The, events surrounding the introduction of cannabis use to the New World are entirely unclear. Some historians say the Spaniards brought the plant with them in the 16th century, other say marijuana smoking came in with the slave trade or with the Asian Indian migration of the late 18th century.

The hemp plant was cultivated in the United States for centuries, apparently without general knowledge of its intoxicating properties. Cannabis was an often used medicine in the United States in the 19th century. It was easily available without a prescription and was also widely prescribed by physicians. Hemp was used by the pioneers to cover their wagons. The plant was a major crop in Kentucky, Virginia, Wisconsin and Indiana, and was one of the more important southern agricultural products, after cotton. It is still used to make rope, twine and textiles, while the seed is used as bird food.

Marijuana use as an intoxicant in the United States began slowly in the early part of this century. Puerto Rican soldiers, and then Americans who were stationed in the Panama Canal Zone, are reported to have been using it by 1916. American soldiers fighting Pancho Villa circa 1916 also learned to use it. This follows the first reported use in Mexico in the 1880's (Blum and Associates, 1969, 1: 69-70). Intoxicant use in the United States is also traced to the large influx of Mexican laborers in the 1910's and 1920's (Geller and Boas, 1969: 14).

The 1933 Report of the "Military Surgeon" stated, regarding marijuana use among the soldiers in the Canal Zone, that:

Marijuana as grown and used on the Isthmus of Panama is a mild stimulant and intoxicant. It is not a "habit forming" drug in the sense that the derivatives of opium, cocaine, and such drugs, are as there are no symptoms of deprivation following its withdrawal.

Delinquencies due to marijuana smoking which result in trial by military court are negligible in number when compared with delinquencies resulting from the use of alcohol drinks, which is also classed as a stimulant and intoxicant.

The report went on to say that marijuana presented no threat to military discipline, and "that no recommendations to prevent the sale or use of marijuana are deemed advisable."

Cannabis has been rejected in various societies on ascetic grounds. In such puritanical societies such as the Wahabil of Arabis and the Senussis of Libya, no smoking of any kind was tolerated, nor was coffee. In North Africa, social rank dictated use: the aristocratic Moors scorned both hemp and tobacco smoking, preferring instead, as compatible with high status, opium eating.

One statement highlighting this kind of value conflict comes from a Nigerian journalist attempting to explain the 15-year prison sentences of foreign tourists for growing and smoking marijuana:

There is a growing trend in the more economically advanced countries to indulge at leisure in the exploration of the personality. At a certain stage of development, there is less need to produce and more time to spend consuming. This is healthy. If used properly, marijuana could be helpful at this stage of development. However, countries which are only beginning to develop a more complex economic structure must channel all their energies into creating a new system. This means that they must sacrifice more of their pleasure. People who smoke hemp seem on the whole to be less aggressive than people who drink alcohol. Hemp smoking may have a positive value for certain social functions....

One of the first acts of the Military Government was to issue a decree making it punishable by death to grow marijuana, and by up to twenty years of prison for merely being in possession of it ... meantime, we Nigerian have to stop getting high for a while and develop our country.

In the United States, the decade of the 1960's has seen a spectacular and unprecedented spread of the use of marijuana, chiefly among the youth. An estimated 24 million persons have used marijuana and approximately 3.4 million are current users. The numbers involved and the fact that use spans all age groups and social classes in American life has produced marked public reaction and a need for more information on the drug.