Talk:Cannabis (drug)

Article is US centric
Some sections only cite US data and examples.

More seriously, many data and examples which are presumably from the US, are cited without mention of which country they refer to. Some readers may mistakenly assume they refer the world as a whole. Spel-Punc-Gram (talk) 13:14, 26 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to change it. We encourage you to be bold in updating pages, because wikis like ours develop faster when everybody edits. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move 8 March 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) Killarnee (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Cannabis (drug) → Marijuana – It is by far the more common name, and confusion due to two cannabis articles existing is gone. Youprayteas talk/contribs 13:40, 8 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Not this again. Bon courage (talk) 13:52, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * This is not a protected edit request, you need to !vote. I am pulling consensus for a controversial move. I am already well over extended confirmed. Youprayteas talk/contribs 13:59, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * And has anything changed since the last umpteen times this was discussed? Bon courage (talk) 14:00, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I have read past nominations and I still don't understand how this isn't accepted. I am not even American, I have never in my life have heard of cannabis being used. Also, this guy just proves Marijuana is better. Youprayteas talk/contribs 14:09, 8 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Weak Support, mainly because of this n-gram. "Marijuana" seems the informal but better-known term when it comes to the intoxicant. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:15, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * You mean an n-gram (not a very useful guage of much anyway) is showing "cannabis" is even more prevalent than the last time this move request failed? Bon courage (talk) 14:19, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * n-grams end in 2019, so if this hasn't been discussed in five years then maybe worth at least a nom and discussion. When was the last RM? The name of the plant genus is cannabis, but it that the common name of the intoxicant, although, to your point, this n-gram shows Cannabis culture the common name of the surrounding cultural events. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:25, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Did you even look at this n-gram? While it currently shows marijuana to have more mentions than cannabis, the trend for the past 25 years has been consistently downhill for marijuana in favor of cannabis, which means that for the past 25 years, people have been transitioning from marijuana to cannabis, so renaming the article from cannabis to marijuana would be going directly against this trend (moving backwards). Thoric (talk) 21:49, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * We should not be trying to predict the future evolution of a trend we perceive in past history. As they say in investment prospectuses, "past performance is not a guarantee of future results." Wikipedia tries to the usage in independent reliable sources, not to lead it. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 02:07, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Perhaps link Marijuana (word) in the lead for Americans. Moxy 🍁 15:50, 8 March 2024 (UTC)


 * Oppose: This was already discussed extensively, Talk:Cannabis_(drug)/Archive_9. Same rational as User:Doc James in the previous discussion. -- Wiki Linuz  ( talk ) 16:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * There's a more recent one at Talk:Cannabis (drug)/Archive 12, but even that was more than 6 years ago. The one in Archive 9 was more than a decade ago. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sufficiently discussed/decided before. Cannabis remains the term used by national regulatory agencies responsible for consumer safety of cannabis, the drug. Zefr (talk) 16:08, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment For WP:NATDIS purposes, I would not mind a move to Cannabis as a drug (or a similar wording). JohnCWiesenthal (talk) 18:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Comment: Please see Talk:Polio/Archive 6. This drug is commonly discussed by the general public and in the popular press. At some point it becomes more important to reflect the common name used by the general public rather than a more formal name used by medical specialists and/or official regulatory agencies. WP:NATDIS is also relevant. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:04, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Marijuana redirects to Cannabis (drug), and the article prominently mentions that it's known as marijuana in the first sentence, so nobody is going to be confused -- they are going to be educated in using the correct word. Thoric (talk) 21:07, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Opposed. First of all, Marijuana is a questionable word, which is strongly associated with subversive American anti-drug efforts, and also has strong ties to racism. It is not the proper encyclopedic term for the plant, and it is not the international term for the drug outside of the USA. In Canada, we have the Cannabis Act, and no longer use this derogatory American slur. --Thoric (talk) 20:40, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I saw some comments saying similar things in the previous RM, but as far as I could tell, the idea of it being just an Americanism or being 'outdated' seemed to have no evidence. Isn't that just false? Even if it is more common in American English, WP:ENGVAR would allow use of an American term for an article that is written in American English, which this one is. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:52, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
