Marijuana and medieval Muslim drug wars

The anti-marijuana movement is a major obstacle to ending the drug wars that have raged across continents for over fifteen centuries. Beginning in 5th century North Africa, religious factions targeted users of illicit substances in much the way prohibitionists do today. Drug users were scapegoated for social problems unrelated to their drug use while cannabis consumption itself was made a shibboleth—a means of exposing hidden identities, ethnicities, heresies, and political agendas.

Ritualized persecutions of ostracized individuals and groups that consume marijuana have ensured that drug laws remain repressive and dangerous. It’s a simple process. Scapegoating a material substance such as marijuana for society’s problems is only one short step away from condemning the people who consume it:

The Sufis were not the only group blamed for the destruction caused by hashish. The fabled Haydar was an older contemporary of Genghis Khan, and about the time of Haydar’s death, the Mongols were poised to invade the lands of Islam [13th century CE]. Blaming moral and material ills of any kind upon the machinations of foreigners and enemies is a common human trait. Thus the Mongols were a natural target for those searching for an explanation of what brought about a social evil assumed to have reached dangerous proportions in their times. – Franz Rosenthal, The Herb: Hashish Versus Medieval Muslim Society – (c. 1971), p. 54.

The religious theme runs deep in drug prohibition. President Richard Nixon’s henchman, John Ehrlichman—who admitted to counseling Nixon to use marijuana criminalization to crack down on alleged pot smoking political opponents—was a member of the Christian Science religion as was Nixon advisor H. R. Haldeman. Christian Science rejects any reliance on the medical or recreational use of drugs. It claims drugs interfere with spiritual healing, so it practices faith healing instead. Its members would literally rather die than consume a drug, and they do. Haldeman died of abdominal cancer in 1993 while refusing any medicinal treatments or painkillers, including marijuana.

Kevin Sabet, a founder (along with co-founders Patrick J. Kennedy and David Frum) of the anti-marijuana organization Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), is a member of the Baha’i faith, a Muslim sect founded in 1863 that currently comprises about 8-million members scattered throughout the world. In contrast to the tolerance shown by Sufism toward marijuana, Baha’i strongly forbids cannabis as well as alcohol consumption, except for medicinal purposes. Baha’i was founded by Bahá’u’lláh, who warned against any substance that induces “sluggishness and torpor” and harms the body. Abdu’l-Bahá, his son and successor, called hashish “the worst of all intoxicants” and described its effects as causing “disintegration of thought and the complete torpor of the soul.” Baha’i’s hostility toward marijuana consumers has been surpassed by persecution of the Baha’i themselves, particularly in Iran where the 1979 Islamic Revolution caused the deaths of about 200 Baha’i.

As Baha’i’s most celebrated disciple, Kevin (Abraham) Sabet, President and CEO of SAM, has a political science degree from Berkeley (2001) and a social policy degree from Oxford (2007). His medical opinions regarding marijuana are often exposed as demonstrably false when subjected to the rigors and conclusions of modern science. Sabet himself is not formally trained in any specific physical, biological, pharmaceutical or medical science. He is not a professional psychiatrist with an actual medical degree in psychiatry, even though he somehow managed to attain a position as Assistant Professor Adjunct of Psychiatry at Yale University, as well as an Adjunct Assistant Professorship at the University of Florida School of Medicine—Drug Policy Institute.

The narrow lens through which Kevin Sabet views marijuana is inherently Islamic, moralizing, self-aggrandizing, and self-enriching, not medical or scientific. He opposes policies that would expand scientific research on marijuana’s potential as a medical treatment. Both Sabet and Patrick Kennedy want each ingredient of medical cannabis to be pharmaceutically sourced, packaged individually, and distributed separately in pill or skin patch form, making the natural source, the marijuana flower in all its THC, CBD and aromatic terpene glory unavailable. Doing this would preclude any potential entourage effect that might occur among marijuana’s various constituents.

Sabet’s Big Pharma style prescription drug preferences are distinctly American. Europeans and many people of other nations don’t object to combining or taking their medications in the form of herbal supplements or natural ingredients. They are more likely to visit a local drug compounder to obtain their drugs in some more preferable or convenient form. They’re willing to swallow a dry magic mushroom they grew at home in preference to taking a boring and expensive pill at a psychiatric clinic.

