Cannabis and Cannabinoids: From Synapse to Society

Cannabis has had a rich and varied history for millennia, across cultures around the world, including ancient China where it was integrated into the pharmacopeia with other plant-based products, to Indian, Persian, and Arabian societies, where it was used in the context of religious rituals or ceremonies (Mechoulam et al, 2014). Evidence of cannabis use from a scientific perspective in the nineteenth century largely began with William O’Shaughnessy, an Irish physician working in India, who studied cannabis for the treatment of rheumatic pain and infantile seizures. Despite the potential therapeutic utility, laws were enacted in the early twentieth century to regulate cannabis cultivation, possession, and use, which significantly changed the scientific framework with which it could be properly studied. The administrative and legal hurdles to study cannabis persist to this day and have restricted comprehensive scientific study of the plant and its constituents, even as scientific understanding of cannabis has exploded