 AD : Texas outlaws Cannabis . Alcohol is prohibited throughout the USA. Cannabis is still legal in most States.

1920 AD : DuPont experiments with petrochemicals. Gang war takes over the alcohol industry, homicides increase drastically.

1923 AD : South African delegate at League of Nations calls for international controls on Cannabis , claiming that it makes mine workers less active. Britain insists on further research.

1923 AD : Louisiana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington outlaw cannabis.

1924 AD : At the Second International Opiates conference Egyptian delegate claims serious problems are associated with hashish use and calls for immediate international controls. Sub-committee listens to Egypt and Turkey. Cannabis declared a narcotic. Cannabis Ruderalis identified by Lamarck.

1927 AD : New York outlaws cannabis.

1928 AD : UK Dangerous Drugs Act (September 28th) 1925 becomes law and makes Cannabis illegal.

1929 AD : The Panama Canal Zone Report concludes that there is no evidence that Cannabis use is habit-forming or deleterious, recommending no action be taken against Cannabis use or sale.

1929 AD : South West states make Cannabis illegal as part of a move to oust Mexican immigrants.

1930 AD : Henry Ford makes his motor cars out of hemp with hemp paint and hemp fuel. New machines invented to break hemp, process the fibre and convert the pulp or hurds into paper, plastics etc. 1200 hash bars in New York City. Racist fears of Mexicans, Asians and African-Americans lead the cry for Cannabis to be outlawed.

1930's AD New mechanised hemp harvesting methods invented

1930 AD : Louis Armstrong arrested in Los Angeles for possession of cannabis.

1931 AD : Federal Bureau of Narcotics formed with Anslinger at the head. By now 29 US states have banned non-prescription cannabis

1934 AD : Anslinger refers to "ginger-haired niggers" in FBI official circulars.

1936 AD : South Western states call for FBI to ban cannabis.

1937 AD : Marijuana Tax Act forbids hemp farming. The Act was based on the Machine Gun Transfer Act which made it illegal to pass on machine guns without a government stamp - there being no such stamps available. By applying this strategy to marijuana, Anslinger was able to effectively ban hemp without contravening constitutional rights.

1937 AD : DuPont files patents for nylon, plastics and a new bleaching process for paper. Anslinger testifies to congress that Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug known to man. The objections of the American Medical Association are ignored. The Marijuana Transfer Tax Bill (14th April) introduced to US House, Ways and Means Committee, passed December, prohibits industrial and medical uses and calls flowering tops a narcotic. Violations attract 200 dollar fines. Birdseed, rope and cordage are exempted from tax.

1937 AD : DuPont patents plastics, seizing the opportunity created by Cannabis hemp prohibition

1939 AD : LaGuardia Report started

1941 AD : Cannabis dropped from USA Pharmacopoeia

1941 AD : Henry Ford's car is made from and runs on cannabis.

1943 AD : Hemp for Victory program urges farmers to grow hemp to help war effort.

1943 AD : US Military Surgeon magazine declares that smoking Cannabis is no more harmful than smoking tobacco.

1944 AD : New York Academy of Medicine reports marijuana use does not cause violent behaviour, provoke insanity, lead to addiction or promote opiate usage. Anslinger describes the authors as dangerous and strange.

1944 AD : New York Mayor's La Guardia Report "The Marijuana problem in the City of New York" concludes that smoking marijuana does not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the word, that juvenile delinquency is not associated with marijuana smoking and that the publicity concerning the catastrophic effects of marijuana smoking in New York is unfounded.

1944 AD : Anslinger threatens doctors who carry out Cannabis research with imprisonment.

1945 AD : USA 'Newsweek' reports over 100,000 Americans use cannabis.

1948 AD : Anslinger now says Cannabis users are peaceful and that Cannabis could be used during a communist invasion, to weaken American will to fight.

1948 AD : United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 AD : Hollywood star Robert Mitchum arrested for cannabis.

1951 AD : UN Bulletin of Narcotic Drugs states over 200 million Cannabis users in the world.

1952 AD : First UK Cannabis arrest at Number 11 Club, Soho, London.

1955 AD : Hemp farming outlawed again.

1960 AD : Hippies, Vietnam Veterans, pop fans adopt cannabis.

1961 AD : UN Treaty 406 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs seeks to outlaw Cannabis use and Cannabis cultivation worldwide and eradicate Cannabis smoking within 30 years (by 1991). USA representative is Anslinger.

1962 AD : President Kennedy sacks Anslinger. Kennedy using Cannabis as a pain relief.

1963 AD : Kennedy assassinated.

1964 AD : Thelin Brothers open first US 'Head Shop'.

1964 AD : THC, tetrahydracannabinol, first isolated

1966 AD : Donovan becomes first UK celebrity to be busted for cannabis.

1967 AD : SOMA Times Petition in the UK urges legalisation of Cannabis . The Beatles sign it. 3,000 people hold a 'smoke-in' in Hyde Park.. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones are arrested and imprisoned for Cannabis . This prompts a Times editorial 'Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?'. The convictions are quashed on appeal.. In the UK 2,393 persons arrested for Cannabis offences.. In the USA over 3,000 joints mailed to addresses at random by Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies.

1968 AD : John Lennon arrested for Cannabis possession.

1968 AD : 1 November : UK Government Wootton Report recommends Cannabis possession should not be an offence. "Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusion reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-94) and the New York Mayor's Committee (1944 - LaGuardia) that the long-term consumption of Cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects."

1968 AD : Campaign to stop US soldiers in Vietnam from taking Cannabis - they switch to heroin.

1969 AD : James Callaghan, UK Labour Prime Minister, rejects the findings of the Wootton Report.

1969 AD : George Harrison arrested for cannabis.

1970 AD : Social use of Cannabis receives widespread acceptance despite illegality; policy of decriminalisation sweeps across USA and Britain.

1970 AD : LeDain Report (Canada) recommended that serious consideration be given to the legalisation of personal possession of marijuana. It finds that Cannabis use increases self-confidence, feelings of creativity and sensual awareness, facilitates concentration and self-acceptance, reduces tension, hostility and aggression and may produce psychological but not physical dependence. The report recommends that possession laws be repealed

1970 AD : R. Keith Stroup founds NORML 'National Organisation for Reform of Marijuana Laws', in UDSA.

1970 AD : USA Marijuana Transfer Tax declared unconstitutional.

1971 AD : British Misuse of Drugs Act classifies Cannabis as a Class B drug with stiff sentencing. This bans the medical use of Cannabis , ignoring the Wootton Report.

1971 AD : UN Convention on Psychotopic Substances

1972 AD : US President Richard Nixon says 'I am against legalising marijuana'.

1972 AD : Baan Commission presents report to Dutch Minister of Health and suggests that Cannabis trade below a quarter of a kilo ought to be considered as a misdemeanour only.

1973 AD : Oregon considering legalisation

1973 AD : US Shafer Commission, appointed by Nixon, declares that personal use of marijuana should be decriminalised as should casual distribution of small amounts for no or insignificant renumeration

1973 AD : UN Convention of Psychotropic Substances: Cannabis is a narcotic.

1974 AD : US Senate report on Marijuana-Hashish Epidemic and its Impact on US Security claims that Cannabis use cause brain damage, a-motivation and genetic and reproductive defects

1975 AD : Hundreds of US doctors call for more research on cannabis.

1975 AD : Alaska legalises Cannabis for personal use. Limit on amount is one ounce.

1975 AD : After 3 years of campaigning to abolish penal sanctions for the consumption of drugs, Pannella forces the police to arrest him, by smoking a joint in public.

1975 AD : Jamaica Studies reveal good health amongst prolific Cannabis users. "No impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability, and cognitive style, and tests of memory."

1976 AD : Holland adopts tolerant attitude to Cannabis and many coffee shops and youth centres allowed to sell cannabis.

1976 AD : USA New York Times (Jan 5) declares 'Scientists find nothing really harmful about pot'.

1976 AD : Ford administration bans medical research on Cannabis . Research on synthetic Cannabis analogues allowed to continue. Robert Randal is the first US citizen to receive Cannabis from Federal supplies made under the Investigational New Drug (IND) Program.

1976 AD : DuPont declares Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and calls for its decriminalisation.

1976 AD : USA President Ford bans medical research on cannabis.

1977 AD : President Carter thinks Cannabis should be legalised.

1977 AD : The Australian Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare (the Baume Committee) recommends treating drug use as a social / medical rather than legal problem. Also that criminal sanction of possession of Cannabis be replaced by fines while retaining penalties for possession of hashish, oil and purified THC.