Smoking or vaporizing marijuana is the quickest, most efficient, and most convenient means of consuming marijuana’s active ingredients. Sabet’s lifelong crusade to penalize herbal marijuana consumers for how and why they consume marijuana has helped initiate thousands of needless criminal arrests. It has resulted in premature and unnecessarily agonizing deaths for those who were subsequently denied marijuana for use as a palliative. Like many religious extremists throughout history, Kevin Sabet doesn’t appear to concern himself with the harm that he, his organizations, and his ideologies produce.

In contrast to Baha’i, religions that use intoxicants in their religious practices for spiritual healing and to enhance the soul include Catholicism that uses wine, the Native American Church that uses peyote, Rastafarianism that uses cannabis, Hinduism that uses cannabis and soma, Bwiti that uses iboga (Gabon, West Africa), ancient Greek religions that used opium and other psychoactives, Amazonian indigenous religions that use ayahuasca, and Mazatec (Mexico) that uses psilocybin mushrooms. Under some U.S. federal laws each of the named religions in theory has a federal legal right to practice their religions using their chosen sacramental herbs, even though infidels, atheists, secularists, Mongols (Tibetan Buddhists), Israelites, and heathens who might want to claim cannabis or another drug as their own personal sacrament currently do not enjoy a federal legal right to possess either cannabis, psilocybin, peyote, ibogaine, LSD, or MDMA (Ecstasy).

The marijuana legalization movement shows no sign of weakening as more people throughout the world add cannabis to their shopping lists. Cannabis consumers encourage drug peace, not drug wars. A workable drug peace will necessitate an absolute separation of church and state on issues regarding drugs and their use. Dominionistic sects and religions such as Catholicism, Baha’i, Mormonism and Evangelicalism that reject recreational use of marijuana so they can dominate other religious groups or citizens must not be given a legal, social, or moral standing in either determining or undermining the alternative lives and successful social adaptations of others regarding their drug use. Ending the drug war means drug use by adults who are fully and truthfully educated about drugs must be treated as a fundamental human right in the fight to preserve domestic tranquility and the rights of citizens everywhere to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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10 Responses to Marijuana and medieval Muslim drug wars

  1. Shane from Slidell says:

    Let us not forget that the dictator who ruined Equatorial Guinea–Francisco Macias Nguema–was also an iboga addict who was severely mistreated at the hands of Spanish colonists when that country was part of Spain. Nguema also witnessed the colonial authorities kill his own father, which in turn, led to him becoming openly racist and anti-intellectual. When he got into power in 1969, Macias chased all the intelligentsia out of Equatorial Guinea, banned the use of the word intellectual, banned western medicine, stifled as much free speech as possible, stole property from landowners, and even banned religion outside of the worship of himself.* Years of drug use and general paranoia led to his nephew Teodoro to overthrow him in a coup d’etat in 1979. Now, this doesn’t mean that psychedelics/hallucinogens should be banned because of the actions of Africa’s equivalent of Pol Pot, but this part of African history needed to be mentioned. *=That is only a small part of what that man did.

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  4. Servetus says:

    Concussions and traumatic brain injuries are successfully treated using the psychedelics psilocybin and DMT:

    17-Sep-2025 — Concussion and other traumatic brain injuries impact an estimated 69 million people every year, as a result of sport collisions, falls, road accidents and interpersonal violence. There are few treatments, and no approved and effective pharmacotherapies.

    New research from the Christie Lab at the University of Victoria (UVic) reveals the promise of two psychedelic compounds—psilocybin and 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT)—for healing these injuries, by enhancing neuroplasticity and reducing inflammation within the brain. […]

    “When someone receives a blow to the head, this sets off a cascade of events in the brain,” says Allen, one of the authors of the review and a UVic postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience. “One of these is inflammation, which can initially help brain tissue to repair.” However, when this inflammation is prolonged, it can lead to long term problems such as learning and memory deficits, depression and anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

    “These conditions share features such as impaired neuroplasticity that keep patients trapped in rigid loops of thought and behavior,” says Allen. This can occur even with mild traumatic brain injuries—what we call concussion. And many people who play sports or serve in the military experience concussions repeatedly.

    “Our review concluded that classical psychedelics have the potential to reduce inflammation in an injured brain, while also increasing neuroplasticity and helping the brain to reorganize, creating new neural pathways to compensate for lost or damaged connections,” says Christie, director of the UVic’s Concussion Lab.