 * This is not a matter of a regional variation, such as the word elevator vs lift, as 'marijuana' is no longer in widespread use outside of the USA, and the Americas includes many other countries -- such as Canada, which have stopped using that word. Also the word marijuana isn't outdated because it is old -- the word cannabis is far older, and was in regular widespread use long before "marijuana" came along. It is outdated because it is not politically correct. Thoric (talk) 21:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Again with no evidence. And it appears that evidence of such assertions being false was provided in the previous discussion. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:12, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * No evidence for what, specifically? Canada stopped using the term "marijuana" for this exact reason. Canada enacted the "Marihuana Medical Access Regulations" (MMAR) in 2001, which were replaced by the "Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations" (ACMPR) in 2016, and all subsequent government cannabis regulations used the word "cannabis", and not "marihuana" or "marijuana". We have the Cannabis Act of 2018, which has fully legalized access to cannabis in Canada for all adults. If you google search marijuana racist you will get millions of results, which include plenty of supporting evidence, and this trend is starting to happen in the USA as well. The Governor of Washington signed a bill replacing the word marijuana with cannabis in the text of all state laws. Thoric (talk) 21:29, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * No evidence was provided that the word "is strongly associated [with] subversive American anti-drug efforts, and also [currently has] strong ties to racism" and no evidence of the word being "not the international term for the drug outside of the USA" / "no longer in widespread use outside of the USA". In your new comment, you now said that Canada doesn't use the term in some new laws, and linked to an article about one of those laws. That's interesting to hear, but no evidence of it was provided (and especially no evidence of the motivation). The article you linked to about the law does not say anything about what terminology is used in the law and why, and it cites 18 sources that use the word "marijuana" as a neutral word in their headlines. In fact, especially when discounting quotes of the name of the act itself, it looks like fewer than half as many sources cited in that article use the word "cannabis" in their headlines, which seems to be evidence that most reporting about the Canada law topic (generally including Canadian sources) prefers to use the word "marijuana". You provided a link to a law of the state of Washington, which is also interesting, but it does not directly say anything about "anti-drug efforts" or "ties to racism" or "the international term" or why the law was changed – perhaps it was motivated just by a desire for consistency and a more medical/scientific terminology –  I can only speculate about that. You have invited me to search Google, which is not evidence and not a reliable source. Trying to go along with this rather dismissive suggestion, the first links I find are an NPR article and a news report that say that while "some people think" the term is racist, the claims of racism are not so clear cut. It's necessary to separate the idea of whether racism was involved in the outlawing of the drug from whether the word reflects racism or not –  including whether the word is currently considered racist or currently associated with "subversive American anti-drug efforts". The Guardian says that "some say" it's a racist word, including a vendor called Harborside, but not that it is currently generally considered that way. On the contrary, the article itself uses the word more than the word cannabis in a generally neutral way, and says the origin of the word is unknown and the two terms are "used more or less interchangeably in the industry". (I think I've spent enough of my time on this, so please forgive me if I am not very responsive in the future; I still see no evidence here –  just assertions.) —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:24, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Why do you insist on using straw man arguments? I obvious didn't provide those examples as direct proof of racism or of anti-drug efforts, I was just citing official examples where governments have switched from using the term marihuana/marijuana to cannabis.
