How Marijuana Works

I and I Yeah, and I love that. How you doing, man, I'm great. You've got some good feelings going on. Yeah. I mean we've covered grow houses and um, we had a medical marijuana right. I don't think so, no, no, because a lot of it didn't seem familiar when I was looking into it in this article. So we've definitely done grow houses, which is kind of backwards. Yeah, well not really. You gotta grow up, that's the first true.

So chuck, here we are. We're talking about pot, and as is our thing, we're gonna talk about pot in a very like above the boards mature way. Are we? I think we can we've talked about some other stuff before poop. We've talked about poop plenty of times. Yeah, well, booze. Every time we cover drugs, we like to cover the scientific aspects to social ramifications, how it's impacted culture. Why would this one be any different? Well, and this is

probably the biggest, you know, it's the most ubiquitous. I would say, yeah, you know, yeah, maybe the gateway to all the other episode. It's very funny. So uh, I guess if you we should start at the beginning. How about that? Okay, let's talk about pot and its history. It's very long, long, long history, UM. And actually for most of that history it has been widely beloved and appreciated.

The apparently pot has been cultivated or marijuana. We're going to use all that, um and interchangeably weed pot marijuana, but cannabis. That's probably where it will stop. Like if either one of us says ganja or sticky it, we should just shut it down it right? Then? All right, all right, we'll do the Hey take that back. One of us will say that. Okay, uh yeah, But like you said, I mean, this is gonna be an overview because we could do honestly for shows on the history

of pot. There's quite a rabbit hole we could go down here. We got to avoid it, but we're just we'll give you a historical overview about that. So um, like I said, pot has been cultivated for years, and like I also said that it's mostly been appreciated most of that time for two reasons. One, it is um in industrial or it was, until the rise of the synthetics, a major industrial fiber hemp. And then secondly it was a um or it still is a medicinal herb that

kind of spills over into recreational use as well. So in the twenty century in China, uh, it looks like it was probably used medicinally and not recreationally. But they're

definitely records written records of the cultivation of cannabis. Well. Yeah, a guy named shen Nung, who was an emperor but was also China's first physician, wrote about how ma that's what they called pot back then in China was good for the yin and the yang, both of them, right, which is actually is we'll see, um, that's a pretty astute observation early on, because what he's talking about is

balance or homeostasis, which part definitely affects. Yeah, they have found a mummy, a three thousand year old Egyptian mummy, and looked into this and it it contained quite a few drugs, but it definitely contained th HC. So the Egyptians were getting down. Yeah, maybe medicine, who knows. In a thousand and one Arabian Nights, it makes an appearance called Bang Sad Bad apparently loves this stuff. But supposedly his was hatch mixed with opium, which is way more

hardcore than what we're talking about. Uh yeah, yeah, probably so. Um, they think it originated perhaps in India and um north of the Himalayas is their best guess. Yeah, they really have no idea. And actually there's like a lot of debate still over whether there's more than one in um type of plant. What do you mean, So there's Cannabis indica,

Cannabis sativa. Yeah, they're different. There's another one called Cannabis ut ruder alice um, and there's there's an ongoing debate among botanists over whether they're all actually just different like um varieties of the same plant, or if they really are different species of plants in the same family. Oh interesting, Yeah, but I think the the current common wisdom is that there's at least two cannabis sativa and cannabis indica. Uh. Yeah,

we may as well get into that a little bit. Um. The Indica is uh the planet itself is shorter and fatter and better suited for indoor growing. And the uh Sativa is taller. It can get really tall like um yeah and thinner. Um. Although I think for cultivation, I don't think uh, even though it's grown outdoors, I don't think they're growing the twenty five ft plants. No. I would imagine the helicopters can see him a lot more easily. Yeah.

And the Indica is known for more of a a body high um quote unquote couch locked, yeah, mellow, and the sativa is more known for more energetic and cerebral and creative, more of a brain high. Right. And then conversely, one can make you more paranoid, one can make you more druy. Uh yeah. And typically these days, um, if you are a recreational or medicinal user, you're probably getting some sort of a U hybrid strain. Good point. And actually some of the strains, those hybrid strains are have

some of the best names like green crack. It's a pretty good name. A K forty seven, white widow. White Widow is actually uh pure strain, isn't it of Indica? I'm not sure. I think it is? Yeah, Maui Wowie. The pot names are they're pretty funny. They've definitely gotten better from the seventies, like Mauie wow. Yeah, that sounds very Yeah. Um, so should we talk about should we talk a little bit about um its history in this country,

in the United States? Yeah, so I think we should get to that because, as I said, Chuck, when you look back on pot all of these years, and um, it's how it was used. It was generally like appreciated, used, medicinally, used, recreationally, not vilified. It wasn't until it hit North America that it really started to become vilified. Yeah. Well it had a good run here too, uh in the States for a couple of hundred years. Um it was hemp was

grown and cultivated and widely used. Some people say it's, you know, the most versatile plant on earth as far as the different us as you can get out of it. And it was in the six nineteen Virginia Assembly Assembly they even said, do you have to grow hemp if you're a farmer in Virginia. So not only was it encouraged, it was actually law in Virginia at least. So I had had a good run until the early nineteen hundreds

and nineteen twenties. Well, what's what's interesting is back in this time, you remember that part in Days and Confused, where um the like the the biggest owner of the whole group is talking about George Washington like like planning camp all day and then comes home and smokes a big bowl of it. It's not clear whether or not any of them were smoking pot, and it's entirely possible that they weren't, because the idea of smoking pot was

lost to the ages for a very long time. Um, and the Greeks actually grew marijuana, but they didn't smoke it. They just used it for its fibers. And it almost appears like they had no idea you could smoke it and it was psychoactive. So it's possible that they our forefathers didn't smoke pot, you know, and they were they were just growing it for industrial uses. And meanwhile Native Americans were like, you guys are crazy. Rope. Rope is

nice but you know it can be both, that's right. Uh. In UM, the early nineteen hundreds, the Mexican Revolution in nineteen ten, this is one of the big turning points because a lot of Mexican immigrants came to the US and they were like, hey, you know, you can smoke this stuff. It's pretty nice. And because Mexican immigrants had a UM, we're sort of looked down upon all of a sudden, Putt was looked down upon. Really Mexican immigrants were looked down upon somewhere in the US history. Yeah.