    “By reopening windows of plasticity and inducing mind-expanding experiences, psychedelics also help prevent the development of depression, anxiety, and other psychiatric disorders associated with brain injury, and offer pathways to recovery.” […]

    AAAS Public Science News Release: Psychedelics offer healing for concussion, traumatic brain injuries

    Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry: Examining the potential of psilocybin and 5-MeO-DMT as therapeutics for traumatic brain injury

    Authors: Zoe Plummer, Josh Allen, Justin Brand, Leah M. Mayo, Sandy R. Shultz, Brian R. Christie.

  5. Servetus says:

    Psilocybin mushrooms and fiber caps evolved two different chemical means of producing psilocybin:

    September 24, 2025 — Researchers found that magic mushrooms and fiber caps independently evolved different biochemical pathways to create psilocybin. This convergence shows nature’s ingenuity, but the reason why remains unknown—possibly predator deterrence. Beyond evolutionary mystery, the discovery provides new enzyme tools for biotech, with promising applications for producing psilocybin-based medicines. […]

    “This concerns the biosynthesis of a molecule that has a very long history with humans,” explains Prof. Dirk Hoffmeister, head of the research group Pharmaceutical Microbiology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI). “We are referring to psilocybin, a substance found in so-called ‘magic mushrooms’, which our body converts into psilocin – a compound that can profoundly alter consciousness. However, psilocybin not only triggers psychedelic experiences, but is also considered a promising active compound in the treatment of therapy-resistant depression,” says Hoffmeister. […]

    Tim Schäfer, lead author of the study and doctoral researcher in Hoffmeister’s team, explains: “It was like looking at two different workshops, but both ultimately delivering the same product. In the fiber caps, we found a unique set of enzymes that have nothing to do with those found in Psilocybe mushrooms. Nevertheless, they all catalyze the steps necessary to form psilocybin.”

    The researchers analyzed the enzymes in the laboratory. Protein models created by Innsbruck chemist Bernhard Rupp confirmed that the sequence of reactions differs significantly from that known in Psilocybe. “Here, nature has actually invented the same active compound twice,” says Schäfer.

    However, why two such different groups of fungi produce the same active compound remains unclear. “The real answer is: we don’t know,” emphasizes Hoffmeister. “Nature does nothing without reason. So there must be an advantage to both fiber cap mushrooms in the forest and Psilocybe species on manure or wood mulch producing this molecule – we just don’t know what it is yet.”

    “One possible reason could be that psilocybin is intended to deter predators. Even the smallest injuries cause Psilocybe mushrooms to turn blue through a chemical chain reaction, revealing the breakdown products of psilocybin. Perhaps the molecule is a type of chemical defense mechanism,” says Hoffmeister. […]

    ScienceDaily: Mushrooms evolved psychedelics twice, baffling scientists — A new study shows that different types of mushrooms use completely different methods to produce the psychoactive substance psilocybin

    Angewandte Chemie – Journal of the German Chemical Society: Dissimilar Reactions and Enzymes for Psilocybin Biosynthesis in Inocybe and Psilocybe Mushrooms

    Authors: Tim Schäfer, Fabian Haun, Dr. Bernhard Rupp, Prof. Dr. Dirk Hoffmeister.

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  9. Servetus says:

    Symptoms of alcohol withdrawal may be reducible using a drug called “Compound 6”:

    30-Sep-2025 — By targeting a specific area of the brain, researchers at Washington State University may now hold the key to curbing the debilitating symptoms of alcohol withdrawal that push many people back to drinking.

    The new study found the answer to helping people get through alcohol withdrawal may lie in a region of the brain known as the cerebellum. In mice experiencing withdrawal, scientists were able to ease the physical and emotional symptoms by altering brain function in this brain region using both genetic tools and a specialized compound. The findings…could help pave the way for targeted therapies that make recovery more manageable. […]

    “Half the neurons in the brain are in the cerebellum,” said David Rossi, the study’s senior author, who is an associate professor in IPN and McLean’s advisor. “It’s increasingly clear this region is involved in far more than just motor control — it plays a role in addiction, emotional regulation and even social engagement.”

    Using mice as a model, the researchers found chronic alcohol exposure disrupts the cerebellum’s normal signaling, which essentially becomes rewired to function in the presence of alcohol. Once alcohol is removed, though, the brain enters a hyperactive state, which leads to withdrawal symptoms.

    The researchers tested two strategies to counteract withdrawal.

