Cannabis Freedom Index
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Culture 34 entries

People

Officials, preachers, scientists and presidents: the people whose work shaped what the law did with cannabis.

Laws have authors and opponents. These are people whose campaigns, faith, research or politics changed what was allowed, told from the record and tied to the laws they touched.

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  1. Black-and-white photograph of a heavy-set man in a suit looking down at papers

    Start here · American narcotics official

    Harry J. Anslinger

    The first head of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics, from 1930 to 1962. He made cannabis a national scare, drafted the law that ended its legal use, and carried the American position to the League of Nations and the UN.

    🇺🇸

  2. An engraving of a young man in a long coat holding up a flask beside laboratory apparatus

    Irish physician in India

    William O'Shaughnessy

    An Irish doctor in Calcutta who tested Indian hemp on animals, himself and his patients, and in 1839 brought cannabis into Western medicine as a remedy for pain, spasm and convulsions.

    🇮🇳 🇬🇧

  3. Oval sepia portrait of a young man with dark wavy hair in a suit and tie

    Mexican psychiatrist

    Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra

    A Mexican psychiatrist who told the Academy of Medicine in 1938 that the madness and violence blamed on marijuana were a myth, and whose plan to treat addiction as an illness became law for five months in 1940 before the United States forced it out.

    🇲🇽 🇺🇸

  4. Black-and-white press photograph of a woman in a hat and coat writing at a desk

    British sociologist and criminologist

    Barbara Wootton

    A British sociologist and one of the first women in the House of Lords, who chaired the committee whose 1969 report found moderate cannabis use harmless and said no one should go to prison for a small amount. The government rejected it, then halved the penalty.

    🇬🇧

  5. Black-and-white photograph of Robert Randall smiling in glasses beside his first legal supply of government-provided marijuana cigarettes in November 1976.

    American medical marijuana campaigner

    Robert Randall

    An American glaucoma patient whose medical-necessity defence and federal supply became landmarks of the modern medical cannabis movement. With Alice O’Leary, he campaigned to open the same route to other patients.

    🇺🇸

  6. Historical black-and-white photograph of Comorian revolutionary leader Ali Soilih delivering a speech at outdoor microphones, accompanied by armed soldiers and government officials.

    President of the Comoros

    Ali Soilih

    The revolutionary Comorian leader whose government briefly legalised cannabis while challenging traditional authority. Youth participation and women’s emancipation coexisted with militia violence and political repression; his overthrow in 1978 brought the ban back.

    🇰🇲

  7. A man in a dark suit and blue tie speaking into microphones

    Thai politician, health minister and prime minister

    Anutin Charnvirakul

    The Thai health minister who took cannabis off the narcotics list in 2022 and promised a million free plants to households, making Thailand the first Asian country to decriminalise. Three years later, as prime minister, he led the government that moved to tighten it again.

    🇹🇭

  8. A man with long dreadlocks singing into a microphone and playing an electric guitar on a dark stage

    Jamaican musician, leader of the Wailers

    Bob Marley

    The Jamaican singer who carried reggae, Rastafari and its sacramental herb to the world. He was jailed for ganja in Jamaica in 1968 and fined for it in London in 1977, and is remembered as cannabis's best-known ambassador.

    🇯🇲 🇬🇧

  9. Dennis Peron with white hair wearing a blue checked shirt outside a doorway.

    American cannabis and gay-rights activist

    Dennis Peron

    A San Francisco cannabis seller and gay-rights activist who helped turn care for people with AIDS into the campaign for California’s 1996 medical-cannabis law.

    🇺🇸

  10. Black-and-white studio portrait of a man with a large moustache in a dark suit and tie

    American physician and opium commissioner

    Hamilton Wright

    The American opium commissioner who tried to put cannabis in a federal drug bill in 1910. At The Hague in 1912 his country alone backed Italy's call to bring it under international control.

    🇺🇸

  11. A bearded man in glasses and a tie-dyed shirt leaning out beside a bright comic-book poster

    American cannabis activist and author

    Jack Herer

    An American activist whose self-published book of 1985, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, joined hemp, medicine and opposition to prohibition into one argument and became the reform movement's most widely read text. Some of its claims about hemp do not stand up.