 * Here are some resources more specific to what you are asking for: Racism and Its Effect on Cannabis Research, Why Is Marijuana Illegal in the U.S.?, The Racist Roots of Marijuana Prohibition, Marijuana: is it time to stop using a word with racist roots?, The Surprising Link Between U.S. Marijuana Law and the History of Immigration, Marijuana Prohibition Was Racist From The Start. Not Much Has Changed.. Thoric (talk) 00:38, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I did not use any straw-man arguments and I resent being accused of that. I directly quoted your own assertions, and pointed out that you and others had provided no evidence for them. A quick look at the new articles you just now cited seems to show that they mostly talk about a link between racism/xenophobia and the historical prohibition of marijuana, and maybe say that racist/xenophobic motivations were involved in choosing to use that word historically, but that is different from saying the word itself was racist or is generally considered objectionable today. Most or all of those articles use "marijuana" as a neutral term themselves within their own text and headlines. In fact the last one you listed (HufffPost) does not include the word "cannabis" at all, and some of the others barely use that word – in fact they seem to support the idea that the dominant familiar and current term for the drug is "marijuana". The Britannica article uses "marijuana" 11 times and "cannabis" only twice. It says that "some speculated" that the word was chosen to be used to stoke xenophobia, but it does not say that this is a widely-held or factually accurate view or that the word itself was a problem or that it retains such an overtone today. I can't find a discussion of the word in the last one (HufffPost) –  it seems to only discuss the prohibition, not the word. The same is true for the Time article –  no mention of the word as a word –  and it uses "marijuana" 30 times and "cannabis" only 9 times (typically using it to describe the plant and explicitly saying that "the drug produced from that plant" is called "marihuana or mariguana in Mexican Spanish and marijuana in English"). The first one is in medical specialist literature, which has its own conventions for using more formalized medical/scientific vocabulary. That is the only one of those that has the word "cannabis" in its headline and uses that word a lot. That set of articles, despite being chosen as evidence that the word is a problem, basically look like evidence that the topic is primarily currently referred to as "marijuana" in articles written for the general public and that the term "marijuana" is well accepted as a neutral term among the mainstream populace. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 01:22, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
 * opposed per the vast majority of above comments--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:17, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support, as the term Marijuana is common outside of the western world and often more understood than cannabis. Zoozoor (talk) 18:28, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Well, the most common names are weed and pot, but obviously weed (drug) or pot (drug) would be too informal for the title. Fish567 (talk) 13:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose for the same reasons as discussed many times before. OhNo itsJamie Talk 13:36, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Requested move, additional comments, 2024
A comment on the above Requested move... this is like at least the seventh time people have requested a move to marijuana since I last mentioned this continuous move requesting issue back in 2006 --Talk:Cannabis_(drug)/Archive_3, when it had been happening over and over again. Can we not put up some sort of sticky notice in the talk page that doesn't get archived, with a list of all the requests to move in the past that failed to pass with a notice to please stop requesting move/rename on this article without reading all the previous request to moves and why the request didn't pass, or maybe we can just keep a few really, really good reasons not to request a move to marijuana sticky in the talk page, without archiving them, or is everyone really happy to have this come up again and again? --Thoric (talk) 05:10, 20 March 2024 (UTC) Btw, here are a few of them:
 * Talk:Cannabis_(drug)/Archive_3
 * Talk:Cannabis_(drug)/Archive_5
 * Talk:Cannabis_(drug)/Archive_6
 * Talk:Cannabis_(drug)/Archive_9
 * Talk:Cannabis_(drug)/Archive_10
 * Talk:Cannabis_(drug)/Archive_12 --Thoric (talk) 05:20, 20 March 2024 (UTC)


 * I think we need to put this in an FAQ at this point. The discussion/request has happened too many times already. Turtletennisfogwheat (talk) 01:21, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes agree.... could also make an edit notice. Moxy 🍁 02:07, 6 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I've added it Turtletennisfogwheat (talk) 09:31, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you! Thoric (talk) 14:57, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Error in facts of legalization
Article states "In Australia, it is legalized only in the Australian Capital Territory." This is incorrect as it has only been decriminalised. This is mentioned at https://www.act.gov.au/cannabis/home#:~:text=Q.,put%20through%20the%20justice%20system. in the Q and A section. should be changed to "In Australia, it is illegal, with it only being decriminalised in the Australian Capital Territory." GoldRequiem64 (talk) 07:49, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Etymology
I suggest someone with the knowhow to utilize the Wiktionary page below to rewrite the etymology section on this. Please do not try to use a new age book on spirituality for the source, use credible sources, such as those cited on the page below.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CE%AC%CE%BD%CE%BD%CE%B1%CE%B2%CE%B9%CF%82#Ancient_Greek Tommygunn7886 (talk) 18:06, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Please stop edit warring. You are removing reliable sources citing subject matter experts. Wiktionary, tertiary sources like online dictionaries, and etymonline.com (a SPS), are not reliable sources. A Rainbow Footing It (talk) 21:47, 18 June 2024 (UTC)