14 DAY TRIAL // In a report recently published in the American Journal of Human Biology, a team of researchers at Washington State University argue that it could be that we humans have an inborn taste for cannabis, kind of like how we are born with a taste for salt.
In not so many words, our body knows that it can do us good and sends us looking for it. “In the same way we have a taste for salt, we might have a taste for psychoactive plant toxins,” said scientist Ed Hagen in a statement, as cited by EurekAlert.
The Washington State University team base their claim that the human body might be hardwired to desire cannabis on the find that Aka hunter-gatherers living isolated in Africa who smoke this weed are less likely to be infected by intestinal worms.
The researchers theorize that, even without their knowing, these people are probably smoking cannabis for medicinal purposes, i.e. to rid their bodies of parasites. Interestingly, neither of the hunter-gatherers who were interviewed said they smoked cannabis for medical reasons.
The general view is that cannabis is a recreational drug that people smoke or consume in some other form in an attempt to have some fun. Ed Hagen says that, since this drug and other so-called psychoactive drugs also contain toxins, there has to be more to it.
The specialists theorize that, like other species of animals, humans have evolved to instinctively desire plants and compounds that can keep them healthy. By the looks of it, cannabis is one of these plants. At least when it comes to doing away with intestinal worms.
“So we thought, 'Why would so many people around the world be using plant toxins in this very 'recreational' way?' If you look at non-human animals, they do the same thing, and what a lot of biologists think is they're doing it to kill parasites,” said Ed Hagen.