strains

History of Cannabis

The marijuana you smoke may already be legal, if courts listen to the most current botanical information, the argument goes like this. By present federal law, marijuana is defined as one particular plant species: Cannabis sativa, identified by Linnaeus in 1753. According to the best botanical research now available, however, there are several other species of cannabis. Among the species accepted by other governments and botanists around the world are Cannabis indica, classified by Lamarck in 1783, and Cannabis ruderalis, established by the Russian botanist Janischewsky in 1924. When a whole, mature plant is available for inspection, botanists can with some assurance identify the species to which it belongs, but when the plant is chopped up, dried, cleaned, and popped into a baggie ready to be blazed, it is impossible to tell which species it is. Therefore the government, when it busts you for a lid, cannot prove that what you possess is in fact the forbidden species Cannabis sativa and not one of the others; the government can't prove that the weed you have is illegal.