The the whole thing about um pot being vilified or UM. I guess there was a moral panic basically is what they call it that erupted around it. Yeah, and a lot of it was based in racism towards UM, Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants. Yeah. In the nineteen thirties, especially in the depression, UM, they were sort of had a bad name because you know, they're immigrants in this country and we're Americans and we're in depression and we want the work and uh. Kind of a lot of the

same arguments here these days. But UM, the association with Pott was definitely, uh, part of it it definitely was. But also I read this, um, this MPR blog code switch about this very topic, and they were saying, like, yes, there's a lot of racism that led to the criminalization of pots, but Mexico was twenty years ahead of the US and criminalizing pot as well. So you can't just say, well, it was just Americans disdain or dislike or distrust of Mexicans.

It was you know, it's more complex than that. And this guy was saying that, really you can conclude there was a fear of what this drug did. And the reason why there was a fear of what the drug did was because the newspaper reports at the time had people like killing entire families and like wandering around the streets like with somebody's head, um covered in blood because they just smoked a joint. And um, they were really trying to unpack this, like why would that happen? Did

it happen? We're all of them just overblown reports. The fact was, when you picked up the Los Angeles Times of the New York Times, there were front page stories about this and they were like brown skin Mexican kills, white family of eight on marijuana cigarette. And that's why and actually the word marijuana was kind of used as a derogatory term to kind of Mexican afi cannabis, which is what it had been called prior to that. I did not know that. I'm off my soapbox. Look at

you teaching me? Well, movies like Reefer Madness definitely didn't help. In nine six, the famous propaganda movie from French director Louis Gasnier, it's, you know, required viewing for any college students at some Yeah, it's it's not very good and it's not very enjoyable, but it is kind of funny showing the the reeferradics, you know, driven to insanity by the marijuana cigarettes. And somebody gets murdered, right, I think

someone murders somebody else because they smoked pot. Uh. And then a ninety seven um, a year after we for Madness, Congress packs past the marijuanat Tacks Act, and this is basically where the tide turn. And it was essentially criminalized because it called for restricting possession just two individuals who paid attacks wh was just like a thousand dollars for medical or industrial use. So in other words, if you're just you know, Sammy Podead, you can't live that way

anymore in this country. Now. You would basically have to show set up a shell organization, pay the thousand dollar tacks, and then you'd be able to import marijuana, but if you were caught with smoking it, you'd still get busted. It was a big deal when that happened. And you can kind of lay all of this at the feet of one guy, a moral crusader who ran the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the thirties, well the thirties until

the sixties. His name was Harry Ann Slinger, and he was the one who really kind of started this crusade against Pott and got the government to um turn against it, got the press to turn against it, and got the Marijuana Tacks Act passed. But even while this guy's like sitting there shouting like all marijuana is gonna kill us all as a horrible drug and it's it's as bad as it gets, there were studies, independent studies that were um funded by the government that we're showing, like, you

guys are kind of overstating this a little bit. Yeah. Mayor Leaguardia of New York issued a report that basically said that it doesn't induce violence, insanity, or sex crimes. Yeah, and he was a moral reformer himself, remember you doing after the Minsky brothers in the burlesque episode. So it's not like he was just some big pothead, Like he was a moral reformer himself, and he still founded this report. Yeah, that's good point that led to. Um. The the sentencing

laws over time have kind of waffled back and forth. Uh. In the fifties they were pretty strict because of the Bogs Act and the Narcotics Control Act, And that's when they started setting mandatory men of mum's for basically any drug but including marijuana of course. Yeah, like you would go to prison for a long time if you got caught with pot. Yeah, two to ten years for a first uh, first time offender. In the nineteen fifties getting

caught with pot, Yeah, that's it any any amount. Uh. And in the sixties things relaxed a little bit, um in every way you can imagine in this country. And uh, you know, President Kennedy and UH and lb J issued reports that found kind of the same thing as they found out in the forties. It doesn't induce violence. Uh. And in these reports it said it didn't it wasn't a gateway drug either. Yeah, in the nineteen sixties, which

is still up for debate. Really. Yeah, Now, because you read every other report you read, it's gonna say something a little different about what the gateway drug is. And plus, I think defining what makes a gateway drug too has never been fully established. Yeah, you can't. Can you test something scientifically if it's you don't have it defined, you know. Uh. And the that led to the nineteen sixties led to a repeal of a lot of the mandatory minimums in

the seventies. Um. But then, of course Ronald Reagan in the nineteen eighties brought a lot of that stuff back. And Nixon too, he fought that tooth and nail, Like, even though the tide in the country was turning one way, Nixon was like, Nope, we're going to keep pot as illegal as possible, and as a matter of fact, we're gonna put it on the same level as heroin and cocaine. Yeah.

And during the Nixon administration, the Schaefer Commission was a bipartisan commission found again that it should be decriminalized, and Nixon was just like, well, I don't, I don't want to hear that. Sorry, I'm gonna make up my own mind about I'm the president exactly. Yeah. So, like you said, the Reagan era brought it back, um not brought pot back, no probt back any kind of um anti government sentiment toward pot itself was redoubled in the eighties under the

Reagan administration. Just say, no mandatory minimums were or mandatory sentences were reenacted. Um in six things to the Anti Drug Abuse Act. If you got caught with a hundred marijuana plants, you got the same um jale time as if you were caught with a hundred grams of heroin. Yeah, that's interesting. Plants versus grahams. It's sort of a apples orange in comparison. Yeah, plants versus heroin, plants versus zombies.

