Cannabis sat in the American pharmacopeia for decades under the name cannabis. It was in tincture bottles at the drugstore.

When the Federal Bureau of Narcotics went to work under Harry Anslinger in the 1930s, the word pushed into the newspapers and into the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was marihuana. Not a scientific term. A Spanish language term. Selected because it sounded foreign and made a familiar plant feel like an invasion.