The History of CBD: From Ancient Hemp to Modern Science | PureCraft CBD

Disclaimer  |  This article is for informational and educational purposes only. The content on this page has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). PureCraft CBD products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition.

The History of CBD: From Ancient Hemp to Modern Science

CBD has been one of the fastest-growing wellness categories of the 21st century — but its story is thousands of years old. The hemp plant that produces CBDhas been used by human civilizations for medicine, fiber, and ritual for at least five millennia. CBD itself wasn't isolated until 1940, wasn't fully characterized until 1963, and didn't have a pharmacological explanation until the discovery of the endocannabinoid system in the 1990s. Its legal journey in the United States — from banned Schedule I compound to FDA-approved pharmaceutical — is one of the more remarkable regulatory stories in modern medicine.

This guide tells that story from beginning to present: the ancient roots, the scientific breakthroughs, the political suppression that set research back decades, the singular moment that catalyzed the modern CBD industry, and the regulatory milestones that have brought us to where we are today.

Ancient Roots: 5,000 Years of Hemp as Medicine

Cannabis sativa has been cultivated by humans for at least 10,000 years — primarily for hemp fiber used in rope, textiles, and building materials. The medicinal use of cannabis followed closely behind.

Ancient China

The earliest documented therapeutic use of cannabis appears in Chinese texts attributed to the legendary Emperor Shen Nung around 2700 BCE. The classic Chinese pharmacopeia 'Pen Ts'ao Ching' — compiled in the first or second century CE but attributed to Shen Nung — describes cannabis as effective for more than 100 ailments including gout, rheumatism, malaria, and absent-mindedness. Hemp seed oil was used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years. China also has the earliest archaeological evidence of hemp cultivation, dating to approximately 10,000 BCE in Taiwan.

Ancient India

Cannabis appears in the Atharva Veda — one of the four sacred Hindu texts, dating to roughly 1500–2000 BCE — as one of five sacred plants. Ayurvedic medicine systematically incorporated cannabis for pain, inflammation, and mental clarity. Bhang (a cannabis preparation) remains part of Hindu religious tradition today.

Ancient Egypt and the Middle East

Egyptian papyri dating to approximately 1550 BCE reference cannabis in medical preparations. Archaeological evidence shows cannabis use in ancient Israel, Persia, and throughout the ancient Near East. The Zoroastrian text Zend-Avesta (approximately 700 BCE) lists cannabis among the most important of 10,000 sacred plants.

Greek and Roman Observations

Herodotus (~450 BCE) documented Scythians inhaling cannabis vapors in ritual steam baths — one of the first Western historical accounts of the psychoactive use of cannabis. The Greek physician Dioscorides (first century CE) described cannabis in his 'De Materia Medica' for its analgesic properties. Roman physician Pliny the Elder documented cannabis for pain relief in his 'Natural History.' These observations — written millennia before anyone knew what CBDor THC was — were recording the effects of the same compounds that science would not isolate until the 20th century.

Cannabis in Western Medicine: 1800–1937

Before prohibition, cannabis was a mainstream ingredient in Western medicine.Queen Victoria's physician, Sir J. Russell Reynolds, prescribed cannabis tinctures for menstrual cramps, neuralgia, and migraines — writing in The Lancet in 1890 that 'Indian hemp, when pure and administered carefully, is one of the most valuable medicines we possess.' Cannabis tinctures were listed in the United States Pharmacopeia from 1850 to 1942.

By the early 1900s, cannabis extracts were manufactured by major pharmaceutical companies including Parke-Davis (now part of Pfizer), Squibb (now Bristol Myers Squibb), and Eli Lilly. Physicians prescribed cannabis-containing products for pain, sleep, anxiety, and spasm. No one in this era knew about CBD specifically — they were using whole-plant preparations that contained CBD, THC, and the full phytocannabinoid profile.

The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937: Prohibition and the Lost Decades

The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act — passed despite vocal opposition from the American Medical Association, which argued that cannabis had legitimate medical uses and that criminalizing it would impede medical research — effectively ended commercial cannabis in the United States. The bill's passage was driven by a complex mix of political, racial, and economic factors that historians have extensively documented.

