Weed and Wellness, Part 2

Part 2 of the "Weed and Wellness" series

Marijuana generally is a safe drug to use because of its inability to be overdosed on and its relatively minimal effects on the body when used properly. Marijuana is different from most drugs in that it is nearly impossible for one to overdose on. It would take 5,000 times more of the amount of THC required to get high for a person to overdose on THC. Many effects of cannabis use are confused between the long term and short term. Most effects cannabis has on the body are short term and in fact last only as long as the user is high. Do marijuana users get the munchies for the rest of their life? No, it lasts as long as the “high” or until their hunger is satisfied. The short term memory loss effect that many are aware of is true, but disappears after the person is no longer under cannabis’ influence.

Some who are worried about marijuana’s health effects may query, “Isn’t marijuana addictive? Also, what about its long term psychological effects?” The addictiveness of marijuana has been widely exaggerated and even invented. Within the past few months, I saw a report on CNN in which some unfortunate Californian who did not want her identity revealed claimed that marijuana ruined her life because it had caused an addiction. This is erroneous and asinine. Yes, marijuana can be habit forming but it has no chemicals to cause an addiction. When I say habit forming, I mean that people want to use marijuana repeatedly because it has pleasurable effects. As such, any reasonable person would want to get that pleasure gain, but not because they feel dependent on it. Anything pleasurable can be psychologically addictive. In 2004, a study was conducted in both Amsterdam and San Francisco. It asked marijuana users how they would describe their use of marijuana over their life. If marijuana were addictive, most would have selected ‘escalating’ use. However, most selected ‘increase/decrease,’ which means that since starting using cannabis, their consumption rose and then fell as a result of voluntary actions. “This is not the trend of a dangerous drug,” as Pete Geither writes. As for cannabis’ psychological effects, in Leslie Iversen’s report on the long term effects of marijuana, “Some individuals who have psychotic thought tendencies might risk precipitating psychotic illness.” In other words, marijuana cannot simply cause psychotic illness in a normal person, but a person who has psychological tendencies should steer away from the drug.

Are there any concerns that were left unnoticed? Ask your question in the comments!

Weed and Wellness, Part 1

Note: Today's post is part one of a two part series on the health effects of marijuana.

Today we will be focusing on the effects that marijuana has on each user of marijuana. This will not include its treatment of medical problems. For length’s sake, I will give you a synopsis of what happens when someone uses marijuana. When smoked, the most active chemical, THC, and the other psychoactive chemicals (cannabinoids) travel from the lungs to the blood stream and into the brain and other parts of the body. Cannabis can have effects when eaten as well because the THC can get to blood stream through this process as well. Because marijuana affects the brain, it certainly should have a minimum age restriction since the brain is still being molded during adolescent and childhood years.

Smoking marijuana is known to cause damage in the airways and lungs of users. It has over a thousand chemicals, some of which become carcinogens when smoked. Although these are facts about marijuana use, there are other ways to use cannabis and still derive the chemicals needed to get the benefits of the plant. Marijuana can be prepared and mixed with food and cooking oils to be safely eaten. Because THC is soluble in lipids, it is practical to extract the THC and make food that has the same effect as smoking marijuana but without the negative carcinogens. However, if you cannot make food with marijuana, there are safer ways to smoke marijuana. The general hierarchy of safe smoking paraphernalia from least safe to the most is:

Blunt/rolling papers à Bowl (smoking pipe) à Bong/Water pipe à Vaporizer

As you move from left to right in this flow chart, more and more toxins are filtered out when the marijuana is smoked. In a blunt, there are possible added toxins of the paper, but in a bowl (which is usually made of glass), one smokes only the cannabis. The bong takes it a step further by cooling the smoke and filtering the smoke through water first which traps toxins before the user inhales the cooler smoke. The vaporizer improves upon this further by taking into account the fact that THC is extracted not through combustion of the marijuana, but the heating of it. As such, it heats the cannabis to a certain temperature at which the THC is released without releasing the harmful chemicals. Furthermore, as you go to the right on the hierarchy, each tool successively extracts a higher percentage of cannabinoids from the marijuana. So while one receives a much better effect and "high" from better equipment, they also are not being as detrimental to their health as the preceding paraphernalia.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion to:

Weed and Wellness!