I know at one point this is sort of off topic topic, but I don't know if they've changed it, but at one point they were sentencing LSD users by the weight, right, and when't that the deal is? Like they would like if you were an LSD dealer and you had twenty sheets of acid, they would weigh it. And they were like, well, wait a minute, you can't weigh the paper that's like weighing the suitcase. Yeah, and uh,

I think that's still the same though, didn't it. I don't know, but I do know you're talking about and apparently like if they would if you had it mixed in with liquid or something like diluted into liquid form, they take the weight of all the liquid rather than the proportion of it. Yeah. I don't know. It could be we could be like showing our our gullibility for urban legend or not. But I know that's the case. I don't know if it still is, but I know

it definitely was. Definitely was, Yeah, because I saw like an HBO special on these LSD dealers. So we're basically serving like life sentences for dealing acid right alongside murders and rapists. Um. Yeah, I'll have to check into that and people who were caught with pot in the thirties. That's right. So pot these days, cost wise, um, varies

a lot depending on quality. Obviously it ranges. Um. I love that in this article it says a dollar seventy seven to seventeen dollars and sixty six cents per gram at like one gram of marijuana. Please. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, but these days you can expect to pay um for you know, what people consider good mayor I wanna about a hundred and twenty dollars for uh a quarterback, which is a quarter of an ounce, right, which is seven grams, right,

because there's twenty eight grams in and out. Yeah, I think between seven eight grams. But it depends on if the dealer likes you exactly. Yeah, but that's generally how it breaks down. As you know, you have it by the pound, which is you know, the pot dealer, I guess, and then they break it down into ounces and then to quarterbacks and dime bags and whatever people can afford.

I guess. Well. It's funny because in the state of the country right now, like you can take dealer and dispensary and basically flip them and interchange them, and no matter what you're talking about, virtually the sentence is going to remain unchanged basically, you know, because the marijuana dispensaries are following like basically the same format that marijuana dealers in this country have for decades, you know what I mean, like pricing and yeah, the pricing, the um, the way

it's sold by weight. Oh sure, sure, Like I think you still't buy like like quarters and half ounces and ounces and stuff, which makes sense. But they're also getting a lot of this stuff from people who are growing it indoors in their basement. And it's like now they

have licenses for all this. But it's basically like all the people who were doing it illegally before, or some of the people who are doing illegally before point and applied for licenses and now they're doing the same thing, but they just have like a a license to do it in a frame on their wall. Yeah, and dispensaries, you're going to find a lot of other things, uh, like edibles and um. They even have now cannabis strips, like you know, the little listing breath strips. They have

little cannabis strips. It's just a little uh edible strip of concentrated cannabis and I guess you put it under your tongue and that's better for your lungs. I would imagine if you're a oh yeah, a cancer patient or something. Yeah, And we'll talk about that in a little bit. Let's let's talk about the plane itself. Chuck. Um. Maybe the most recognizable plant that leaf, you know, yeah, which is um.

Here's a little fact for you. The botanical description of the way that marijuana leaves are arranged is groovy called palmately like the palm of a hand with five fingers outstretched. That's the pot leaf. That's you. You can find on lighters and baseball caps, gas stations, um and the like you said, the planet itself, depending on which variety it is either very tall or kind of tall, depending on

whether it's trimmed or not. Um and the the buds or whatever that are smoked are actually the flowers of the plants, the flowers of the female which apparently are that's sent semia. So the definition of the word sent semia are female flowers that have reached maturity without being um pollinated. I can't hear that word without thinking of cat check what I don't remember that part. Phil Murray A little California sens to me. Yeah, so that's what

that means. Yes, that's the term sense of meia means. So basically, unless you're like fourteen, if you're smoking pot, you're smoking censemia. So yes, the term senemia means pot. Okay, the pot that's smoked. Although the male flowers do have some thhd, it's just far far less of female than female. Yeah. As a cultivator, males are not what you want. In fact, males can can disturb the cycle of the female plants. So the goal of the cultivator is to get the

male out of there as quickly as it can be identified. Basically, Yeah, and weeds actually good moniker for pot because it's it spreads very easily. There. Um, pollen is like twenty four microns, which apparently is very easily wind born and goes very

great distances. There's very few obstacles to pollenization. Um. So if you have female plants and you have what you suspect to be a male plant anywhere nearby, you want to get rid of the male plant and then tell the officer, Uh, they must have just blown over here and taken roots. Are these hundred plants in my backyard came from my neighbor? There? Pollens is twenty four microns? Come on, yeah, he says, he says, tell your story to the judge, my friend, Um, there are about uh,

we should also say they're hermaphroditic plants. Hermaphroditic plants that feature both male and female flowers. Those are probably a mess. Yeah, I think that maybe that's a good thing. I think that's like a lot of hybrid ones are hermaphroditic. Okay, yeah, Well, there are hundreds of chemicals in the marijuana plant um A hundred nine of which are cannabinoids. About thirty three are cancer causing, and we'll we'll get to that stuff later too. But ironically they also are cancer killing some

of them. It is an on plant. But we're gonna get to all that stuff too, write um, and your th HC is really the main psychoactive ingredient. What's the long name for it, Delta nine tetra hydro cannabin all that is th HC. That is what the high that you're seeking. It lies within that chemical. Yeah. And actually you can point to the part of the plant where

