In 1927, twenty-six-year-old American jazz musician Louis Armstrong smoked cannabis for the first time. He was backstage at a Chicago music club when a white musician named Mezz Mezzrow lit a reefer, took a few puffs, and passed it to him. At the time, cannabis was still legal in Illinois. “I had myself a ball,” Armstrong later recalled. From then on, he openly praised the plant’s benefits, viewing it as a “medicine” comparable to the wild herbs his mother fed him as a child in New Orleans. “It’s an assistant, a friend, a nice cheap drunk if you want to call it that, very good for asthma, relaxes your nerves.” Article continues after advertisement In the months following this initial experience, Armstrong began smoking cannabis before his concerts and recording sessions. In 1928, he recorded an instrumental piece called “Muggles,” a slang term for cannabis. The music evoked the way instruments sounded under the influence of the drug.…