Let's Be Blunt: Normalize Cannabis

Story by Rory Ball

The Cannabis Museum aims to shed light on its significance by telling the history of hemp in all forms.

Liz Jones, one of the staff at The Cannabis Museum, shows off one of the cannabis bottles collected from various pharmacies around the U.S. when cannabis was made illegal.

Photo by Jacob Durbin

Thousands of years ago, in cities and villages throughout modern-day Asia, Europe and the Middle East, people utilized hemp and cannabis plants for everyday uses in medicine, clothing and recreation. Today, hemp, characterized by its low tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content, and cannabis, characterized by its higher THC content, are a misunderstood plant species that can provide vital uses to people’s lives.

In Canaanville, Ohio, a small town just 10 minutes east of Athens, construction of The Cannabis Museum’s first location is underway. Currently, the museum relies on exhibitions on the road, traveling to Nelsonville, Athens, dispensaries in the Western U.S., Columbia and beyond to showcase historical cannabis and hemp artifacts.

For 30 years, Don Wirtschafter has collected more than 11,000 artifacts during his travels around the world which tell the history of cannabis and hemp uses in medicine, fuel, fiber and food. Ten years ago, Wirtschafter shifted focus from his work as an attorney to compiling his collection of artifacts into The Cannabis Museum.

Wirtschafter first began to understand the positive effects of cannabis in his life when he was in high school. His severe attention deficit disorder (ADD) made it difficult for Wirtschafter to focus, but cannabis helped him overcome symptoms. Immediately, he became an activist for cannabis.

“I realized that most everything that we were being taught about cannabis was a total lie, and that the plant was extremely useful and not nearly as dangerous as it was claimed[to be],” Wirtschafter says.

This early interest and acceptance of cannabis as a safe, useful source of medicine sparked interest in Wirtschafter, who now wants to inform people of the long history of cannabis throughout the world through his museum.

Liz Jones shows a package of cannabis made by Johnson & Johnson used for medicinal purposes at one time.

Photo by Jacob Durbin

In 1937, cannabis became illegal in the U.S. and seemingly disappeared from the general public. The plant was not only banned in the marketplace, but its history was erased in libraries and museums too. The illegalization of hemp and cannabis made it a taboo subject that was either left out of conversation or heavily criticized, which left people scared of the plant and modern medical industries ignorant to its uses.

“As an attorney, I got to travel the world meeting pharmaceutical executives who often heard that cannabis had never been accepted as a pharmaceutical in the past, and I knew that was wrong,” Wirtschafter says.

Having seen a photo of a Parke & Davis cannabis container dating before 1937, Wirtschafter that people had to have known about the medicinal benefits of cannabis and set out to find as many medicinal cannabis containers as he could. The museums features more than 1,100 containers dated during or before 1937 that have origins in old apothecaries and major pharmaceutical companies today.

“These jars were preserved for the future, for us, and so I am trying to put all of them in one place, because all of these jars together line up and tell an amazing story of the mainstream acceptance of cannabis,” Wirtschafter says. “It provides a good basis for people to understand this is not any new fact of medicine, this is something that was quite well accepted historically.”

With such a large collection of artifacts, Wirtschafter began seeking help to create the database of artifacts to bring the museum together. Liz Crow joined The Cannabis Museum staff in 2015 after meeting Wirtschafter at a protest against the cannabis monopoly. Crow, with a history in nursing and cannabis activism, understands the positive uses of cannabis as medicine historically and today.

“It is a natural plant that has all of these capable healing powers... cannabis can prolong the effects of opiates and make them more effective or replace the opiates altogether and there are many other things like [cannabis’s] use for seizures and epilepsy,” Crow says.

Joe Brumfield, artist, cartoonist and illustrator for the museum suffers from muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease that causes muscles toweaken and damage over time. Brumfield, like Wirtschafter, found cannabis in high school and, before he was diagnosed, used it to combat the unknown source of pain in his muscles.

Brumfield, who joined the museum in 2013, was introduced to the container collection and cannabis activism by his neighbor, Wirtschafter. He began by researching, taking photos of artifacts and uploading new items to the museum’s database. Recently, Brumfield has been able to focus more on his specialty, bringing cannabis history to life with art.

In his first exhibit for the museum, Brumfield created a ten-piece illustration outlining the early hemp harvesting process. Through color, he was able to tell the history of hemp harvesting procedures and tools to show visitors how normal and accepted hemp had once been in society.

A close-up of some of the cannabis bottles, all collected from pharmacies around the U.S.

Photo by Jacob Durbin

It can be hard to imagine the influence that the museum will have in a rural community in Southeast Ohio. The Canaanville exhibit space is a temporary location and will feature only small parts of the entire museum at once, giving the public a taste of what the museum will become.

Although the permanent location of the museum may be a challenge, there is something special the museum will bring to the area.

“There is a real deep history of cannabis in Southeast Ohio that is a story that is definitely worth telling,” Brumfield says. “[The museum] fits in better in a place like this because so much of the pre-prohibition stuff that we have were used and made in towns and places like this.”

The museum welcomes college students from Ohio University to visit and learn more about the history of cannabis in Athens and other cities around the world that they might travel to upon graduation. The Cannabis Museum has a partnership with OU and recently received two capacity building grants, which has allowed them to grow their knowledge through workshops and technology courses for their database.

As hemp and cannabis make their way back into mainstream culture, their uses vary and will become essential to growing industries throughout the world. Cannabis and hemp, once used for basic clothing, food and medicine are now entering electronic and communication industries.

In the article “Where Hemp Meets the Road: Automotive Bioplastics” for New Frontier Data, Calin Coman-Enescu discusses hemp’s influence on the automobile industry.

During the 1940’s, Henry Ford built a car made almost entirely out of hemp that ran on hemp-ethanol and now companies like BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes and Audio use hemp for door panels and dashboards. Hemp is nearly four times stronger and five times lighter than the usual petroleum-based plastics used to produce cars on the road today.

“Hemp has a lot of unique qualities in industries just learning now that they can use it,” Wirtschafter says. “Building materials out of hemp are probably the fastest growing sector that will become very huge in coming years because it is such a good addition to the present line of building materials.”

Though not focused on exhibits highlighting the future of cannabis and hemp quite yet, education, at its heart, is what the museum is all about. The museum is about infiltrating uneducated minds and create a welcoming, thoughtful environment that encapsulates the untold truth of cannabis and hemp.

“The goal, ultimately, is to change minds. It’s to put people’s minds at ease and show them that [cannabis] is not anything creepy or strange,” Brumfield says. “It is possible with the artwork that bringing some color and some life might pique someone’s interest.”