it is um. If you've ever seen a marijuana plant and it has kind of this hazy a period appearance from far away, and you get up close and you realize that haze is actually made up of a bunch of little, clear, sticky protrusions coming off of the leaves. Those are called tricombs, and that is where the THC is stored. That's right, And depending on the plant in the variety and how it's grown and when it's harvested, in the genetics and how you process it. It's that's

all gonna affect the th HC level. And it's a cultivator. Your goal is to have the th HC level how as you can get it. Yeah, that is up for debate as well. From what I've seen there, Um, apparently they're just going higher and higher and higher as far as THHC content goes. And there's a lot of recreational pot users and um medicinal pot users. So we're saying

too much. Dude like k has a bit about how when he was in like the in the seventies could smoke like a whole joint and be like totally mellart cool. Now I was saying, it takes like one hit and you go totally insane. Um, And apparently there is like a point where it's just like that's too much. Well, Louis can afford better pot these days to know, But you're right, it all depends on the the end user,

you know what they're into. But generally speaking, uh, the cultivator wants to deliver the most bang for the buck, you would think, so, sure, so chuck, let's figuratively smoke some pot and follow it through the body. Okay, okay, uh, you know what, we probably shouldn't do this ourselves. No, we like our jobs exactly, and we might be fired for even figuratively smoking pop. Well, yeah, and who wants to Let's let's get how about that scruffy looking guy,

farmer Ted. Yeah, he's look at him. He's game. So a lot of people don't know this, but we have a friend named farmer Ted who has the very strange um characteristic of having entirely translucent skin. He's kind of like the Invisible Man or something like that. Yeah, and what better person than to follow the trail of th HC in the human body then you can actually see yeah, because the rest of his organs or anything aren't translucent. It's just a skin. Yeah, and uh, thank you for

coming in, Ted. Um. So, Ted is going to smoke a joint a marijuana cigarette. Yes, and uh, he's going to smoke what is a typical marijuana cigarette, approximately five milligrams of marijuana, which translates to roughly, um, I don't know, maybe ten milligrams of th HC. So he's going to take a lighter and take it to the end of this joint. I'm making air quotes here because it's it's vernacular. Uh and uh. The th HC is going to be burned and carried into his lungs, so farmer Ted is

kind of high already. Um. The the th HC in the smoke is carried to the aviola in the lungs, and the aviola is where gas exchange occurs. It's where your oxygen, you priv blood comes to get a refill of oxygen to be replenished. And since there's THHC smoke present in that oxygen in the lungs, the TCC is gonna hit your ride into the bloodstream and travel through the body. So it just takes seconds. Yeah. One of

the places it's going to go is the brain. Uh. And when it hits the brain, it starts doing some pretty funky stuff. That's right. We could ask farmer Ted how he's feeling right now, and he'll probably say, yeah, he can't talk. He might say that my eyes are dilating and the colors are a lot more vivid. Yeah, Um, I'll be hungry soon. I'll be hungry soon. My other senses are enhanced as well, but hold on, I'm starting to feel a paranoid. Yes, let's let's get into this.

Let's let's get into how pot affects the brain, because it is pretty gosh dar and interesting if you ask me. Yeah, and and this is how it the physiological effects Um, the end user might have different reactions depending. It didn't make everyone paranoid necessarily, No, And I really looked into it hard to find out why some people are paranoid and some people don't. Part of it is it? Well, there's two things. One and I didn't find anything definitive,

which I'm I'm sad about. But one the two things that came up with it's one, it depends on the pot. Sure, if there is a difference between indica and sativa, the prevailing wisdom is that if you smoke indicate you're going to be less likely to be paranoid. Okay. Uh. The other reason is it would depend probably on the existing brain chemistry of the user. My brain chemistry is not the same as yours, um, and neither one of ours

are just the same as Jerry. So of course when we introduce the psychoactive chemical into that chemistry, it's going

to affect it differently. So that's what I came up with. Basically, I wonder if one of the reasons indica is less likely is because that's the couch bound one, and you're less likely to be a paranoid sitting on your couch rather than the more active one like smoking and going to the Renaissance festival where you'd be freaked out stone sober, where you'd meet John Strickland and he would mess with you if you found out your stone anyway, I'm curious. Um, Yeah,

it makes sense. Yeah. I've also found there's recent research UM that shows the the cannabin als there's a precursor um chemical to them that's called cannaba dialic acid CBD, and cbd UM has been found that to actually counteract the schizoid effects of pot, like the stuff that makes you paranoid, that symptom if you get if you smoke pot that has a higher CBD to th HC ratio.

Maybe it's even or something like that. Uh, the CBD is going to cut down on the schizophrenic symptoms while leaving like the rest of the stuff intact interesting and that weird. So I wonder if if indica, just by nature has a higher CBD content. Yeah maybe, so, yeah, there are people that know this. Okay, So back in the sixties, there was a researcher his name escapes me, who started looking into what the heck made POT make

you loco? Right, and he found th HC. So TC was isolated in the sixties, and from that they reverse engineered, um how th HC affected the brain and effectively discovered an entire system that we didn't know existed thanks to POT research. It's called the endocannabinoid system, and it's a very ancient system that's found in everything from C squirts to every VERTI braid on the planet s C squirts,

very primitive animals all the way up to us. Well I know that, Uh, I didn't quite get the indocannabinoid parts, so take it away, okay, So I know it works backwards. Yes, that's a very important point. So you know, when like um, when we do anything from our brain says grab coffee mug right to um to us thinking about how we're feeling at any given point, all of that is based on the transmission among neurons. Right, Yeah, we've covered that

a lot. The neurotransmitters kind of cover that gap. Between the neurons and deliver the message. And then depending on where the neuroprint transmitter is and what chemical has come across, then different things happen. Right. Well, the endocannabinoid system is this kind of dimmer switch, uh, that is around all neurons that works backward to kind of say, whoa, whoa, let's not pump those neurochemicals out as frequently or in

as much abundance. And the whole point of the endocannabinoid system is to maintain homeostasis or good for your good for your yangs. Right, and that weird, Okay, So when you smoke pot, your endocannabinoid system, which has receptors all throughout the body. There's CB two receptors which are mainly associated with your immune system, and then CB one receptors

are throughout the brain. And when you smoke pot, the cannabinoids, the phytocannabinoids which is th HC in this case, go into these reasons of your brain and stick to your brain, to your endocannabinoid receptors. Yeah, they basically just kind of hijacked the system. So these the systems that the endocannabinoid receptors are meant to regulate are no longer being regulated by our bodies endocannabinoids. They're being hijacked by th HC, which is not subject to our body's whims and and

all that. We just basically have to ride that snake out until it's over. So you end up with all these different weirdo symptoms that you normally wouldn't have, which is basically the result of your endocannabinoid system going hey wired because it's been hijacked by th HC. Right, so like your hippocampus, Yes, we've talked about that. That's good for learning, Yeah, it is. And when the endocannabinoid receptors are full of th HC, uh, you're not learning or

making memories as well as normal. We're talking short term memory. It definitely impairs that. And um, that's why if you've ever hung out with a bunch of pot heads, you'll hear the phrase what were we just talking about? A lot? Because it's gonna affect the hippocampus in that way you're not forming memories. It's also gonna affect your coordination, which is the cerebellum, so you may be a little clumsier. And then you have the basil ganglia and that directs

your unconscious muscle movements. Yeah. Uh, so the reason farmer Ted is paranoid. He doesn't like that plant looking at him the way it is, right. Uh, he's paranoid because his bazom medial um amygdala has been affected. It's endocannabinoid receptors have been hijacked by th HC, and it's this region of the brain where we learn to fear dangerous situations.

Farmer Ted is learning to fear things he normally wouldn't fear because the endocannabinoids that the body normally makes they're not um operating the way that they're supposed to be. So he's now afraid of that plant. Now. Isn't that this aren't the endocannabinoids the same system that they have finally been pointed the munchies activates the munchies. Yeah, and your hypothalamus um you're grilling production, Remember grilling, It's that chemical that makes you feel hungry, so you go eat.

You're grilling production and absorption, uh is mediated by endocannabinoids and the hypothalamus, which gets hijacked by THHC, which suddenly all food looks irresistible. Yeah, and which is why it is prescribed for people going through chemotherapy and of things because they lose their appetite and lose a lot of weight. And uh, aside from helping the stem nausea, it also will stimulate the appetite. So that's the endocannabinoid system and that is how pot affects it. I feel like that. Yeah,

we left out the biggest part. It also causes a release of dopamine, which is what makes you feel. Any euphoric feeling comes from that release of dopamine. But it's also possible that any paranoia or those schitzoid symptoms that come along with it are from too much dopamine. Right, So that too high a release of dopamine can lead to feelings of paranoia and anxiety. Yeah, and these feelings. Um, the effect of th HC period is gonna last a couple of hours, depending on obviously how good the pot

is and how much you smoked. Um, but the chemicals are going to be in your body a lot longer than that, with the terminal half life of twenty hours to ten days after you've smoked it. So um, if you get you know, if you're one of the how many percentage of companies drug test fifty seven, yeah, fifty something, fifty three maybe, yeah, depending on your weight and how much you smoked and how long you smoked. Right, Uh, you're gonna either pass that drug test here or not.

It can stain your body for you know, weeks though. Yeah, it's yeah, and there's no way to tell because it depends on you your metabolism and the pot potency of the pot too. Um. But yeah, your body breaks it down into five metabolites and they test for all five to just using a basic immuno essay where they introduce an antibody to your urine and it reacts or doesn't react and turns it a pretty color, a pretty bad color. Right, chuck, We got a little more on the body. Okay, Well

we'll get to it after this break. How about that? It sounds good? Okay, form it said? Um, stand back up, let's abuse you some more. Although it seems like he's enjoying it, he's a little he's a little cooler now. He was petting that plant, I mean, and I think so if you can see his liver right here right there. Um, so farmer tend is gonna eat some pot this time.

So what's gonna happen. He's ingested pot orally one way or another, whether cooked in a brownie or just eating the pot, and the body is going to take this and break it down, metabolize it and send it to the liver. And when this happens, it's going to the THHC is going to hit the bloodstream in this stomach anyway, so he's gonna get some sort of buzz or whatever.

But in the liver he's going to metabolize it into another psychoactive chemical that isn't really present when you smoke it, so it doesn't it's the effects aren't quite as pronounced, but they last longer. And there's an additional weirdo thing to it. Well it's gonna take longer, but last longer, and um, the effects of it exactly. Yeah, but there's also the extra psycho active chemical it's produced in the liver that's not really produced when you smoke it. Yeah,

and that weird. It is weird, and it's also the reason why um, new young travelers to Amsterdam, you know, I want to try their first pot brownie. They don't think it's working, then they try another one. And this is the ones you see like sitting alongside the canal like rocking themselves. Yes, because it takes a little while. It does when you when you ingested via smoke, it's almost instantaneous. When you ingest it by eating it, it's

going to take a lot longer, that's right. So, UM, I guess we should talk a little bit about whether or not it's addictive, because that's another raging debate for years and years. How addictive is pot? Uh? There are all kinds of studies that contradict one another, and um, I think it's one of these things that probably comes down to the person somewhat if you have that addictive personality.

