Queen Vic on pot?

[ATOB2]

Did Queen Victoria really smoke cannabis?

[albionboy]

No. But she took it as a tincture - dissolved in alcohol - to help combat her period pains. Victoria's personal physician once described cannabis as "one of the most valuable medicines we possess" and this statement is being used in the two current arguments: that cannabis should be permitted as a medicine; and that its recreational use should be decriminalised. The medicinal properties of cannabis were recognised as long ago as 3000BC, when the world's oldest surviving textbook on drugs, the Chinese Shen-Nung Pen-tshao, described its value in treating rheumatic pain, digestive disorders, malaria, and "female problems". Yet despite 50 centuries of experience in using the drug, a prescription medicine based on cannabis is unlikely to be available until 2004 at the earliest. Non-medicinal use of cannabis was first banned in Britain in 1928. However, the drug was available as both an extract and a tincture until it was controlled under schedule one of the Misuse of Drugs Act (1971).