Friday, November 28, 2008

Now where did I put that stash? Researches find oldest-ever stash of marijuana Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China. The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany. The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China. I certainly don't recommend that you smoke any 2,700-year-old pot -- it loses some of its freshness. This is pretty fascinating -- we've known that cannabis has been around for thousands of years, but to actually find a sample of it is something. The incredible age of that 789 grams is particularly powerful in that it really points out how ephemeral is our war on drugs. When I die, don't put it in my grave - just light up and celebrate (hopefully it'll be legal again by then). [Thanks, Tom and Robert] 7:51:19 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []