Incluye referencias bibliográficas e índice.

Cannabis and the psychoactive riddle -- Cannabis and the colonial milieu -- The discovery of marijuana in Mexico -- The place of marijuana in Mexico, 1846-1920 -- Explaining the missing counterdiscourse I: the science of drugs and madness -- Explaining the missing counterdiscourse II: people, environments, and degeneration -- Did marijuana really cause "madness" and violence in Mexico? -- National legislation and the birth of Mexico's war on drugs -- Postscript: Mexican ideas move North.

Isaac Campos combines wide-ranging archival research with scholarship on the social and cultural dimensions of drug-related behavior in this telling of marijuana's remarkable history in Mexico. Introduced in the sixteenth century by the Spanish, cannabis came to Mexico as an industrial fiber and symbol of European empire. But, Campos demonstrates, as it gradually spread to indigenous pharmacopoeias, then prisons and soldiers' barracks, it took on both a Mexican name--marijuana--and identity as a quintessentially "Mexican" drug. A century ago, Mexicans believed that marijuana could instantly trigger madness and violence in its users, and the drug was outlawed nationwide in 1920. This book is a guide for anyone who hopes to understand the deep and complex origins of marijuana's controversial place in North American history -- Cubierta.