Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, wasn't the stuff to blow your Mind?
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. Hey,
Speaker 1: Robert who said the following, The illegality of cannabis is outrageous,
Speaker 1: an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps
Speaker 1: produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately
Speaker 1: needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. Oh well, well,
Speaker 1: that's of course a quote from Mr X from the
Speaker 1: early nineteen seventies. Yeah. Mr X. He's that guy who
Speaker 1: is on The X Files. He replaced the deep throat
Speaker 1: character in like season three, Right, is that true? There's
Speaker 1: a Mr X on there? Oh yeah, totally totally. He
Speaker 1: was like their inside informant. Uh, he's the guy from
Speaker 1: twenty one Jump Street. He said that. No, no, okay,
Speaker 1: turns out this was actually Carl Sagan. Why yeah. Mr
Speaker 1: mr X was his um, his his marijuana advocate pseudonym
Speaker 1: back in the day. Well, Carl Sagan must have had
Speaker 1: a contact high. That's my worst pot joke that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna tell during this episode. But yeah, so Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: said that. But We didn't find out about that until
Speaker 1: after he died. You know, I learned about Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: saying that listening to a podcast. I was listening to
Speaker 1: the Dead Authors podcast with Paula Tompkins and Matt Gorley
Speaker 1: was his guest, pretending to be Carl Sagan, and they
Speaker 1: talked about this quote at length. Yeah, and it's and
Speaker 1: it's more than a court like, it's a full piece
Speaker 1: and you know, in which he talks about his experiences
Speaker 1: with marijuana, the effects marijuana had in his own life,
Speaker 1: on creativity, on making connections things outside of his out
Speaker 1: of the scientific discipline. But he at least alluded a
Speaker 1: little bit to it's it's used to make scientific connections
Speaker 1: as well. So we figured we did a two parter
Speaker 1: on M D M A. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: positive comments about that, and we thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe we should do this as kind of like an
Speaker 1: ongoing series where we explore different UH drug substances, the
Speaker 1: cultures around them, but mainly the science of how they
Speaker 1: work and the potential medical properties that they have. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as well as you know, some cool historical and cultural
Speaker 1: material as well, more way more so than M D
Speaker 1: M A Cannabis is a subject where you could easily
Speaker 1: have a stuff to blow your mind esque show that
Speaker 1: just covers nothing but marijuana. Like each day, you could
Speaker 1: look at a different uh each week, you could look
Speaker 1: at a different historical tidbit, some different cultural tidbit. You
Speaker 1: could look at some new study about its applications. You
Speaker 1: could look at some new study about it's you know
Speaker 1: that that tackles it from a you know, drug abuse,
Speaker 1: drug prevention angle. There's just so much material out there,
Speaker 1: uh that you could just go on forever. And we're
Speaker 1: not going to go on forever. We're going to listen
Speaker 1: two pieces here. Yeah, we we did our best to
Speaker 1: condense this down. Robert's right. There's an absolute infinity of
Speaker 1: hot research out there, and that's a good thing because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that we have to learn
Speaker 1: from this one plant that are our species has become
Speaker 1: totally obsessed with. Yeah. I mean, we stand it in
Speaker 1: a you know, an interesting place in history where um
Speaker 1: acceptance of marijuana is growing in many circles. Uh. We
Speaker 1: see a lot more research, scientific research going on right
Speaker 1: now than we have in the past. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to exactly predict where we'll be ten
Speaker 1: years from who knows. Yeah, but but yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: give it the old stuff to blow your mind. Shake
Speaker 1: here and if there if you want more information or
Speaker 1: you want one more of just a general overview, there
Speaker 1: are a couple of great articles over how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot Com, one on marijuana, how marijuana Works, another one
Speaker 1: how medical marijuana Works, that will give you the basics.
Speaker 1: You know, us, we're liable to maybe dwell on some
Speaker 1: of the weirder, cooler things about the topic, and you
Speaker 1: might very well want to then go back and export
Speaker 1: some of the basics. Yeah, I want to start the
Speaker 1: episode with a disclaimer that, like, what we're going to
Speaker 1: do isn't the standard how marijuana works type episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: And in fact, our colleagues over at Stuff you should
Speaker 1: know to to how medicinal marijuana Works episode that you
Speaker 1: should go listen to if you're looking for something like that.