    🇺🇸

  12. Black-and-white photograph of an elderly man with a white beard and swept-back hair

    French psychiatrist

    Jacques-Joseph Moreau

    A Paris psychiatrist who brought hashish back from the East, took it himself, gave it to students and patients, and in 1845 published the first medical book on a drug's effects on the mind. He supplied the hashish of the Club des Hashischins.

    🇫🇷

  13. Czech drug policy expert Jindřich Vobořil wearing glasses and a dark suit, speaking into a microphone and gesturing with his hand.

    Czech drug-policy official and harm-reduction worker

    Jindřich Vobořil

    Czechia's national drug coordinator in 2010–2018 and 2022–2024, who promoted home growing, cannabis associations and licensed commercial sales. Political opposition blocked the market; the narrower reform enacted in 2025 legalised limited personal cultivation and possession from January 2026.

    🇨🇿

  14. A man in a dark suit and tie speaking at a lectern in front of conference banners

    Portuguese physician and national drug coordinator

    João Goulão

    The Portuguese doctor credited as the author of his country's drug policy. He sat on the committee whose report led Portugal in 2001 to stop treating possession of any drug for personal use as a crime, and has run its drug services for most of the time since.

    🇵🇹

  15. Joep Oomen sitting outdoors in front of green vegetation, wearing a white Trekt Uw Plant T-shirt and a dark cap.

    Dutch-born drug policy activist in Belgium

    Joep Oomen

    A Dutch activist in Antwerp who read Belgium's one-plant rule and asked whether someone else could look after the plant. The answer was Trekt Uw Plant, Belgium's first cannabis social club, founded in 2006 and twice taken to court.

    🇧🇪 🇳🇱 🇪🇸

  16. Black-and-white portrait of John Lennon with long hair, a beard and round glasses.

    British musician and anti-prohibition campaigner

    John Lennon

    The former Beatle who, with Yoko Ono, turned John Sinclair’s cannabis sentence into a concert and a song demanding his release. Their 1971 benefit brought international fame to an existing campaign.

    🇺🇸 🇬🇧

  17. An elderly man in a dark jacket sits at an outdoor table, smiling, while a woman beside him leans in to speak

    Uruguayan president

    José Mujica

    The former guerrilla who, as president of Uruguay, made it in 2013 the first country to legalise and regulate the whole cannabis market, against the opinion of most Uruguayans and of the UN drug board.

    🇺🇾

  18. Portrait of a man with grey hair and glasses in a dark jacket

    German physician, epidemiologist and health minister

    Karl Lauterbach

    A German doctor and epidemiologist who opposed legalising cannabis for years, changed his mind in 2021, and as health minister steered the law that from April 2024 let adults in Germany carry, grow and share it through clubs.

    🇩🇪

  19. A man in glasses and a dark jacket speaking at a lectern in front of large NORML banners

    American lawyer and founder of NORML

    Keith Stroup

    An American lawyer who in 1970 founded NORML, a lobby for marijuana smokers modelled on Ralph Nader's consumer campaigns. Eleven states decriminalised during his first decade in charge, which ended when he exposed a White House adviser.

    🇺🇸

  20. Kenyan parliamentarian Ken Okoth seated outdoors wearing glasses and a dark blazer, gesturing with one hand while holding a tablet.

    Kenyan legislator and cannabis-reform advocate

    Ken Okoth

    The Kenyan MP who proposed replacing cannabis prohibition with regulation, taxation and relief for people carrying convictions for its use.

    🇰🇪

  21. Historical black-and-white portrait of Jamaican Rastafari pioneer Leonard Percival Howell wearing a formal suit and tie.

    Jamaican religious leader

    Leonard Howell

    An early Rastafari preacher and founder of Pinnacle, a Jamaican farming and religious community that grew ganja alongside food crops. Colonial raids repeatedly disrupted the settlement and dispersed its residents.

    🇯🇲

  22. Black-and-white photograph of Lester Grinspoon wearing a tie and seated beside a desk in an office.

    American psychiatrist and drug-policy scholar

    Lester Grinspoon

    The Harvard psychiatrist who began by investigating cannabis’s dangers, changed his view, and challenged prohibition through books, legislative testimony and legal evidence.

    🇺🇸

  23. Black-and-white photograph of a man in glasses and a light jacket speaking with both hands raised, a name tag on his chest

    Dutch criminal lawyer and criminologist

    Louk Hulsman

    A Dutch professor of criminal law, and an escaped prisoner of the Nazis, whose commission argued in 1971 that cannabis users should be taken out of criminal law and kept apart from the market in harder drugs. The idea became Dutch policy.

