they smoked weed. they were selectively breeding hemp seeds for two purposes, textiles and smoking. farming journals show seed separation for those qualities. remember the first person arrested for marijuana in the 1930s was a poor white farmer wearing overalls. smoking was reintroduced to europe with tobacco but people have been using weed for millenia. greeks wrote about it, there's even more ancient braziers filled with hemp that have been found. cocaine was around too as well as opium. drugs were treated differently then and not very regulated. hemp was considered critical as much as food though. there's zero chance no one tried smoking it with the introduction of tobacco. it was the church that had issue with it being used outside of incesne but there were colonial laws that required growing hemp if you owned a plantation.
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