> In my (European) country [...]
Your country, and even Europe as a whole, is not the same thing as humanity.
Documented pharmacological uses seems to be at least since 2,800 BC [0], cultivation seems to be at least another 5,000 years or so before that.
[0] https://www.sydney.edu.au/lambert/medicinal-cannabis/history...
What a strange thing to say, when the previous commenter wasn't saying the opposite. They were citing when weed became legal, socially accepted, and permeating of their culture, which is the topic.
Edit: As an aside, this whole discussion began with on the topic of prohibition in regard to alcohol, which for a lot of people that term specifically refers to a period in the United States during the 1920s-1933. I’m not sure if the colonel was referring to a different European prohibition or how the rise in ubiquity of cannabis in the 90s has to do with their initial point, if at all.
For my point it's irrelevant if people used cannabis thousands of years ago and then stopped.
My point is that weed had no presence in culture or social acceptance pre-1990. Weed is therefore much easier to ban than alcohol and not comparable to the difficulty of banning alcohol.
I don't know the history of weed in US, but my guess is that it's roughly similar.
I guess you could find it here and there earlier than that, but it was quite rare.