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!