    The first strategy used a genetic approach in which the researchers inserted special receptors into cerebellar neurons. When activated, these receptors acted like an “off switch,” calming overactive cerebellar activity during withdrawal and improving motor coordination in mice. While this showed that restoring inhibition in the cerebellum could reduce withdrawal symptoms, the method relied on genetically modifying animals and isn’t currently a realistic option for people.

    The second strategy, however, points to a more practical path forward. The team tested a synthetic compound known as Compound 6, developed by chemists in Austria, that targets a receptor found only in the cerebellum. When given to mice in withdrawal, the drug eased emotional distress, or anxiety, without affecting the rest of the brain. It also showed low abuse potential, as mice not in withdrawal found it aversive.

    “Compound 6 gave us a way to target the cerebellum without genetic modification,” McLean said. “That makes it a much more realistic option for therapy, and it suggests this part of the brain could be a powerful target for treating alcohol withdrawal.” […]

    “What makes this approach exciting is that we’re looking at ways to target a very specific brain region and receptor, instead of applying a broad treatment that comes with side effects,” Rossi said. “If we can take away the worst part of withdrawal, even temporarily, people may be better able to succeed with counseling or other long-term treatments for AUD.” […]

    AAAS Public Science News Release: Study finds altering one area of the brain could rid alcohol withdrawal symptoms

    Neuropharmacology Selectively counteracting cerebellar adaptations to chronic alcohol exposure reduces acute alcohol withdrawal severity in C57BL6/N mice

    Authors: Nadia A. McLean, Samantha N. Shippell Stiles, Aspen E. Harder, Chloe M. Erikson, Gloria J. Lee, Dominik Schnalzer, Margot Ernst, Marko D. Mihovilovic, Giuseppe Giannotti, and David J. Rossi.

  10. Servetus says:

    Brain circuits affected by psilocybin function as a “dimmer switch” to offer relief from pain and adverse mental health conditions:

    2-Oct-2025 – Researchers at Penn Medicine have identified specific brain circuits that are impacted by psilocybin—the active compound found in some psychedelic mushrooms—which could lead to new paths forward for pain and mental health management options. Chronic pain affects more than 1.5 billion people worldwide and is often deeply entangled with depression and anxiety, creating a vicious cycle that amplifies suffering and impairs quality of life. The study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania- published today in Nature Neuroscience- offers new insight into ways to disrupt this cycle.

    “As an anesthesiologist, I frequently care for people undergoing surgery who suffer from both chronic pain and depression. In many cases, they’re not sure which condition came first, but often, one makes the other worse,” said Joseph Cichon, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care at Penn and senior author of the study. “This new study offers hope. These findings open the door to developing new, non-opioid, non-addictive therapies as psilocybin and related psychedelics are not considered addictive. […]

    In studies using mice with chronic nerve injury and inflammatory pain, researchers found that a single dose of psilocybin reduced both pain and pain-induced anxiety and depression-like behaviors, with those benefits lasting almost two weeks. Psilocybin acts by gently activating specific brain signals, called serotonin receptors (5-HT2A and 5-HT1A). “Unlike other drugs that fully turn these signals on or off, psilocybin acts more like a dimmer switch, turning it to just the right level,” said Cichon.

    To pinpoint where the effects originated, researchers injected psilocin—the active substance into which the body converts psilocybin—into different regions of the central nervous system. The team used advanced fluorescent microscopy, a technique that uses glowing dyes to see and capture neuronal activity, to see chronic pain neurons spontaneously firing. When psilocin was injected directly into the prefrontal cortex of the brain, specifically the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a part of the brain that processes pain and emotions, it provided the same pain relief and mood improvements as when psilocybin was given to the whole body.

    Researchers also injected psilocin into the spinal cord, but it didn’t have the same calming effect. “Psilocybin may offer meaningful relief for patients by bypassing the site of injury altogether and instead modulating brain circuits that process pain, while lifting the ones that help you feel better, giving you relief from both pain and low mood at the same time,” said Cichon. […]

    The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (R35GM151160-01) and the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRA) Chronic Pain Medicine Research Award. […]

    AAAS Public Science News Release: Psilocybin targets brain circuits to relieve chronic pain, depression — Penn researchers offer new insights into psilocybin’s ability to break the pain-depression cycle

    Nature Neuroscience: Single-dose psilocybin rapidly and sustainably relieves allodynia and anxiodepressive-like behaviors in mouse models of chronic pain

    Authors: Ahmad Hammo, Stephen Wisser & Joseph Cichon.

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