Substitute the word booze for pot in this thread. Makes little difference.
When you think booze, think thousands of years of Western Civilization, when you think Cannabis, think thousands of years of the Cannabis using areas, the strange and pothead like areas of the Middle East, and parts f India and the Orient.
There are reasons why the white man avoided adopting Cannabis as an intoxicant, from ancient Greece to the Crusades they avoided it, all until the 1960s, as Western man started his road to erasing himself and letting the world wash over him, and the Cannabis worm is now taking root, in the Western culture.