Speaker 1: This is going to be more us really drilling as
Speaker 1: far as we could, uh into the science behind it,
Speaker 1: how it affects the brain, uh, some kind of odder
Speaker 1: unknown cultural connotations of it through history, how it's evolved
Speaker 1: over the years, and in particular, one of the things
Speaker 1: I'm psyched to talk about is like it's migratory patterns
Speaker 1: across the planet. Yeah, that that is some really fasting
Speaker 1: material there. And then we're gonna break and we're gonna
Speaker 1: do another episode later this week that's going to be
Speaker 1: solely about the health benefits and the medical properties of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know this will be a little bit different.
Speaker 1: This is in our voice and as such, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a subjective experience. So Robert and I will also
Speaker 1: probably bring our own experiences of growing up as adults
Speaker 1: in America in a society that, uh, plenty of people
Speaker 1: smoke marijuana and do do whatever they want with marijuana,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of still illegal. Depends on where you
Speaker 1: live now, Yeah, yeah, And I imagine pretty much everybody
Speaker 1: out there is gonna have some level of familiarity with
Speaker 1: with marijuana. Either you have tried it in the past,
Speaker 1: you're an active user, you know somebody who fits either
Speaker 1: these categories, or you've at least seen it on television,
Speaker 1: you've heard about it in the lyrics to two various
Speaker 1: songs and um and in various hip hop tracks. You
Speaker 1: probably know something about what we're talking about here, all right,
Speaker 1: So let's dive in then real basic cannabis as an organism,
Speaker 1: it is closely related to some other species plant species,
Speaker 1: But really that just of it is that it is
Speaker 1: a plant that probably originally originated natively in India somewhere
Speaker 1: just north of the Himalayas. We know that it can
Speaker 1: grow somewhere between eight to twelve feet tall, almost in
Speaker 1: some cases as tall as twenty five ft. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that. Uh. And then one thing that you know,
Speaker 1: we'll just get out of the way, but this is
Speaker 1: not going to be something we're gonna talk a ton about.
Speaker 1: Of course, it has uses as a textile fiber, right,
Speaker 1: and hemp has particular woody fibers in it that have
Speaker 1: industrial applications that that could be again like that could
Speaker 1: be its own podcasts, all the ways that you can
Speaker 1: use hemp, right, Uh. And I mean it is important
Speaker 1: to hit because because essentially you have two very common
Speaker 1: subspecies of cannabis. You have a Cannabis Sativa L and
Speaker 1: L stands for Carl Linnaeus, Carl Linnaeus who named it
Speaker 1: in three and this is the non psychoactive hemp variety.
Speaker 1: This is the version of of cannabis that is used
Speaker 1: to create these various textiles and has been used for ages.
Speaker 1: Will discuss in a little bit um and and and
Speaker 1: to put that in perspective, hemp contains less than one
Speaker 1: percent th HC. Meanwhile, you have Cannabis sativa, the psychoactive
Speaker 1: cannabis plant, and that when that one you'll see t
Speaker 1: ch th HC levels that range from four to and
Speaker 1: the upper end of that the twenty percent area. You're
Speaker 1: going to see that in some of the specially strains
Speaker 1: that humans have cultivated. So then there's also Cannabis indica
Speaker 1: and there's another one called Cannabis rudder alis uh. And
Speaker 1: these are different species. There's variants, there's subspecies. But one
Speaker 1: thing that's worth saying right up front about these is
Speaker 1: that these categorizations sometimes get used over simplistically, and this
Speaker 1: is gonna be something that we keep coming back to
Speaker 1: over and over again, especially with medicinal use. Uh. The idea,
Speaker 1: for instance, that indica makes you sleepy but sativa makes
Speaker 1: you hyper uh. But then there you can find strains
Speaker 1: of both that have totally opposite effects. Right. So there's
Speaker 1: like there's a lot more going on here. And the
Speaker 1: reason why is this plant is like incredibly dynamic and complicated.
Speaker 1: It has more than five hundred chemicals in it, including THHC.
