SYSK Selects: How Marijuana Works

Tuck Bride getting his demons out, man. And how about this music? Yeah, this is a thanks to our guest producer Noel. Yeah, who is Jerry's actually producing, but he's got the musical touch. He's if you want to, he's our dub producer. Yeah, if you want to reggae. If I your podcast, Nol is the man. Yes, the big thanks to Noel. Yeah, and great idea by you. I and I yeah, yeah, I 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. Yes, well not really. You gotta grow up. That's the first two. 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, I think booze. Every time we cover drugs, we like to cover the scientific aspects, 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 episodes. Very funny, So, uh, I

guess if you we should start at the beginning. How about that? 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, we'd pot marijuana,

but cannabis, that's probably where it will stop. Like if either want of us as ganja or sticky, it's in this article, we should just shut it down it right then, all right, all right, we'll do the Hey take that back. Yeah, 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, four shows on the history of pot. There's quite a rabbit hole we could

go down here. Yeah, we got to avoid it. Yeah, 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 century in China, uh, it looks like it was probably used medicinally yea, 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. H 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 pot definitely affects. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Uh. 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 medicinally, who knows.

In a thousand and one Arabian Nights, it makes an appearance called bang g Sambad apparently loves this stuff, but supposedly his was hash 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 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 rude or alice um. And there's there's an ongoing debate among botanists over whether they're all actually just a different like um varieties of the same plant, or if they really are different species of plants in the same family. 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 plan 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 them 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 uh 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 Maui wowie. Yeah, that sounds very slapping. Yeah. Um, so should we talk about we 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 uses you can get out of it. And it was in the sixty 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 this the biggest owner of the whole group is talking about George Washington like, oh yeah, like planning camp all day and then comes home and

smokes Martha. 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 law 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 of 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 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 very ified 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 a 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 pot, 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 could 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, right, 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? Where 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 n six The Family, a propaganda movie from French director Louis Gasnier, it's, you know, required viewing for any college student 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 reefer addicts, 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 n seven um a year after refer madness, Congress packs past the Marijuana 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, which is like a thousand dollars for medical or industrial use. So in other words, if you're just you know, Sammy pod head, 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 tax, and then you'd be able to impore 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 Anslinger, 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, in 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 doing on after the Minsky brother there's the burlesque episode. Yeah, 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 sentence and 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 minimums 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 islands. Uh. And then these reports it said it didn't wasn't a gateway drug either. Yeah. In the

nineteen sixties, which is still up for debate. Really, Yeah, I've ever been definitively because you read every other report you read, it's going to say something a little different about what the gateway drug is. And plus I think defining what makes a gateway drug two has never been fully established. Yeah you can how can you test something

scientifically if it's you can't have it defined, you know. Yeah. 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 going to put it on the same level as heroin

and cocaine. Yeah. And during the Nixon administration, the Schaefer Commission, it 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 it. I'm the president exactly. Yeah. So, like you said, the Reagan era brought it back. Um, not brought pot back, No, brought back any kind of um. Anti government sentiment toward pot itself was redoubled in the eighties.

Under the Reagan administration, 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. That's sort of a apples orange in comparison. Yeah, plants versus heroin. It's like plants versus zombies.

I know at one point this is sort of off topic topic, but I don't know if they've changed, But at one point they were sentencing LSD users by the weight, right, and when 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 the cocaine comes. Yeah, and uh, I think that's still the same though, didn't it. I don't know,

but I do know what 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'd 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 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 he's 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 pott in the thirties. That's right. So pot these days, costwise, 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 graham, 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 marijuana 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 grahams in and out. Yeah, I think between seven eight grams. But um, 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, uh 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, the 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, um, the way it's sold by weight, 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 at

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 gonna 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 a 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 planet 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, that 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 sentemia. So the definition of the word sentema are female flowers that have reached maturity without being um pollinated. I can't hear that word without thinking of Caddyshack. What I don't remember that part Bill Murray A little California sens to me. Yeah, yeah, so that's what that means. Yes,

that's the term sense of mea means. So basically, unless you're like fourteen, if you're smoking pot, you're smoking centemia. So yes, the term centemia means pot, 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 plan. So the goal of the cultivators to get the mail out of

there as quickly as it can be identified. Basically. Yeah, and weed's actually good moniker for pop 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 plan anywhere nearby, you want to get rid of the mail plant and then tell the officer, Uh, they must have just blown over here and taken roots. Are right, These d plants in my backyard came from my neighbor. The 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 are hermaphroditic plants. Hermaphroditic plants that feature both male and female flowers 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 and 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 odd plant. But we're gonna get to all that stuff too, right, 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 into a little clear, sticky protrusions coming off the leaves. Those are called tri combs, and that is where the th HC 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 THHC level. And it's a cultivator. Your goal is to have the th HC level as 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 th HC 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, he can smoke like a whole joint and be like

totally mellor cool. Now he's 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 c cake in for better pot these days to now. 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, you know what, we probably shouldn't do this ourselves. No, we we like our jobs exactly, and we might be fired for even figuratively smoking pot. Well, yeah, and who wants to Let's let's get how about that scruffy looking guy farmer Ted. Yeah, he's 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 THHC And 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 that'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 a viola in the lungs, and the aviola is where gas exchange occurs. It's where your oxygen to pride blood comes to get a refill of oxygen to be replenished. And since there's th HC smoke present in that oxygen in the lungs, the t HC 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 at 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 darn interesting if you ask me. Yeah, And and this is how it the physiological effects. Um, the end user might have different reactions to 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

I came up with, it's one. It depends on the pot. Sure if 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 he found out your stone anyway.

