Cannabis
|
Cannabis, the buds and leaves of which are also known as marijuana (archaic: marihuana; see street names below), is any of several different species of mildly hallucinogenic dioecious plants whose main active ingredient is Δ-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Cannabis is a member of the family Cannabaceae, in the order Urticales which includes figs and nettles. It grows in most climates. The tough fiber of the cannabis plant is known as hemp and has various uses, including the manufacture of cloth, rope, and paper.
| Table of contents |
|
2 Effects 3 Medical use 4 History 5 Death penalty for cannabis usage or trafficking 6 Canadian Law Relating to Cannabis 7 Related articles 8 External links |
THC Content
Although the main psychoactive substance in cannabis is Δ-9-THC, the plant contains about 60 cannabinoids in total. The complexity of this mixture has led to much speculation as to why the effects of the plant can differ from the synthetically manufactured dronabinol.Although potency of a given variety of cannabis is highly subjective outside the laboratory environment, "Normal" herbal cannabis usually contains between 0.5% to 7% THC, although selective breeding and cultivation techniques (such as hydroponics) have produced varieties which some theorize having up to 25% THC content. The THC content is also affected by the sex of the plant, with female plants generating more THC-laden resin than their male counterparts. Sinsemilla (from the Spanish for "without seed") is derived from unpollinated female plants and has an even higher THC content.
Effects
Cannabis is psychoactive, meaning it affects the mind and/or behavior. Acute effects of marijuana consumption vary by individual, but generally include a subset of the following: mild euphoria or enhanced feelings of general well-being, stronger awareness of surroundings, increased acuteness of the senses, increased appetite (called the munchies) and especially a craving for sugar, sleepiness, increased interest in music and art, relaxation. Also common is a tendency to find humor in many more situations and events than one normally would. Other more negative effects include paranoia which can sometime panic the user. It is possible to "whitie" (especially when combined with alcohol) which can leave the user pale and clamy (and freaked out) and generally feeling unwell. Users who are typically lazy or are already sleepy will often become drowsy and lethargic when high. Other negative effects in some users may include impaired motor and cognitive functions, and short-term memory loss.
Anti-drug publicity campaigns would lead a person to believe that most cannabis users (and other drug users) are either violent and vindictive folks, or that they are lazy people who contribute little to society as a whole. While there are definitely cannabis users who are overly violent or lethargic, many pro-cannabis advocates point out that there are users of alcohol and tobacco (legal drugs) who exhibit many of the same traits, and that the negative actions of a few should not be extrapolated to represent an entire subset of the population -- just as there are people who drink alcohol every day while leading productive fullfilling lives, there are persons who use cannabis (and other illicit drugs) every day without letting their habits interfere with their responsibilities.
No fatal overdose due to cannabis use has ever been recorded in two millennia of medical history. One study found an LD50 of pure Δ-9-THC in milligrams/kilogram for mice and rats respectively as 481.9/666 orally; 454.9/372.9 intraperitoneally; and 28.6/42.47 intravenously. Assuming 100% efficiency in extracting THC from marijuana (in reality, extraction efficiency is nowhere near 100%), and high grade marijuana that was 6% THC by weight, a 68 kg (150 lb.) human would have to rapidly ingest almost 20 pounds of marijuana to achieve this dose, in which case a person would experience respiratory failure due to smoke inhalation long before actually overdosing on THC.
Although a mild tolerance of the drug can be built up, it is generally understood not to be physically addictive, and such tolerances tend to vanish within as little as a few days of abstinance. As with any substance however, some can build up a psychological dependence. There is some evidence linking long-term use to depression as well as aggravation of pre-existing mental conditions, although the cause and effect relationship between depression and substance abuse is not fully understood, and there is a possibility that drug use could be a result of depression and not the root cause.
The long-term effects of cannabis still need more study. One of the most important and widely shared concerns regarding cannabis is that its high tar content (especially when it is combined with tobacco, as is common in Europe) could lead to an increased risk of lung cancer. Pipes using water filtration, called bongs, are often believed to reduce lung damage by filtering out a portion of the smoke's tar, and lowering the temperature of the smoke.A recent report [1] indicated that marijuana's effects on the lungs are at least as serious as those of tobacco; it may be noted that most marijuana users use far lesser quantities, and that it is not necessarily smoked.
Medical use
Cannabis is infequently prescribed by doctors due to its legal status in most nations, but is most often prescribed as an appetite stimulant and pain reliever for terminal illnesses including cancer and AIDS. The medical use of cannabis is highly controversial and is dealt with in its own article. See medical marijuana.
Marijuana products.
Recreational use
Cannabis comes in several forms.
- Leaves, dried. ("shake")
- Flowering tops (buds) of female plants, dried ("bud," "marijuana"). Buds are more potent than leaves.