The practical result for CBD research: American scientists were largely cut off from researching cannabis compounds for the next four decades. The most productive cannabinoid research of this era happened not in the United States but in Israel, where chemist Raphael Mechoulam would change the history of CBD science.

Raphael Mechoulam and the Scientific Discovery of CBD

The modern scientific history of CBD begins with two men: an American chemist who first isolated CBD, and an Israeli chemist who explained what it was.

Roger Adams Isolates CBD (1940)

In 1940, Roger Adams at the University of Illinois achieved the first isolation of CBD from cannabis extract — separating it from other plant compounds and beginning to characterize its properties. Adams published several papers on CBD in the early 1940s and received a patent for its isolation process. However, Adams could not determine CBD's complete structure with the analytical tools available at the time — that would have to wait more than two decades.

Mechoulam Determines CBD's Complete Structure (1963)

Raphael Mechoulam — then a young chemist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — obtained 5 kilograms of Lebanese hashish from the Israeli police and, with Yuval Shvo, determined the complete chemical structure of CBD in 1963. The following year, 1964, Mechoulam isolated and synthesized THC — demonstrating that THC, not CBD, was responsible for cannabis's psychoactive effects. By establishing that CBD was structurally distinct from THC and non-psychoactive, Mechoulam laid the foundation for all subsequent CBD research. His 1980 clinical trial showing CBD's anti-seizure effects in epilepsy patients — conducted decades before Epidiolex — was the first suggestion of CBD's therapeutic potential that would eventually lead to an FDA-approved drug.

The Endocannabinoid System: The Missing Piece (1988–1995)

For twenty years after Mechoulam characterized CBD and THC, researchers understood what these compounds did but not how they did it. The discovery of the endocannabinoid system in the late 1980s and early 1990s changed everything.

CB1 was identified in 1988 and cloned in 1990. The discovery of CB1 immediately raised the question that changed the field: why does the human brain have a receptor specifically shaped to bind a plant compound? The answer, arrived at in 1992, was anandamide — the body's own endocannabinoid. CB2 followed in 1993. 2-AG, the second major endocannabinoid, was isolated in 1995. Suddenly, CBD and THC weren't just interesting plant compounds — they were keys that fit biological locks the body had built for its own endogenous ligands. The science could finally explain the mechanism. For the full ECS story, seeWhat Is the Endocannabinoid System?.

CBD History Timeline: Key Dates

Charlotte's Web and the Modern CBD Movement (2013)

If Mechoulam's science is the intellectual foundation of the modern CBD industry, Charlotte Figi is its human story. Charlotte was born in 2006 with Dravet syndrome — a severe, drug-resistant form of epilepsy that produced hundreds of seizures per week and left her unable to walk, talk, or eat. By age five, no pharmaceutical had controlled her seizures.

The Figi family learned of the Stanley Brothers in Colorado, who had bred a high-CBD, low-THC hemp strain. They began giving Charlotte a CBD-rich oil extract— and her seizures dropped from approximately 300 per week to fewer than 3 per month. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who had previously publicly dismissed cannabis as medicine, reversed his position and documented Charlotte's case in a 2013 documentary called 'Weed.' The segment was watched by millions and became the catalyst for a wave of families seeking CBD for treatment-resistant epilepsy. The Stanley Brothers named the CBD strain Charlotte's Web in her honor.

Charlotte passed away in April 2020 at age 13. Her story remains the most powerful example of CBD's potential and the human cost of the research delays caused by decades of prohibition. She is the reason Epidiolex exists — the FDA approval that followed was a direct result of the clinical research her case inspired.

The 2018 Farm Bill and FDA Epidiolex Approval: Legal Legitimacy

Epidiolex — The First CBD Drug (2018)

In June 2018, the FDA approved Epidiolex (cannabidiol oral solution 100mg/mL) for treatment of seizures associated with Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome in patients two years and older. This approval — achieved through the standard FDA drug approval process with robust clinical trial data — cemented CBD's scientific legitimacy at the highest regulatory level. GW Pharmaceuticals (now Jazz Pharmaceuticals) had spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars conducting the randomized controlled trials that led to this approval. The FDA's decision made CBD the first plant-derived cannabinoid to receive FDA approval for any indication.

