LIAMBA: Brazil’s African Cannabis Story

 From Portuguese hemp and African smoking traditions to racialized prohibition and modern reform, Brazil’s cannabis history developed through several distinct paths.

Hemp at Landfall

When Portuguese ships reached Brazil in 1500, they arrived carrying hemp rope and sails.

That confirms hemp fiber crossed the Atlantic with European ships, but it does not prove cannabis seed was planted in Brazil at that time.

The history of psychoactive cannabis appears to follow a different route.

The African Route

Psychoactive cannabis was likely introduced through African networks, particularly through enslaved people from West-Central Africa and Angola who carried plant knowledge, smoking traditions and vocabulary into Brazil.

Oral histories later recalled “Congoes” arriving with seeds.

The exact date of introduction remains uncertain, but the evidence points to cannabis being established by at least the 18th century.

Palmares, Angola & Cultural Memory

Brazilian scholar Edison Carneiro later wrote that quilombolas associated with Palmares smoked liamba, describing it as “smoke from Angola.”

He connected the practice with banzo and saudade, terms associated with grief and longing for Africa.

These writings are important cultural memory, but they were recorded centuries after Palmares and should not be treated as eyewitness evidence of 17th-century cannabis use.

How Liamba Was Smoked

Carneiro described liamba being smoked through a clay pipe connected to a tube that passed through water, cooling the smoke before inhalation.

That detail matters because the historical phrase pito do pango should not automatically be translated as a modern joint.

Brazilian cannabis smoking included its own regional tools and traditions.

Portugal’s Crown Hemp Project

Cannabis also entered Brazil through an entirely different agricultural system.

In 1783, Portugal founded the Real Feitoria do Linho Cânhamo in Rio Grande do Sul to produce hemp for naval use.

The operation relied on enslaved labor.

By 1785, hempseed was also being sent to São Paulo, showing that the Portuguese Crown was actively attempting to establish cannabis as an industrial fiber crop.

Pango, Diamba, Liamba & Maconha

Cannabis accumulated many names across Brazil.

Historical sources used terms including pango, diamba, liamba, maconha, fumo de Angola and fumo bravo.

In 1869, explorer Richard Burton recorded miners using the word ariri.

The vocabulary itself reflects the plant’s movement through African, Portuguese and Brazilian communities.

1830: Rio’s Cannabis Ban

In 1830, Rio de Janeiro prohibited the sale and use of pito do pango.

Sellers faced a 20 mil-réis fine, while users could receive 3 days in jail.

An 1854 code increased the punishment for users to 8 days.

These early restrictions were local rather than national, but they became an important part of Brazil’s longer cannabis prohibition history.

Cannabis in the Pharmacy

By the late 1800s, cannabis occupied a contradictory position.

Products such as Grimault’s Indian cannabis cigarettes were sold as treatments for asthma, even while Black Brazilians associated with traditional cannabis use faced policing and criminalization.

The same plant could appear as medicine in a pharmacy and as a target of social control in another setting.

Racist Science & International Prohibition

In 1915, physician Rodrigues Dória portrayed cannabis as an African vice linked to madness, degeneration and social disorder.

That framing helped turn racial prejudice into supposedly scientific justification for prohibition.

At the 1924–25 Geneva Opium Conference, Brazilian delegate Pernambuco Filho reportedly described cannabis as “more dangerous than opium.”

By this period, cannabis was moving from local policing into national and international drug-control policy.

National Control

Brazil formally tightened cannabis regulation in the 1930s.

Decree 20.930 of 1932 placed Cannabis indica under national drug control.

Then, in 1938, Decree-Law 891 prohibited private cultivation and explicitly listed names including “maconha, meconha, diamba, liamba.”

Cannabis had moved from a regional custom and agricultural crop into a nationally controlled substance.

An Unfinished Reform

Brazil began loosening criminal penalties in the 21st century, but reform remained incomplete.

The 2006 drug law removed prison as a punishment for personal possession, while leaving police and judges to distinguish between users and dealers.

In 2024, the Supreme Federal Court, or STF, made possession for personal use noncriminal and established a presumption of personal use for amounts up to 40 grams or 6 female plants.

Licensed medical cultivation followed in 2026.

Adult-use commercial sales, however, remain illegal.

Legacy

Brazil’s cannabis history was never one single story.

Hemp arrived through Portuguese ships and Crown agriculture. Psychoactive cannabis carried strong African cultural roots. Liamba moved through smoking traditions, burial memories, pharmacies, police codes and racist medical theories before becoming a target of national prohibition.

The modern reform era has begun undoing parts of that history, but the process remains incomplete.

Brazil’s cannabis story is ultimately a story of migration, labor, culture, criminalization and survival.

By Nuggnotes