- Hashish ("hash") which is the secretion of the plant, usually dried and processed into blocks. When pressed into long, thin rectangular pieces this is called "charas".
- Oil ("honey oil," "hash oil") which is a concentrate usually involving a solvent-based extraction.
Other methods include using pipes or "bongs" (water pipes) and buckets to smoke the cannabis whilst cooling the smoke down and, in the case of bongs, removing some of the unwanted impurities/tar. Smoke escapes through a hole called a "carb". In addition, a drink called bhang can be prepared. See also hashish and hashish oil.
Cannabis is also cooked to make things such as Alice B. Toklas brownies, "space cake", "pot pie," and "hash brownies". However, the effects of ingested cannabis usually do not take effect for over 30 minutes (many times much longer), making it harder for users to regulate their consumption.
The seeds of the hemp plant are also eaten and roasted, as well as being used to make hemp seed oil. A few restaurants that specialize in food with hemp seeds in it have opened, and appeal mostly to a countercultural clientele base. These places are legal, but is precisely because roasted hemp seeds contain too little THC to get the diner high that they are legal.
Another method of ingestion is vaporization. Vaporization allows the Cannabis resins (THC and other cannabinoids) to be extracted into a vapor by heating without actually burning the plant material. This is advantageous because most of the toxic chemicals found in cannabis and tobacco smoke are byproducts of the combustion process. By heating the cannabis to about 190°C, the Cannabis resins are released into a vapor but the plant material is not actually burned. This vapor can then be inhaled and the effects of the drug will be felt as quickly as if it were smoked. Vaporization is an option for people concerned about the dangers associated with smoking.
Cannabis can also be taken by dissolving it in milk, which is in turn added to preparations of flavoring herbs (such as cloves, cinnamon, etc. They vary by region). THC is not water-soluble, so the cannabis must be steeped in a fatty substance such as melted butter, oil, cream, or milk. Such a preparation is referred to as "bhang" and is a traditional method of consumption in India and related countries.
See also: Recreational drug use
Street Names
General names
For Cannabis: bomb, bud, buddha, chillsprout, chronic, crunkler, dagga, dank, dee, dope, frodis, ganja, grass, green, hashish, herb, indo, instaga, KB (kind bud/killer bud), kind, kipp, Mary Jane, mellow fellow, moss, nugget, pot, rope, scrazzlerb, shwag (low-quality marijuana), skunk, smoke, sticky-icky-icky (a Snoop Doggy Dogg coinage), tampiko, tea, weed, whacko-tobacco and many other names. Definitions of all these terms vary by region, and may vary in meaning according to context.For getting high: stoned, toking (up), zonked, baked, tore-up, buzzed, ripped, smashed, lit-up, lifted, faded, (solid) gone, toasted, blazed, blasted, wasted, basted, gonzo, or simply fucked up
Reefer has most often been used to refer to a marijuana cigarette, but sometimes to the substance itself. "Reefer" was common in the early 20th century, but is now usually only used humorously, often in reference to the then-serious now-comical 1930s film Reefer Madness, extremely exaggerating marijuana's effects, depicting a scenario of evil gangsters attempting to corrupt the youth of a small town with the evil weed.
Early 20th century terms
Mez, Muggles, gage, viper jive.
Names for potent or otherwise good marijuana (or cannabis strains)
(Cross)breeds of plants White widow (light green-white in appearance), C99, AK-47 (Sativa/Indica cross), Bubblegum (very sticky), JuicyFruit, Orange Bud and Blueberry (product smells or tastes somewhat like its name); G-13 (developed at the University of Washington); BC Bud (from British Columbia, Canada); Thunderfuck, Northern-lights (these two natives of Alaska), purple haze, kush, Thai or Thai stick (the legitimate product is indica from Thailand or US Grown of Thai seed, the buds being long and treelike in appearance, often with string wrapped in a spiral pattern for the purpose of holding the bud together). The term Thai stick is also used for imitation marijuana.It should be noted that (in part due to the illegal status of cannabis) many lies about origin and THC content are perpetuated by dishonest sellers to boost sales or justify high prices; for example common marijuana with buds appearing somewhat treelike will often be labeled "thai stick" by a dealer, at which point the price may increase from 50% to 200% or more.
History
The use of cannabis is thought to go back at least 5000 years. Neolithic archaeology grounds in China include cannabis seeds and plants. The first known mention of cannabis was in a Chinese medical text of 2737 BC. It was used as medicine throughout Asia and the Middle East to treat a variety of conditions. In India particularly, cannabis was associated with Shiva.
Cannabis was well known to the Scythians. Germans have grown hemp for its fibers--used to make nautical ropes and material for clothes--since ancient times. In the Elbing Prussian vocabulary from around 1350, hemp is recorded as knapis (derived from cannabis). Large fields of hemp along the banks of the Rhine are featured in 19th century copper etchings.
