Even though the government legalised the medicinal usage of cannabis, laws surrounding a simple blaze are still not as relaxed as literally 99% of the population would like them to be.
According to a recent interview with Vice, Queensland based historian John Jiggens believes that Australia was originally colonised to cultivate cannabis. Yep, NSW was apparently once a haven for all things THC. Incredible.
Jiggens claims that the first European settlement in Australia was founded in order to “cultivate vast amounts of hemp”. Hemp was at the time, an important resource needed for making ship sails and rope.
“Joseph Banks (colonising botanist) had a whole file on hemp from 1764 to 1810, and I got a copy of that, read through it, and was able to discover all sorts of things about the importance of hemp and Banks’ role as the main advisor on hemp in Australia and other colonies,” he says.
“Hemp formed the basis for war, trade, and empire in that early period of mercantile capitalism. But then in the early 1800s coal took over, and became strategic in the same way,” he went on to say.
The man doesn’t sound totally cooked, right?
