I tried using Google but I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I’m curious if anyone knows the history of cannabis in Taiwan, specifically when it became illegal, why it became illegal (like just following another foreign government’s policy), and did it ever enjoy a legal status?
Thanks for any leads or info!
Umm. It’s never been legal.
When did it become available?
Wikipedia says Japan passed their first cannibas control law in 1948 so must have been the KMT who made the decision during martial law years.
1955 maybe
https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawHistory.aspx?pcode=C0000008
Japan was basically governed by the US during that time, and Taiwan likely outlawed it at the behest of the US. I believe historically, at least after WWII, the US went extraordinary lengths to outlaw marijuana all over the world.
It became illegal after the release of the Lumberjack song
Monty Python - Lumberjack Song (youtube.com)
What do you mean? The earliest evidence of human cultivation is on the island. So at some point it became illegal.
The aboriginals should push to be able to grow it for cultural preservation 
Cannabis grows all over the island, and the first evidence of cannabis usage was found in China. I’d say East Asians are very familiar with Cannabis before the US made a big deal out of it. Back then it had multiple purposes, such as making rope and clothes, and just just bred for its medicinal properties, so it was nowhere as potent as what’s available on the market these days.
I’ve never heard that before
I believe the first evidence of cultivation is found in Taiwan but most likely used to make materials out of the cannabis plant as no evidence has been found it was used medicinally.
Earliest evidence of cannabis use as a drug is found in China.
But when the KMT took over the country, they brought their laws and legal system with it.
Ah, modern day China, but long before the Chinese empire pushed that far west. Hotan, I’ve been there.
Xinjiang has an interesting and long history, shrouded in mystery, and outside the scope of this thread
What did that legal system include?
KMT was also America’s stooge and will do anything America tell them to do. If America tells them to outlaw weed, they ask “where do we shoot them?”
But weed is even more outlawed in PRC, so I don’t know.
yeah. My general understanding of why it’s so illegal everywhere is that the US made it illegal as a means of controlling native people and Mexicans and they basically told the rest of the world that if you want to trade with us, you better make it super illegal too.
That’s a super abbreviated history that skips a lot of details, but it’s really what we should be thinking about as we think of who was helped (the people in power) and who was not (anyone the government wanted to control) throughout the War on Drugs (anyone protesting Vietnam = LSD went from something legitimately being studied scientifically to a hard no if you didn’t wanna be locked up, but only if you’re a hippie, for another example).
Marco probably means it’s never been legal in Taiwan. In that, the legal entity we enjoy today as called Taiwan, it wasn’t legal. The land mass we now call Taiwan has had it for a very long time.
Back in the day people just called it food…and used it to better their infrastructure.
Bit sad that, in some ways, “Chinese” culture has become more oppressive today than it used to be. Ironic.
Also, the UN. Then the black market which is created by prosecuting such a food. It’s been a complete shit show, unethical mine field of gangsters ever since the government “solved” the “problem” 
But, to be fair. Controlling freedom of expression is kinda par for the course in ethnic Chinese societies.
https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/戡亂時期肅清煙毒條例_(民國44年)
Chapter VI. Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances
TITLE 18. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, as amended by the Protocol amending the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961. New York, 8 August 1975
From (above) UN document.
A guess could be 1961 when ROC a part of UN.
Fuck is it illegal?
Just now, Googling around, I encountered some writings that gave me the impression that the thing under discussion here was at one time considered to be something on the order of, or something similar to, a sacrament by some Shinto practitioners. For example:
–妙心雜誌－－台灣佛教、專題報導﹛第 ３９ 期〔87('99).03.01〕
Another example:
–總力戰與 臺灣, 日本殖民地的崩潰, 臺灣研究叢書 03, 近藤正己著,林詩庭譯
I don’t know Chinese, so I used Google Translate, but I decided to post these snippets “as is,” because of the possible sensitivity of the subject, and in case any persons wanted to provide their own translation(s). Additionally, it’s entirely possible that I took the above quotes out of context.
A word of caution: treating the thing under discussion as a sacrament in our present environment may well produce very unhappy results.