But they do see effects of pot cessation your ability anxiety, depression, maybe sleeplessness and insomnia, restlessness, and that's if you quit the pot after having been a user. And it's you know, psychologically addictive. Like any drug, you're gonna crave it if

you want it. Sure apparently, um it can have an impact on your levels of anxiety, like you might not feel anxious when your stone, but you could feel anxious when you're not stoned, so you get stone more often, which while not necessarily a classic addiction because the addiction model follows the strictly the limbic system, and I think activates it somewhat, but it's not really acting specifically on that is acting more on the endocannabinoid system, right, So

indirectly it might be hitting the limbic system, but it's not following that classic addiction route. But at the very least, that's habitual. If you need to smoke something to get back to normal, that's a habit and a bad one because you have a crutch there. Yeah, unless you're Willie Nelson and then you're just like, what's the problem, You just keep smoking it? Um really know that? What are some Uh well, I guess we can talk about some of the medicinal uses. Um. We did talk about cancer

and AIDS patients to stimulate appetite. Um. The old glaucoma card is a big one to play. Yeah, if you're applying for your medical marijuana card, it relieves ie pressure. I couldn't find how it does that, Yeah, but it's been that's one of the earliest uses of Hell. You remember remember when all this first started to hit California past uh um legal medicinal marijuana. It was almost all glaucoma at the time, in which it seemed like everybody was like, you are so facant glaucoma, you need pop

or glaucoma. And then it just became more and more established as fact became associated with helping more and more maladies. And of course if you go to get your card, then you go to the dispensary. They have a long list of things that it can help, right, basically, anything you can think of they will they will put on their list. As long as you have a prescription card. I think they're cool with that. Well, no, that's to get the card like the you know the yeah that's

a new doctor where stocks. Yeah, you can probably get a medicinal marijuana card from him, but don't see him for anything else. Um, it can help with epileptic seizures. In fact, here in Georgia that's been on the table due to a famous story of a boy here in Georgia who whose seizures were like massively cut down by taking a marijuana oil which has no THHC like the kids not getting high. Basically it doesn't have psychoactive properties.

And Georgia is, believe it or not, trying to speed through I know it didn't go through initially a few weeks ago, just because I think they didn't have time to get it through. But there seems to be support for it. But just for yeah, just for the marijuana oil though not uh like dispensaries or anything like that. Yeah. Well, I mean it could be the beginning of it, or it could be a sea change in how in Georgia states,

you know, legalized marijuana. I'd be surprised. Well, but I'm wondering if it's a change like, Okay, this medicinal marijuana oil works, We'll just all we can legalize that and that's it and it'll be like the model for other states. Oh, I see what you mean. Uh. And then MS multiple sclerosis UM decreases muscle spasms and I've seen this firsthand with a good friend really helps him out. And Montell Williams is uh famously come out as an MS sufferer

who is a longtime advocate for using marijuana. Well it makes sense again. I mean, if you're having muscle spasms, perhaps your endocannabinoid system is not functioning correctly and the THHC goes in and actually supplements it. Yeah, you know, and also I remember I said that it fights cancer. Ye oh yeah, if you're go onto cancer dot COVN type cannabis and cinal cannabis. I think it brings up basically a laundry list of all of the ways that

marijuana helps. And it's been found to fight to destroy cancer cells like THHC goes in and destroys cancer cells in the liver. Apparently it's been shown to destroy cancer breast cancer cells like not helps you feel better when you have cancer, can actually cure cancer in some cases. Um, it was a carcinoma in the liver that it was shown to be able to cure. It's definitely worth checking out too. And it also alleviates pain and um uh

inflammation associated with um injury or disease. The way it does that is what the other cannabinoid receptors, the CB two receptors in the body are related to the um immune system. So it goes in and messes with those and says, hey, everybody calmed down with stuff being so inflamed. Well that's uh, yeah, I guess that's why it's prescribed

a lot for arthritic conditions these days. That makes sense, Yeah, rhuma toid arthritis, and that's called Yeah, I don't know what that with the differences between rhuma toyed and regular arthritis. You should do one uthritis? How about that? Um, it is still despite all the medical research, it is still scheduled as a m or classified as a Schedule one substance, which is uh the most dangerous drugs that currently have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

And there have been many pushes over the years to get it reclassified uh and not in the same group as heroin and cocaine and ecstasy. But um, that has not been successful as of yet, but I think that will probably happen at some point soon. It seems like it's going that way. But supposedly around the time Normal was found in the National Organization for the re Legalization of Marijuana legislation. Is that right? I'm pretty sure. It's quite a mouthful. Festivals used to have in Peamont Park

in the nineties, the Normal rally, Hashbash. Yeah, I saw the black girls there once. It was great, right, um so, But yeah, Norman was found in the seventies at a time when it looked like I mean Carter was president, Willie Nelson had smoked to join on the White House roof like it was the time for you know, hoot to be decriminalized, and everybody thought like it's gonna happen. It's happening, it's happening, and apparently, nope, it didn't happen.

They pulled back from the brink. So it's entirely possible that what looks right now to be the wind of change that is very much sweeping through the country. It could could be stopped. Baffled, I guess, so it's the the fat Lady has not sung yet. Well, I think the first step toward a federal and the difference here is, you know, federal laws versus state laws. It's still federally not accepted, but in states like of course Colorado and Washington,

and then how many states have medical like eleven? Okay, Um, if anything's gonna happen federally, it's got to be reclassified away from Schedule one first. Uh So until that happens, you're probably not gonna see any um federal laws enacted or repealed. And we should say the mood of the country right now is about split a little bit in favor toward UM pot pro pot. So like in Washington and Colorado, both votes were like fifty four, fifty five,

forty three something like that. And then a CBS poll from two thousand fourteen, I think in January found about the same of Americans favor legalizing pot um opposed to like I think forty four or forty three. Yeah, so it's it's clearly moved out of you know, just the hippie stoners at the normal rally and two people supporting that kind of legislation that don't even use marijuana because there is a groundswell of support that hey, uh, it's not a schedule wonder, it's not a schedule one drug.