Speaker 1: A hundred and nine of those chemicals are what we
Speaker 1: call cannabinoids, and those are the important ones when we're
Speaker 1: talking about the effects on the brain. But this seems
Speaker 1: really diverse. It's got a lot going on inside of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: And depending on how it spread, depending on the different strains, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's gonna have different effects, right yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: effects of th HD of consumption is gonna depend down
Speaker 1: the strain, how much you took, how you took it, Uh,
Speaker 1: your your individual makeup, your past usage, a number of
Speaker 1: different factors. Um. It's also worth a stressing here that
Speaker 1: the female cannabis plant is the one that produces the
Speaker 1: sticky resin that contains the cannabinoids, most notably delta nine
Speaker 1: tetra hydro a banal, which is th h so th HC.
Speaker 1: Let's let's start with just like a simple brain explanation. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's this is the This isn't your brain on drugs.
Speaker 1: This is just your brain. Okay. Our gray matter contains neurons,
Speaker 1: and neurons are cells that talk to other cells with
Speaker 1: electro chemicals. Right, the electro chemicals are called neurotransmitters, and
Speaker 1: one type of neurotransmitter in our brains that exists without
Speaker 1: smoking marijuana are called endocannabinoids. Yea, endocannabinoids aren't in your
Speaker 1: brain right now, regardless of your past usage or nine
Speaker 1: usage of marijuana. And there's one plant that also produces them,
Speaker 1: and that's cannabis. So keep that in mind throughout all
Speaker 1: of this, right, Is that, like, the things that are
Speaker 1: going on the effects of cannabis on the human body
Speaker 1: are basically the king things that we are already going on,
Speaker 1: right increasing or decreasing them. Yeah, I mean you can
Speaker 1: you can sort of say that for from for pretty
Speaker 1: much any Yeah, that's substance. It's not like a magic
Speaker 1: hand supernatural force reaching into your brain. Is this substance
Speaker 1: that is causing your brain to do things that it
Speaker 1: already does, though perhaps in different intensities and in different ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just kind of want to dispel the notion of
Speaker 1: the and you and I grew up with this the
Speaker 1: this is your brain on drugs type commercials where it's
Speaker 1: like the drugs are doing the things to you, and yeah,
Speaker 1: like and they are, I mean, it's a cause and
Speaker 1: effect relationship. But like the chemistry sets already there on
Speaker 1: your skull, right, an egg does not fry itself exactly,
Speaker 1: all right, So an individual takes th HC it can.
Speaker 1: We already mentioned that the exact results are gonna depend
Speaker 1: on strain, dosage, delivery method, individual frequency of use, but
Speaker 1: the it's gonna ultimately produce a variety of effects of
Speaker 1: both sensory and psychological and looting. Uh. One of the
Speaker 1: sources listed it is mild reverie, which show we were
Speaker 1: just talking about about that off air. Well, what's what's
Speaker 1: the more relatable term for that fun? Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: what I would think of it as that's that's another
Speaker 1: thing that like I guess we should point out as
Speaker 1: like along the way and the research of this is
Speaker 1: of course academics who are studying marijuana or cannabis and
Speaker 1: its effects, like they're in this sort of weird, precarious
Speaker 1: situation right where they want to be as scientifically accurate
Speaker 1: as possible to maintain their standing of this being a
Speaker 1: serious study. Uh, because and I read this in multiple pieces,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, there's a stigma on people who study
Speaker 1: this as like, you know, we're just a bunch of
Speaker 1: hippies who just want to smoke weed or something like
Speaker 1: that while while also holding professorship, and they're paranoid about it.
Speaker 1: Almost yeah, uh so there is almost uh an impenetrable
Speaker 1: language use in some of these, including uh equent reverie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they rarely use the word dank, but yeah. Some
Speaker 1: of the other effects include a euphoria, heightened sensory awareness, creativity, empathy,
Speaker 1: impaired short term memory, altered senses of time and space,
Speaker 1: enhanced appetite and sexual desire um not necessarily at the
Speaker 1: same time, occasional drowsiness, and a tendency to enhance introspection. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: and this this, These are all the kind of like
Speaker 1: basic assumptions that we have as just like general people
Speaker 1: who exist, at least in America, of like what happens
Speaker 1: when you smoke weed? Yeah, I mean, if you just
Speaker 1: watch television, you see varying level. So like the guy
Speaker 1: in this show he smokes a little breaking back and
Speaker 1: suddenly he is a little more creative, creative, or oh,
Speaker 1: this character in this show Aida Pott Brownie and then
Speaker 1: just set there thinking about death for an hour. You
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, totally a lot of people are gonna
Speaker 1: be familiar with these these basic uh sensory and psychological effects.
Speaker 1: So back to the brain. Those cannabinoids work their way
Speaker 1: up through our blood and into our brains, and they
Speaker 1: mimic or block the neurotransmitters, interfering with our normal functions. Right. So,
Speaker 1: because there's high concentrations of cannabis cannabinoid receptors in our hippocampus,
Speaker 1: our cerebellum, and our basil ganglia, the THHC binds with
Speaker 1: the receptors there and interferes with our recollection of recent events.
Speaker 1: So this is the whole memory thing. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: a lot about this um. In fact, I had previously
Speaker 1: written an episode for our video series brain Stuff on
Speaker 1: how much marijuana actually affects your memories, so I was
Speaker 1: able to incorporate a lot of that research here. And
Speaker 1: of course, as we also know, it affects your coordination
Speaker 1: and your muscle movement. So okay, like we said, our
Speaker 1: brains have already got these endocannabinoids in them, right, and
Speaker 1: cannabis cannabis basically hijacks this process. Now, the system of
Speaker 1: the endocannabinoid system influences pain, our memory, our mood and
Speaker 1: our appetite, all those things that Robert just listed as
Speaker 1: being affected by using cannabis, which is a nice uh,
Speaker 1: which nicely foreshadows the air eventual discussion on medical applications
Speaker 1: because you can already see this is a substance that
Speaker 1: is it is already involved in a number of of
Speaker 1: the things that are affected by various illnesses and diseases. Yeah. Absolutely, Uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that we're really getting into
Speaker 1: now and we're going to talk about more, but like
Speaker 1: research is relatively recently in the last five years, is
Speaker 1: that the endocannabinoid process also has a big role in
Speaker 1: how our brains grow. Now, recall from when we talked
Speaker 1: about m D m A and the m D m
Speaker 1: A episodes, Our brains are actually growing until we're twenty
Speaker 1: five years old. Like it's easy to say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm growing up, I'm eighteen, I'm done, but that's
Speaker 1: not true, Like your brain is still evolving, and uh,
Speaker 1: using marijuana definitely seems to have an effect on how
Speaker 1: your brain grows if you use it in adolescence. But
Speaker 1: I think like what they're referring to is like anything
Speaker 1: before years old, and that that's on a regular use,
Speaker 1: but we'll get into that later. And the thing about
Speaker 1: the endocannabinoid system, we've only known about this thing since
Speaker 1: the late nineties, so, uh, we know, okay, we know
Speaker 1: it's complex neurosystem. We know it affects these couple of
Speaker 1: things that I just mentioned, but we're only beginning to
Speaker 1: understand it. So it's weird when you go down the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole on marijuana research because there's tons of it.
Speaker 1: Like we mentioned, it's everywhere, but a lot of it
Speaker 1: is the same. Like, here's this endocannabinoid thing. We sort
Speaker 1: of get it, but not really. More research is needed. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then here's my fun fact for the episode. The
Speaker 1: reason you can't overdose on marijuana is because our cannabinoid
Speaker 1: receptors aren't densely packed inside the medulla. The medulla control
Speaker 1: our cardiovascular system, right, So if you use heroin and
Speaker 1: you overdose on heroin, that'll shut down your respiratory control center.
Speaker 1: But pot can't do anything like that. Do not mistake
Speaker 1: us when we say you cannot overdose on marijuana. We
Speaker 1: are not saying that you cannot take too much. You cannot.
Speaker 1: You can take more marijuana than than is than you
Speaker 1: should or is comfortable for the user experience. Um, But
Speaker 1: you can say that about anything, right. You can say
Speaker 1: that about chocolate. Yeah, I mean one, you can say
Speaker 1: that about plenty of things just in your on your
Speaker 1: spice rack that take too much of it, you can
Speaker 1: they can have dire consequences. Bottom line being you cannot overdose,
Speaker 1: but you can't take too much. Okay, So we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the positive effects. But I'd like to think
Speaker 1: that most of the people out there, again, like whether
Speaker 1: you've had personal experience with it or you've just watch
Speaker 1: a TV show, you pretty much get what those positive
Speaker 1: effects are, right at least the positive recreational effects that
Speaker 1: we're talking Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the the reduce of
Speaker 1: pain and inflammation. Uh. And then the medicinal applications we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about in the next episode and primarily
Speaker 1: just you know, spoilers for that episode. It's primarily used
Speaker 1: to treat epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, and of course we
Speaker 1: also discussed some of its uses, um for people who
Speaker 1: are undergoing chemotherapy from cancer. Yeah, there's all kinds and
Speaker 1: and PTSD as well. There's just like with m d
Speaker 1: m A, uh, that same maps research Institute is looking
Speaker 1: at how marijuana can help with PTSD. So this leads
Speaker 1: us though, let's talk about the adverse effects. Okay, and
Speaker 1: this isn't I'm not gonna do like the Nancy Reagan
Speaker 1: like sit here and tell you all the bad things, right.
Speaker 1: I think the way that we need to approach this,
Speaker 1: just like we we talked about with m d m A,
Speaker 1: is like, let's be mature about it. This is plant.
Speaker 1: This plant does these things to the human body. We're
Speaker 1: listing them. We can apply positive or negative connotations to them,
Speaker 1: but just it's important for us to walk through what
Speaker 1: they are, right, all right, So memory is the big one. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the answer like, does does marijuana affect your memory? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it absolutely does. And the reason why is because the
Speaker 1: th HC latches onto the cannabinoid receptor type CB one
Speaker 1: in your brain. Uh. And this affects your short term memory.
Speaker 1: In fact, we've done forty years worth of studies that
Speaker 1: show that th HC disrupt that disrupts our short term memory.
Speaker 1: It also makes it difficult to remember what happened when
Speaker 1: you were actually high. Uh. And yes, when you take
Speaker 1: larger doses like Robert was talking about, you can take
Speaker 1: too much, it has an even even more of an
Speaker 1: effect on your memory. However, you can also develop a tolerance, uh,
Speaker 1: and so like if you are a chronic user, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can build up a tolerance and subsequently you'll have
Speaker 1: less of the memory problems. But this also plays into
Speaker 1: the medicinal stuff we're gonna talk about later in that
Speaker 1: like the medicinal applications don't always work again because you
Speaker 1: can build up a tolerance to it, right, And it's
Speaker 1: and on the short term memory stuff. I do want
Speaker 1: to mention here that like there's a difference between say, oh,
Speaker 1: this user um consumes some marijuana and they can't quite
Speaker 1: remember all the details of that that episode of of
Speaker 1: Breaking Bad they watched, as opposed to an idea of
Speaker 1: like somebody just having a complete blackout experience. Like there
Speaker 1: are varying levels of memory disruption and it's not just
Speaker 1: the black and white I remember and oh I have
Speaker 1: a black hole in my life, right you know, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: totally totally, which reminds me of like, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean I have friends who over the years used too
Speaker 1: much alcohol and that was kind of their experience with that,
Speaker 1: which was just like the the whole in in time
Speaker 1: and space. They don't remember it happened, or at least
Speaker 1: they say they don't remember what happened. I have far
Speaker 1: less friends who use marijuana that have said the same thing. So,
Speaker 1: but let's let's clarify to existing memories are not affected
Speaker 1: by marijuana use. Uh. And this does not lead to
Speaker 1: memory loss, you know, or dementia. UH. That needs to
Speaker 1: be clarified because there's I think, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of the scare campaigns about cannabis leads to sort of
Speaker 1: these misunderstandings. Researchers do, though, hope they can use THHC
Speaker 1: to help people with forgetting bad memories associated with PTSD,
Speaker 1: and the reason why is because the endo cannabinoid system
Speaker 1: regulates memory formation, but it also is involved with how
Speaker 1: we quote make negative memories extinct. That's a weird phrasing,
Speaker 1: but apparently there's has something to do with us basically,
Speaker 1: like I guess like the metaphor would be like put
Speaker 1: a negative memory in a box and shoving it in
Speaker 1: a closet way in the back of your brain, right
Speaker 1: and just like I'm done with this. But you know,
Speaker 1: this touches again on the complexity of PHC because it's
Speaker 1: a substance that almost paradoxola involves sometimes the like the
Speaker 1: the the overexamination of a negative element in one's memories
Speaker 1: or in this case, we're discussing now the potential eradication
Speaker 1: of of negative connotations for a memory. Right, And we
Speaker 1: didn't do a lot of like real deep dive research
Speaker 1: into the PTSD application here, but I'm gonna guess based
Speaker 1: on all the stuff that we did on m D,
Speaker 1: m A and PTSD that probably has a similar use
Speaker 1: and that it's done in conjunction with therapy, and that
Speaker 1: you know, you use it a little bit with a
Speaker 1: trustworthy therapist and then you talk your way through the
Speaker 1: memories and the problems, rather than it's it's not like
Speaker 1: this magical thing where like you take a certain amount
Speaker 1: of marijuana and book your memory just goes and close it. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: we need to stop thinking about it as being like
Speaker 1: this just magic wand thing. Okay. The chronic use effects
Speaker 1: are important to consider as well, because as we age,
Speaker 1: chronic use of marijuana can hasten the loss of neurons
Speaker 1: in our hippocampus. So teens, and this is where it
Speaker 1: comes into the like growing up and how it affects
Speaker 1: your brain. Thing. Teens who smoke it for three or
Speaker 1: more years may have abnormally shaped hippocamp i, and they
Speaker 1: get more abnormal the longer they use it chronically. Now,
Speaker 1: these deformations are connected to poor performance on memory tests
Speaker 1: and they don't go away either. Uh. They've been observed
Speaker 1: in individuals who are in their early twenties who stopped
Speaker 1: using marijuana up to two years before. So it's like,
Speaker 1: there's this window in your life and let's be honest,
Speaker 1: for a lot of us, that's the window when we're
Speaker 1: most likely to use marijuana. Uh and and it if
Speaker 1: it's used on enough of a regular basis, it can
Speaker 1: affect the shape of your brain. Yeah. I mean this
Speaker 1: is the period of time in our development where we're
Speaker 1: hardwired really to to break out and uh and and
Speaker 1: attached to different peer groups. It's like a survival instinct
Speaker 1: to to take more risk as a survival instinct. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's it's unfortunate this is also the time where
Speaker 1: we should we should probably not be experimenting with a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different substances. Yeah. I know, like reading
Speaker 1: this like I almost thought like wow, like in a
Speaker 1: in a mature society it would be. And I wonder
Speaker 1: if there's like some kind of uh like smaller micro
Speaker 1: culture somewhere where it's like this where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like we accept that this is a thing that exists
Speaker 1: and it has these properties, but you know, for the
Speaker 1: most part, like we want to keep that away, uh,
Speaker 1: from our from our youth until they're of a particular age,
Speaker 1: and then we'll have like a ceremony or whatever, like
Speaker 1: like a celebration spring yeah, like the yell yeah, the
Speaker 1: rum spring of marijuana where you're ready and it won't
Speaker 1: affect how your brain shaped and and and and affect
Speaker 1: your cognition. Basically, basically your programming here is to is
Speaker 1: to rebel, run away from your tribe and go find
Speaker 1: another tribe that you can breed with and uh find
Speaker 1: safety among But yeah, way to you get to other
Speaker 1: tribe until you tryal these substances should be the uh
Speaker 1: the caveat there. Yeah, I don't know, that would be interesting.
