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Acceptance of a polytypic composition of the genus 
Cannabis should not really lead to so much opposition as it 
seems to have caused in some botanical circles. As has been 
pointed out above, this opinion is nothing new and has 
been substantiated by critical work in wild populations. 
But there have been even greater changes in our con- 
cepts of Cannabis. For many years, the family to which 
Cannabis belongs has been uncertain. Early taxonomists 
tended to put Cannabis in the Urticaceae, the Nettle 
‘amily. Then, botanists tended to allocate the genus to 
the Moraceae, the Fig Family. Now, almost all botanists 
are in agreement that Cannabis should be classified in a 
separate family, the Cannabaceae (sometimes incorrectly 
called the Cannabinaceae or Cannabidiaceae), which in- 
cludes only two genera: Cannabis and the genus of the 
hops plant, Humulus. This change in outlook is much 
more drastic than the change from a monotypic to a 
polytypic concept of the specific composition of the 
genus—vet it has come about without the opposition 
which the proposal of several species instead of one 
extremely variable species has met in some. circles. 
Furthermore, the change in understanding of the chemi- 
cal makeup of the genus during the past few years—from 
four or five to more than twenty-nine cannabinolic struc- 
tures—has been even more drastic. 
Vi 
The principal field work on Cannabis was carried out 
more than forty-five years ago. We now have available 
more sophisticated and interdisciplinary techniques for 
arriving at taxonomic evaluation of generic, specific and 
subspecific classification of plants, especially of cultivated 
plants which have been manipulated and drastically al- 
tered through agricultural and horticultural practices ex- 
tending over thousands of years. 
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