Free Access and Limited Success: Hemp, Hashish and Cannabis in Nineteenth Century Germany

Nowadays, cannabis is controversially discussed under key words of liberalisation and deregulation. But long before the “prohibition” of Indian hemp by the German Opium Act of 1929, hemp, hashish and cannabis had already lost their temporarily relevant position in a moderately regulated pharmaceutical market. Hemp, the native-grown cannabis sativa, was a widely used crop whose fibres were processed into fabrics and yarns, ropes and sails, hard felt and sacks in the early nineteenth century. Seeds were used to extract oil, then lit up the living room in oil lamps and were used to make soaps, oil paints and varnish. Hemp was used in cooking and also as a remedy. However, it was replaced by colonial materials and because of the transition of cultivation to more profitable cash crops. From around 1840, preparations made from cannabis indica raised growing attention. They came from the Middle East, India and North Africa – and were recommended by British and French colonial experts as an alternative to opium, as a basis for new pharmaceutical markets. Hashish had the charm of intoxication, i.e. an obvious effect. It was more attractive to contain it and then use it in a targeted manner than to analyse the healing effects of the domestic hemp plant, which were also far less effective. A brief boom of early cannabis preparations in a barely regulated market environment followed. They were offered by medium-sized and large companies, and increasingly also by American, British and French multinationals. Cannabis was used in sleeping and clavus preparations, became part of painkillers and psychotropic drugs, and was widely advertised as part of asthma cigarettes. However, the active ingredients and effect profiles of cannabis preparations remained unspecific -- and were replaced by pharmaceuticals with more specific impacts from the turn of the century onwards. This double disappearance of hemp was market-driven, not the result of state regulation and repression. Domestic hemp no longer paid off in the face of natural alternatives on the global market. Cannabis preparations showed structural deficits in effect and dosage, because clearly defined active ingredients could hardly be named and isolated. The relative failure of these pharmaceutical goods in the long nineteenth century suggests that the effects of current liberalisation will be more limited than their propagandists imagine.