1978 AD : New Mexico allows Cannabis sale for medical use.

1978 AD : The New South Wales Joint Parliamentary Committee upon Drugs recommends eliminating criminal sanctions for personal use of Cannabis , implementing bond and probation penalties for first offenders and expunging records upon successful completion of these punishments. Also suggest retaining penalties for trafficking in cannabis.

1980 AD : Paul McCartney arrested for Cannabis and spends 10 days in prison in Japan.

1980 AD : Costa Rica study reports good health in Cannabis users.

1980 AD : May 10 : Smokey Bears in Hyde Park

1981 AD : The Coptic Study claims 'No harm to human brain or intelligence' through Cannabis use.

1982 AD : An Analysis of Marijuana Policy, National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, concludes that "a policy of prohibition of supply is preferable only to a policy of complete prohibition of supply and use"

1983 AD : In the UK over 20,000 convictions for possession.

1983 AD : The USA government (Reagan / Bush)orders American Universities to destroy all 1966-76 research work on cannabis.

1985 AD : Winters and DiFranza reveal radioactive material in tobacco may account for half the lung cancer deaths; no radioactive material in cannabis.

1986 AD : 8 July : UK Drug Trafficking Offences Act introduced to enable confiscation of assets from drug dealers

1987 AD : The USA Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy says: "Cannabis can be used on an episodic but continual basis without evidence of social or psychic dysfunction. In many users the term dependence with its obvious connotations, probably is mis-applied... The chief opposition to the drug rests on a moral and political, and not toxicologic, foundation".

1988 AD : 6 September : DEA chief administrative judge, Judge Young, rules the US government should allow the medicinal use of Cannabis . He says "Marijuana in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substance known to man". DEA rejects report.

1988 AD : 20 December : UN Convention against illicit traffic in narcotic and psychotropic substances, Vienna, includes cannabis

1988 AD : UK 23,229 people arrested for Cannabis offences.

1989 AD : Presidents Reagan and Bush declare war on Cannabis ; shops selling smoking apparatus outlawed. Urine testing introduced. Recriminalization, asset and property seizure, armed forces, prison camps, 'Just Say No' campaign, PFDA, DARE, tobacco and nuclear subsidies. Price - per - ounce Cannabis worth more than gold. Worldwide prohibition entices organised crime to take control of the Cannabis market and make huge profits. Reagan declares victory in War on Drugs. Secretary of State James A Baker reports global war on narcotic production is 'clearly not being won'.

1990 AD : Jack Herer, in his book 'The Emperor Wears No Clothes' offers $10,000 reward to anyone who can disprove his assertion that hemp can 'save the planet'.

1990 AD : Alaska recriminalises Cannabis possession

1990's AD :USA voters pass regional measures to allow medicinal use of Cannabis . Interest in this and other uses of hemp add new support to campaign for the legal right to social / recreational use of cannabis.

1991 AD : THC receptors found in the brain.

1991 AD : UK 40,000 people arrested for cannabis.

1991 AD : 'Mr. Marijuana', Howard Marks, arrested, taken from Spain to USA, and given 25 years imprisonment for trafficking in cannabis.

1991 AD : UK Judge Pickles advocates legalisation of drugs..

1991 AD : UK MP Tony Banks (labour) advocates legalisation of cannabis.

1991 AD : IND program dropped in USA.

1992 AD : January 22 :California Research Advisory Panel reports that prohibition has a more harmful effect on society and the individual than illegal drugs themselves.

1992 AD : February 19 : UK Government issue licenses to grow Cannabis for industrial uses or scientific research

1992 AD : "Medicines often produce side effects. Sometimes they are physically unpleasant. Cannabis too has discomforting side effects, but these are not physical they are political"... The Economist March 28th 1992

1992 AD : USA over 340,000 arrests for cannabis.

1992 AD : Australia licenses hemp farm.

1992 AD : US Investigational New Drug (IND) Program dropped.

1992 AD : USA President Clinton admits he smoked Cannabis but did not inhale. Howard Marks admits that he smoked Cannabis but never exhaled.

1992 AD : 17 European Cities sign Frankfurt Charter agreeing to tolerate social use of cannabis.

1992 AD : USA Jim Montgomery, a paraplegic who smoked Cannabis to relieve muscle spasm, busted for two ounces of marijuana in Oklahoma, arrested and sentenced to life plus 16 years.

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