June
4,
2020
Kremers Seminar in the History of Pharmacy & Drugs
2020 Summer Kreminar
Register for Dr. Duvall’s Presentation.
Abstract: In The African Roots of Marijuana (Duke University Press, 2019), Chris Duvall traces marijuana’s African past, and argues that better awareness of this history would improve how cannabis is managed nowadays.
In this presentation, Prof. Duvall sketches the drug plant’s dispersal from South Asia to Africa to the Americas, and discusses how European perceptions of these places affected 19th- and early 20th century commerce in pharmaceutical cannabis. Based on market data from five continents, he shows that British colonial policies in India, racist attitudes toward Africa, and ignorance of cannabis pharmacology altogether drove up pharmaceutical prices and simultaneously brought down the plant drug’s value in Western medicine. These pressures removed governments’ political-economic interests in sparing cannabis from legal control, and helped close the global pharmaceutical market. Had European pharmacists and merchants learned from African (and South Asian) societies, the plant drug’s value would have been higher and more stable in global pharmaceutical markets.
Bio: Chris Duvall is a geographer who studies people-plant interactions. Most of his work has focused on western Africa and the Atlantic World. His recent publications include Cannabis (Reaktion Books, 2014), The African Roots of Marijuana (Duke University Press, 2019), and cannabis-related articles in EchoGéo, Space and Polity, and Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. He is currently Chair of the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico.