Alcohol is more destructive to uh, to your life, in your body, and why are you gonna outlaw this plant uh and put people in prison with a war on pot that isn't working. It's like wasting money, whereas we could tax it and raise money. So there's uh, there's been a big title shift in the past decade, really in the past twenty years, but in the past ten Like if you had asked me ten years ago if there would be recreational use all out in any state,

I would have said probably not. But here we are with Washington and Colorado, here we are like where you can grow it. You can buy it and have it. I don't know how much, but I think you're allowed to have a certain small amount, right, Yeah, Like you can't drive around with ten pounds in your trunk or anything. I don't know how much you can um. It's it's definitely more than just like a small amount, but you um and you can just literally go to the store

and pot. There's actually an awesome New Yorker article called buzz Kill from late last year, and it's about this economist that Washington State hired to basically create the framework for their legal pot industry, like the economic model. Yeah, and like on a on a macro economic level and a microeconomic level. He's like, we're whether you like it or not, you're going to be competing with dealers still.

And so you want to make your text money, but you don't want to make so much that you price yourself out of the market and the black market stays open. You want to get rid of the black market by basically competing against them, competing amount of business. And there's just all these different factors that this guy like was kind of laying out and it was really interesting. Buzz Kill. Want to check that out? Yea. Um. Alright, let's take

another break here and then we get back. We'll talk a bit about the potency of marijuana over the years. All right, there's a debate that I don't quite understand about the potency of marijuana, and like the sixties and seventies versus today. The debate is that that pot is much more potent than it was in the sixties and seventies. And first of all, they didn't they didn't test a wide variety of marijuana strains in the sixties and seventies, right,

it was like stems and seeds Mexican like. Yeah. So that's the only way you can tell a true test of potency is to study a wide variety. They didn't. They never did that. They didn't test the MAUI wowie. They never did that in the sixties seventies. And you can't go back in the time machine. So what's the point in debating it. The pot today is is how it is. It is. And basically, what the best you could hope to do is like have Dennis Hopper smokes some pot and be like huh, and he can be

like dead. Hopper is dead, dude, since when Yeah, I just saw him on like an insurance commercial years ago. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's sad, it is said, Sorry, a state of Dennis Hopper. Get Willie Nelson though, Peter Fonda, Yeah, he's alive, Okay, So you just have Peter Fond to tell you. He can tell you. There's plenty of people who could say. The point is that is largely irrelevant because we're not dealing with creating pot policy based on

the nineteen sixties. We're dealing with pot policy today. And we know very clearly that pot is more potent today than it was even a couple of decades ago. And we know that in part because it's something called the University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project. Basically, they get their hands on seized pot that the cops get their hands on, they send some of it to Mississippi, and Mississippi tests

it for potency. And they said that between two thousand and eight, the UM average, the average amount of th HC across all samples, rose from three point four percent to eight point eight percent from two eight and it's going up up up, apparently now with the rise of dispensaries and the UM openly shared knowledge of how to cultivate pot and do you know what you want to genetically select for it's up to a quarter like supposedly and I didn't see that figure disputed th HC content.

That's insane. That's that will drive you and say, I can't imagine that if the average is eight point eight or was three point four and is now up to that's potent and that's I guess for the top of the line most expensive pot you can buy. Yeah, but I predict that there's going to be like kind of retro vintage push back, not necessarily that, but something that's like way more toned down, or it'll be like marketed to people who like don't want like that level of

high I guess like seventies weed. Yeah, like all they have to do to market at green leisure suit or something like that boom success. Although I don't know if anybody would want to go back to the seventies because I think it really was very low potency comparatively speaking. Yeah, all right, should we cover some of the ways that it's smoked. Well, I already covered um the joint, right,

that's what slim hand Slim had the joint. Um. I do know that slim happens to prefer the blunt, and that is a cigar that is sliced open and tobacco is taken out and generally mixed back in with some of the pot and it's um was the right, Yeah, it's called a blunt. I didn't know that the tobacco was ever mixed back in. It depends on I mean, you don't have to. Like a spliff is popular in Europe, and that's with regular tobacco like drum, yeah, whatever, just

any kind of loosely tobacco mixed in with with the pot. Yeah. I think the blunt's usually they take most of the cigar tobacco out. I think you're probably right, and then you don't even need to buy a cigar. Now they have blunt wrappers like basically cigar rolling papers. Oh really Yeah, and flavored ones too. You I've heard of those. Interesting man. Uh, you can have your just traditional pipe. If you go into any head shop, you're gonna find a big variety

of all sorts of handmade glass pipes. Or remember the brass ones with the the little kind of tied eye plastic thing in the middle for holding because the brass would get so hot. Apparently remember that. Do you remember that from the nineties, Like, did you go to Lollapalooza. Yeah, I went to Lollapaluza. Well, then you saw those things. I remember the first time I smell pot It was at a concert and uh, he was like, and it was such a foreign I think I've talked about this

on the show. I was just like, what in the world is that? Like, I've never smelled anything like that in my life. It's like someone burning a spare tire or something. Uh. And then you've got the bong the or water pipes and uh that uses water to uh to I guess cool down the smoke. And I remember that from the Scott Bayo after school special Stone. Did you ever see that one? No? I saw Zapped. That was a regular movie, but he was growing pot in

that one. He was I think we're going to at school? Yeah, And Stone was one of the classic after school specials where he was a pothead that like ended up accidentally killing his brother or something like he went swimming and knocked him on the head with the oar of a boat, but he may not have died, though he may have rescued him. The after school special that I remember most vividly is the one where Helen Hunt took PCP oh yeah and jumped out the window like the great story