    🇳🇱

  24. A smiling white-haired man in a grey suit and patterned tie, photographed indoors

    Czech chemist, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1990

    Lumír Hanuš

    A Czech chemist who grew and analysed cannabis for twenty years in communist Olomouc, then co-discovered anandamide, the brain's own cannabinoid, in Jerusalem in 1992. At home he became one of the best-known voices for medical cannabis.

    🇨🇿 🇮🇱

  25. A man in glasses, a white cowboy hat and a white T-shirt speaking with his arms spread at an outdoor rally

    Canadian cannabis activist and seed seller

    Marc Emery

    A Canadian bookseller turned seed merchant, called the Prince of Pot, who broke Canada's ban on cannabis literature, paid tax on his seed sales for seven years, and served four years in an American prison for them.

    🇨🇦 🇺🇸

  26. Black-and-white photograph of Mary Jane Rathbun in a kitchen, wearing glasses and a cannabis-leaf badge beside a tin of baked goods.

    American hospital volunteer and medical-cannabis campaigner

    Mary Jane “Brownie Mary” Rathbun

    The San Francisco hospital volunteer whose cannabis brownies, arrests and work with people with AIDS helped make medical cannabis a public cause.

    🇺🇸

  27. Black-and-white photograph of a man in shirt sleeves and tie playing a clarinet, eyes closed, glasses pushed up on his forehead

    American jazz clarinettist

    Mezz Mezzrow

    A Chicago clarinettist who became better known for the marijuana he sold to the jazz world than for his playing, so much so that "mezz" became a word for it. Louis Armstrong was among his customers.

    🇺🇸 🇫🇷

  28. A man with long locks playing a guitar at a microphone on a dim stage

    Jamaican musician, founder member of the Wailers

    Peter Tosh

    The Jamaican reggae singer whose 1976 album Legalize It made legalisation a song. Two years later he lit a spliff on stage in front of Michael Manley and Edward Seaga and told them to change the law; months later he was beaten in police custody.

    🇯🇲

  29. An elderly man speaking at a lectern in front of a projected slide

    Israeli chemist

    Raphael Mechoulam

    The Israeli chemist who identified THC in 1964, from five kilos of hashish lent by the police, and whose group later found the body's own cannabinoids. Much of what is known about how cannabis acts began in his laboratory.

    🇮🇱

  30. Black-and-white portrait of a man in a fez and a dark uniform with embroidered collar and epaulettes, looking to one side

    British police chief in Egyptian service

    Russell Pasha

    The British commandant of the Cairo police who led Egypt's war on heroin between the world wars, and told the League of Nations, against the American line, that hashish was a minor vice and its smokers no danger to anyone.

    🇪🇬

  31. Nineteenth-century engraved portrait of Sangula Meta, with closely cropped hair, pale facial markings and a beaded necklace.

    Religious leader in the Lulua Valley

    Sangula Meta

    A religious leader of the Bena Riamba whose authority helped sustain a cannabis-centred political order in the nineteenth-century Congo Basin. Her surviving portrait and biography come through interested European observers.

    🇨🇩

  32. Historical black-and-white photograph of Nigerian psychiatrist Thomas Adeoye Lambo seated at an academic gathering in 1975, wearing a ceremonial medallion.

    Nigerian psychiatrist

    Thomas Adeoye Lambo

    The Nigerian psychiatrist who made cannabis use a question of medicine and social change, shortly before military rulers made cultivation a capital crime.

    🇳🇬

  33. Tommy Chong holding a microphone and raising his hand while speaking to a crowd outdoors.

    Canadian-American comedian and cannabis-law reform advocate

    Tommy Chong

    The comedian who helped put cannabis users on screen with Cheech Marin, then served a federal prison sentence for a paraphernalia business. His comedy, prosecution and later campaigning connect popular culture with prohibition.

    🇺🇸 🇨🇦

  34. Willie Nelson in a black cowboy hat singing into a microphone on stage.

    American country musician and cannabis-law reform advocate

    Willie Nelson

    The country musician whose decades of support for NORML made cannabis reform part of his public life. Fundraising and advocacy continued alongside his own encounters with possession enforcement.

    🇺🇸

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