Heather Steans, a leader in the state’s legalization movement, said when I asked for her preferred term. “We call it cannabis,” Illinois state Sen.
The cultivation of the cannabis plant from which the drug is derived is big business.
Now the medicinal uses of marijuana are more widely accepted. One Prohibition leader even blamed marijuana for “Satanic music,” by which he meant jazz and swing.īut that was another century. There remains debate about the word’s racist roots, but there’s no doubt that the rise of the word “marijuana” - for a substance previously known as “cannabis” or “Indian hemp” - came attached with ugly racial attitudes.