I'm curious, Um, Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I've also found there's research um that shows the the cannabin als there's a precursor um chemical to them that's called cannabin dialoic 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 a pot that has a higher CBD

T 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 indicate 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, 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 vertebrate on the planet squirts 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 neurotrans ter's 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 in, good for your yang and that weird. Okay, So when you smoke pot, your endocannabinoid system, which has receptors all throughout the body. There's cbtwo 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 THHC 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 bodies 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 whire because it's been hijacked by th HC. So like your hippocampus, yes, we've talked about that that's good for learning, and when the endocannabinoid receptors are full of th HC, uh, you're not learning or making memories as well as normal. Yeah,

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 quite a lot. Because it's gonna affect the hippocamp us 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 bazo medial um amygdala has been affected. It's uh, endocannabinoid receptors have been hijacked by THHC, 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 there 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 hypothalum miss 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 in 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 other things, because they lose our appetite and lose a lot of weight and UH, aside from helping the stem nausea, it also will stimulate the appetite. Yeah. 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 in dopamine, which is what

makes you feel high. Any euphoric feeling comes from that release of dopamine. But it's also possible that any paranoia or those schizoid 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 THHC 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 a 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 yeah, fifty some and fifty three maybe yeah, depending on your weight and how much you smoked, on how long you smoked, Uh, you're gonna either pass that drug test here or not.

It can stain your body for you know, weeks though, Yeah. 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, Okay, farmer Ted. Um,

stand back up, let's abuse you some more. Although he 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 they made up. So if you can see his liver right here right there. Um, so farmer Ted is going to eat some pot this time. Okay, So what's going to 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 th HC 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 lasts longer, and um, the effects of it, yeah exactly, Yeah, But there's also the extra psychoactive chemical that'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, um, irritability, 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. It is a big one to play. Yeah, if you're applying for your medical marijuana card, it relieves I 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

u UM legal medicinal marijuana. It was almost all glaucoma at the time, in which it seems like everybody was like, you are so facant glaucoma, you need pop for 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 and 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. Oh like the you know the Yeah that's what new doctor wears Birkenstocks. Yeah, you can probably get a medicinal marijuana car 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. When 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 we can legalize that and that's it and it'll be like the model for other states or 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. It 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, you know. And

also I remember I said that fights cancer. Yeah, if you're going to cancer dot GOVN type cannabis and medicinal 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 th HC 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. That's awesome. 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, let's stop being so inflamed. Well that's uh, yeah, I guess that's why it's prescribed a lot for um arthritic conditions these days. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, rhuman TOID arthritis and that's called Yeah. I don't know what the what the differences between rheuma TOID and regular arthritis.

We should do one on arthritis, how about that? Um it is still despite all the medical research, it is still scheduled as a UM 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 I'm pretty sure it's quite a mouthful. Every festivals used to have in Piedmont Park in the nineties, the normal rally hashbash. Yeah, I

saw the Black Crows there once. It was great, right, um so, but yeah, normal 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, hot to be decrimin realized, 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. 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 and 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 can attack sit 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 allowed 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 to ten pounds in your trunk or anything. I don't know how much you can um, but 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 buy 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, it'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 tax 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 this all these different factors that this guy like was kind of laying out, and it was really interesting. Buzz kill. I have to check that out. Yeah, all right. There's a debate that I don't quite understand about the potency of marijuana in 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 mauie wawie. They never did that in the sixties seventies. And you can't go back in a 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 he got years ago. I didn't know that. Yeah, that's sad. It is sad. Sorry, a state of Dennis Hopper. Um get Willie Nelson though. Peter Fonda, Yeah he's alive, Okay, So you just have

Peter Fonda 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 of 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 twenty five percent 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 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 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, yes, that's what slim hand. Slim had the joint. Um. I do know that slim happens to prefer the blunt. Oh yeah, and that is a cigar uh that is sliced open and U tobacco is taken out and generally mixed back in with some of the pot and it's um was there, right, it's called a blunt. I didn't know that the tobacco is 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, uh like drum yeah whatever, just any kind of loose leaf 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. Yeah, 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 Lalla Palouza. Yeah,

I went to Lallapaluza. 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. It's 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 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 wasn't, so we're going to

it's school. Yeah, And Stone was one of the classic capture 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. So 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 second story over 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 bo 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 like hey Scott beyo. And then of course we've 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 supposedly, I don't know, a fast majority. It's 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. I think so, I'm

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 least we would sit around in college listen to the Chronic and play street Fighter two. Yeah, it was a good album. It was a great game. I never really played street Fighter. They were really good. Uh So I found a study here. Um,

I have to interject one another thing. Um, have you seen the YouTube of Mike Tyson clips set to 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 they're 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 twenty 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 a day, whereas no one's going out there and smoking you know, well that's not true twenty today, Yeah, but it would be probably less than that because it's more concentrated. But you don't see people smoking five joints a day either, unless they have they're they're Willie Nelson, Snoop Dog. I'm sorry, snoop Lin.

Is he still on Snoop line? I think so? Um. I could see how pot would have an effect on your lungs though 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 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 long 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 uh marijuana oil like they give that little kid, Yeah, or marian all although that's psychoactive, uh is it? It's a THHC pill, remember, like wasting disease and um to increase appetite and that kind of stuff. Just a mess with the endoconebinoid 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 good, good overview, I think it is. I hope everybody enjoyed it. Yeah, you learned a little something. Anything else, nope. Uh. If you want to learn more about arijuana a k A. Cannabis, type either of those words into the search bar how stuff works dot com and uh, let's see. Since we said uh, 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 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 inspi ration 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

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