The 2018 Farm Bill — Legal Hemp CBD

Five months later, in December 2018, the Agricultural Improvement Act (the 2018 Farm Bill) removed hemp — defined as Cannabis sativa with less than 0.3% THC — from the Controlled Substances Act. This created a federal legal framework for hemp cultivation and hemp-derived products including CBD. The CBD market, which had been operating in a regulatory gray zone since the 2014 Farm Bill's pilot program provisions, exploded. Between 2018 and 2020, the US CBD market grew from approximately $620 million to over $4 billion.

The Federal Government's Own CBD Patent: A Historical Irony

One of the most striking moments in CBD's regulatory history: while cannabis remained Schedule I (no accepted medical use, high abuse potential), the United States Department of Health and Human Services held Patent No. 6,630,507 — titled 'Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants' — which it had been granted in 2003.

The patent, filed in 1999, claimed cannabinoids including CBD as antioxidants and neuroprotectants useful for treating neurological conditions including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and stroke. The federal government simultaneously maintained that cannabis had 'no accepted medical use' (Schedule I classification) while holding a patent on cannabis-derived neuroprotectants. This contradiction was widely noted by researchers, advocates, and legal scholars as one of the more absurd moments in the policy history of cannabinoids.

CBD Today: From Counterculture to Clinical Science

The CBD of 2027 bears little resemblance to the underground hemp oil of 2010. What has changed:

Frequently Asked Questions

When was CBD first discovered?

CBD was first isolated by Roger Adams at the University of Illinois in 1940. Its complete chemical structure was determined by Raphael Mechoulam and Yuval Shvo in Israel in 1963. The biological mechanism explaining how CBD works — the endocannabinoid system — wasn't discovered until 1988–1995. The legal framework for hemp-derived CBD in the United States wasn't established until the 2018 Farm Bill.

Who discovered CBD?

Roger Adams is credited with the first isolation of CBD in 1940, though he could not determine its complete structure. Raphael Mechoulam — often called the 'father of cannabis research' — determined CBD's complete molecular structure in 1963 and isolated THC in 1964, establishing the scientific distinction between the two compounds. Mechoulam's subsequent discovery of anandamide and the endocannabinoid system in 1992 provided the biological explanation for how CBD works.

What is Charlotte's Web CBD?

Charlotte's Web is a high-CBD, low-THC hemp strain bred by the Stanley Brothers in Colorado and originally given to Charlotte Figi, a child with Dravet syndrome whose seizures were dramatically reduced by CBD. The strain and the resulting CBD oil were named in her honor after CNN's 2013 documentary brought her story to international attention. Charlotte's Web Hemp became one of the first widely known CBD brands and remains associated with Charlotte's legacy. Charlotte passed away in April 2020.

When did CBD become legal in the United States?

Hemp-derived CBD became federally legal in the United States in December 2018 when the Agricultural Improvement Act (2018 Farm Bill) removed hemp (cannabis with less than 0.3% THC) from the Controlled Substances Act. Before this, CBD occupieda regulatory gray zone following the 2014 Farm Bill's hemp pilot program provisions. CBD from marijuana (high-THC cannabis) remains Schedule I at the federal level regardless of state laws.

A 5,000-Year Journey to Your Medicine Cabinet

The history of CBD is simultaneously ancient and brand new. Shen Nung's pharmacopeia, Queen Victoria's physician, Raphael Mechoulam's laboratory, Charlotte Figi's story, and the 2018 Farm Bill are chapters in a story that spans fifty centuries — from hemp as a sacred plant to hemp as an FDA-approved pharmaceutical.

What makes the current moment unique is not just the legal legitimacy or the market size — it's the scientific infrastructure. For the first time in 5,000 years of human use of cannabis, we have a complete biological explanation for why it does what it does. We have the endocannabinoid system. We have RCTs. We have COA verification. We have nanotechnology that delivers CBD at nearly full bioavailability. The ancient plant and the modern science have finally met.

PureCraft's nano-optimized broad-spectrum CBD is the product of that 5,000-year journey.View our full product line.

Disclaimer |  This article is for informational and historical purposes only. The content on this page has not been evaluated by the FDA. PureCraft CBD products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition.

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