Of course it’s Africans who decided to light up marijuana and try smoking it for the first time

Africans had very intricate water pipes and dry pipes and the usage was largely social. Also, reminds me of the fact that so many igbo masquerades take it before dancing.

Colonizers marked Africans who use marijuana as “ins*ne” and it was banned during slavery + colonialism though African slaves brought it over to the Americas.

“A Sotho smoking song, published in 1913, suggests this subjective effect: “We smoke it, and it reminds us of different things. We remember the miracles of the world. We remember those far and near. We remember.”

“Sotho women fed children hempseed as a nutritional supplement while weaning.”

“Sotho women smoked to relieve pain during childbirth.Zulu herbalists and people in Sierra Leone prescribed the smoke to treat chest complaints.”

The African roots of marijuana (yt author)

“In colonial South Africa, a public-health study from 1913 quoted a “native” as saying, “It[’]s the best medicine in the world.”

“At the mouth of the Congo in 1850, nganga prescribed a tea of cannabis, tree barks, and the medicinal vine Abrus precatorius to treat gonorrhea.”

“Around 1912 in present-day South Sudan, a “woman calling herself the Sirdar” organized resistance to traditional authority and made cannabis smoking an element of her movement’s ideology.”

Colonizers complained that the movement caused “considerable trouble” in governing the natives.