of her school. I mean, they scared the pants off of us, which is the point. Nancy Reagan was like off on the set, like, but I remember hearing the bong he smoked out of the bong Scott Bao did, and I heard that the bubbling sound, and I was like, well, that's a weird sound. And then you heard it on the Cypress Hill album years later and was like, hey, Scott THEO. And then of course we talked about the edibles um and vaporizing, which is like all the rage

these days. Yeah, and I imagine it just hit me the other day. I'll bet everyone who smokes pot uses East cigarettes as like little vaporizer one hitters, don't they? Uh, some do, I would imagine. So Yeah. In fact, you can buy like pre made cartridges of like hash oil and things to stick in your little cigarette. I know they saw those in Colorado stick that in your East cigarettes. But we should point out, we say kids these days and teenagers um, although marijuana use and teenagers has escalated

over the years, you can't pin it down to one demographic. Um, I think you would be surprised if everybody who smoked pot on a semi regular basis was outed about. Who you would see. Um. I've heard stories from friends whose fathers were like CEO executives and they had cannabis clubs where all the other CEOs that they were friends with like grew their own specialty pot and traded it among

each other. So a wide range of people UH use it, although the vast majority is supposedly I don't know vast majorities right, Although according to polls or surveys, the vast majority are teenagers, followed by post teens. Yeah, but in between nine and marijuana used among teenagers doubled. And you know what, I lay that almost exclusively, at least at first at the feet of Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. You think, so I put it out there. Yes, with

the Chronic, absolutely, Yeah, that was a great album. Yeah, I listen. I can when I hear that album, I think of Street Fighter two. Did you play a lot of that? Then? We we would sit around in college listen to the Chronic and play street Fighter two. It's a good album. It was a great game. I never really played Street Fighter. Yeah, they were really good. Uh So I found a study here. Um. I have to

interjects one another thing. Um, have you seen the YouTube of Mike Tyson clips set to the street Fighter sound effects? It's pretty awesome from his one man show or No No from his boxing career. It fits like perfectly. He's like, shy are you getting at one point? I'll have to see that. Uh So, if you're smoking pot, it's obviously not going to be great for your lungs in your

body because you're inhaling smoke. And like we said earlier, there's their thirty three cancer causing chemicals in marijuana, and it's gonna deposit tar into your lungs just like cigarettes. Uh. And in fact, if you smoke equal amounts of marijuana and regular tobacco, it's gonna deposit about four times as much tar as regular tobacco. What's called the tar burden,

is it? Uh? However, there was a large scale long term study UM released recently UM by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and they collected data from five thousand adults for more than many years. Which these are always my favorite studies, you know, because you can tell stuff long term. Uh. And they found that low to moderate use of pot is less harmful to your lungs than

exposure to tobacco, and I think it's uh. They measured airflow rate, which is the speed which you can blow out air, and then lung volume, which is the amount of air you can hold um in your lungs, and they found that with tobacco there's a one to one relationship. The more you lose, the more loss you have lung wise, and with marijuana, up to a certain rate, it actually

increased the airflow rate. And um. Their rationale was that a cigarette smoker, like a moderate to heavy smoke or smoking like you know, twenty cigarettes today, whereas no one's going out there and smoking you know, well that's not true today, Yeah, but it would be probably less than that because it's more concentrated. But you don't see people smoking five joints to day either unless they have they're they're Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg. I'm sorry, SnO Blind? Is

he still on Snoop Blind? I think so. Um, I could see how pot would have an effect on your lungs as well, especially compared to cigarettes, because like no one uses a filter on their joints. Well, yeah, and they you inhale deeper with marijuana than you do with a tobacco So those are both factors. But if you're smoking a pack of day and you're smoking a lot of weed, you're not doing yourself any favors in the lung department. Yes, even though it might help you fight

that cancer, it may give you cancer to begin with. Yeah, just use some non psychoactive U marijuana oil like they give that little kid. Yeah, or marinol, although that's psychoactive, uh is it? It's a THHD pill like wasting disease and um increase appetite and that kind of stuff. Just a mess with the endoconnebinoid system of people who need it. That's right. You got anything else? No? I mean this could have been a two parter, but well this is a

a good, good overview, it is. I hope everybody enjoyed it. Yeah, you learned a little something. Anything else, Nope? Uh. If you want to learn more about marijuana a k A. Cannabis, type either of those words into the search bart how stuff works dot com and uh, let's see, since we said a search bar, it means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this Australian smoke jumper. Hey, guys, just thought i'd write to let you know how you've influenced

a major change in my life a couple of years ago. Now, h you did a podcast on wildfires. Already had a strong interest in firefighting, but never heard of the things like smoke jumpers or some of the science involved. Uh. Since I joined the Rural Fire Service UM last year as a volunteer and last week I completed my first full bush fire fighter accreditation. It's been a great change and it's inspired me to get fitter and more active

with my community. I'm now working towards getting fit and fast enough to be a smoke jumper, which we call our a f T units in Australia Remote Area Fire Task Force. So thanks guys for giving me the inspiration and drive to get out there and challenge myself. I could imagine do anything else in my spare time now has always loved the show. You keep me mildly distracted through my slow days at work, and that is Andrew from Australia. Nice. Thanks a lot, Andrew, congratulations, Yeah, keep

it up, but it's pretty cool work. Agreed. Be safe out there. If you want to let us know about any life achievements or successes that you'd like to celebrate by sharing them with us, we want to hear about them. We are all over social media. You can find us on Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, just search Stuff you Should Know, s Y, s K, Josh and Chuck and your favorite browser and I should bring one or all of them up right and you can send us an email to

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