The hemp plant has to be soaked to harvest the fiber. This liquid was used as a drink. In today's Germany there are bars that serve hemp beer and hemp wine (edit: while this may be true those drinks will not contain any THC because as a drug cannabis is still outlawed in Germany and only so-called "industrial hemp" that doesn't contain any THC may be grown for production of fibers and said drinks).
Cannabis was used medicinally in the western world (usually as a tincture) around the middle of the 19th century. It was famously used to treat Queen Victoria's menstrual pains, and was available from shops in the US. By the end of the 19th century its medicinal use began to fall as other drugs such as aspirin took over.
Until 1937, consumption and sale of marijuana was legal in most American states. In some areas it could be openly purchased in bulk from grocers or in cigarette form at newstands, though more and more of them had begun to outlaw it. In that year Federal law made possession or transfer of marijuana illegal without the purchase of a by-then incriminating tax stamp throughout the United States (contrary to the advice of the American Medical Association at the time); legal opinions of time held that the federal government could not outlaw it entirely.
Congress' decision was based in part on testimony derived from articles in the newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst, who was heavily interested in DuPont Inc. Some analysts theorize DuPont wanted to boost declining post-war nylon sales, and wished to eliminate hemp fiber as competition. Many argue that this seems unlikely given DuPont's lack of concern with the legal status of cotton, wool, and linen; although it should be noted that hemp's textile potential had not yet been largely exploited, while textile factories already had made large investments in equipment to handle cotton, wool, and linen. Even more inflammatory and biased were the accusations by that period's US 'drug czar' Henry Anslinger. Anslinger felt that the drug provoked murderous rampages in previously-solid citizens, charges not borne out under closer scrutiny. Anslinger went on to say that "it makes darkies feel equal to white men," a plaint typical of much of the anti-drug rhetoric of the time, which for example emphasised opium's role in promoting Anglo-Chinese miscegenation. He told the married men in the audience: "Gentlemen, it will make your wives want to have sex with a Black man!" Anslinger also popularized the word marihuana for the plant, using a Mexican derived word (believed to be derived from a Brazilian Portuguese term for inebriation) in order to associate the plant with increasing numbers of Mexican immigrants, creating a negative stereotype which many Americans still believe to this day.
Cannabis has a prominent religious role in the Rastafarian religion.
Although it has probably been used as a recreational drug thoughout its history, it first came to prominence in the jazz scene during the late 1920s and 30s (Louis Armstrong being its most prominent [and life-long] devotee), its use taking off in the 1960s.
It is now the most widely used illicit drug in the world.
Federal Bureau of Narcotics poster used in the late 1930s and 1940s
Death penalty for cannabis usage or trafficking
As of 2003, only a minority of countries still include the death penalty in their legal system. Several of those which still have the death penalty have either carried it out or legislated it for cannabis usage or trafficking.
In Malaysia, Mustaffa Kamal Abdul Aziz, 38 yrs old, and Mohd Radi Abdul Majid, 53 yrs old, were executed at dawn on January 17, 1996, for the trafficking of 1.18 kilograms of cannabis. [1] Under Malaysia's anti-drug laws, the death penalty is mandatory for trafficking certain drugs. Anyone found in possession of at least 15 grams of heroin, 1,000 grams of opium or 200 grams of cannabis is presumed to be guilty (until proven innocent) of trafficking in the drug. This reverses the usual presumption of innocence of internationally recognised norms of law.
The Philippines introduced stronger anti-drug law (including the death penalty) in 2002 [1]
In 1996 in the USA, Newt Gingrich planned to introduce a mandatory death penalty for a second offense of smuggling 50 grams of marijuana into the USA, in the proposed law H.R. 4170. It seems that proposed law failed, so that, under the 1994 crime act, the threshold for sentencing a death penalty in relation to marijuana is the involvement with the cultivation or distribution of 60,000 marijuana plants (or seedlings) or 60,000 kilograms of marijuana.
Canadian Law Relating to Cannabis
On December 23, 2003, The Supreme Court of Canada announced (in a 6-3 decision) that the criminalization of Marijuana was not unconstitutional.
Related articles
- Health issues related to use of cannabis
- Legal status of cannabis
- Drugs policy of the Netherlands
- Amsterdam
- Medical marijuana
- Marijuana Parties
- hemp
- Grow-op
- Jack Herer
External links
Drug Information
- Basic facts about drugs:Marijuana. American Council for Drug Education factsheet.
- UN Drug control and Prevention factsheet
- Good Drugs Guide
History
- The Emperor Wears No Clothes Jack Herer's book, partially online.
- How Marijuana Became Illegal Smokedot.org's take of the history of criminalisation.
Advocacy
- Pro-cannabis
- NORML National organisation for the reform of marijuana laws.
- Cannabis.com
- Anti-cannabis