Marijuana: Difference between revisions

<blockquote>The appearance of cannabis products in the Middle East did coincide with a long period of decline during which Egypt fell from the status of a major power to the position of an agrarian slave state, exploited by a series of Circassian, Turkish, and European rulers.</blockquote>

<blockquote>As often happens, the very decline of the nation prompted the increased use of what may have hastened its fall. The hashish habit became so prevalent among the masses that some sultans and emirs made attempts to prohibit its use, knowing that they were going against a practice participated in by a large percentage of the population. In the fourteenth century, Emir Soudouni Schekhouni ordered that all cannabis plants be uprooted and destroyed, and that any users of the substance be condemned to have all their teeth extracted without the benefit of anesthesia.<ref>Ibid., p. 15.</ref></blockquote>