Speaker 1: I wonder if any of the listeners out there aware
Speaker 1: of like if there's some there must be I would
Speaker 1: assume that there's got to be some kind of mature
Speaker 1: society where that is how it's handled. Although I guess
Speaker 1: like based on sort of like nation state regulations, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily be able to do that anymore. Well, I
Speaker 1: think you do see traditional uses of marijuana and other
Speaker 1: substances where control of the substances held by shamans and
Speaker 1: relise individuals, and therefore you would have to reach a
Speaker 1: certain age a certain place in your life before they
Speaker 1: would be administered to you. That's so that would be
Speaker 1: I think the most likely form of that. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting to consider going forward with this. Um. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we know this endocannabinoid system, even though it's super
Speaker 1: complex and we're only just now learning about it, it's
Speaker 1: important to how our synapses form. It's important to our
Speaker 1: early brain development during adolescent uh. And so yes, it's
Speaker 1: possible that marijuana is affecting the development of our brains. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we know of course that they also adversely affect
Speaker 1: our motor coordination, our attention, our judgment. It also can
Speaker 1: raise our heart rate, cause anxiety, and it has irritants
Speaker 1: inside the smoke that possibly cause cancer. And this is
Speaker 1: a good moment for us to all Right, so memories
Speaker 1: the big one, right, that's the big like quote unquote
Speaker 1: adverse effect. But let's go through a list of other
Speaker 1: adverse effects that have been tracked through science. It's been
Speaker 1: linked to having at lower sperm count you have used
Speaker 1: at least once a week. Uh. It's also it's not
Speaker 1: highly addictive. However, ten scent of users become dependent. I've
Speaker 1: also I've seen that number represented as high as thirty.
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on who's tweaking the numbers, because
Speaker 1: I think it depends on like your definition of dependence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the thirty percent I saw was something like, quote, um,
Speaker 1: some degree of dependence. Yeah. Um. But the so that's
Speaker 1: the thing is the addiction like definition is complicated. It's
Speaker 1: possible that you might be influencing a neurochemical dopamine addiction
Speaker 1: that's linked in our brain. There's a couple of other
Speaker 1: science things going on here. Uh. It may also change
Speaker 1: the quote feel good part of the brain, including our
Speaker 1: neurons that produce dopamine. And if you're you know, it's
Speaker 1: constantly producing dopamine, that's going to make people to want
Speaker 1: to keep using it obviously. Uh. And somehow we know this.
Speaker 1: It's reducing the number of those CB one receptors that
Speaker 1: we have in our brains, and that too could be
Speaker 1: leading to addiction of some type. It's also been linked
Speaker 1: to cardiovascular problems, long damage for heavy smokers, high risk
Speaker 1: of but up in chronic gobronchitis. But its effects on
Speaker 1: respiratory function and respiratory cancer on clear mostly because of
Speaker 1: mixed use with tobacco. So on a lot of this,
Speaker 1: we're just talking about the fact that the primary method
Speaker 1: of consuming it is the smoke, So of course you're
Speaker 1: going to end end up with smoke and relation issues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And now going back to my story of my stupid youth,
Speaker 1: cannabis intoxication can double a driver's risk of a crash,
Speaker 1: as reported in a study, and I'm here from a
Speaker 1: subjective experience to tell you that makes a lot of sense. Also,
Speaker 1: maternal cannabis used during pregnancy can modestly reduce birth weight. Okay,
Speaker 1: And there is a connection between youthful exposure to to
Speaker 1: cannabis and early onset psychosis, including schizophrenia. Now I want
Speaker 1: to add here though, that these people are usually already
Speaker 1: genetically predisposed towards these mental illnesses. So it's not like
Speaker 1: smoking weed makes you crazy, right, Like, it's not that.
Speaker 1: And it's also associated with the use of other ellipic drugs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I feel like this is a good moment, like
Speaker 1: with that particular one to just like add a note
Speaker 1: here that I personally think that there's a difference between
Speaker 1: cannabis's socio cultural role and its scientific effects on the
Speaker 1: human body. And some studies suggest that cannabis is a
Speaker 1: contributing cause to these things like for instance, that you'll
Speaker 1: drop out of school or something, while others are arguing that, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a relationship there, but there's also lots of other
Speaker 1: shared causes, right, like makes me think of wicked problems.
Speaker 1: There's a lot going on there. And just from my
Speaker 1: own personal experience growing up with with with kids who
Speaker 1: dropped out of school and we're pot smokers, Like, I
Speaker 1: don't think it was necessarily just the pot that made
Speaker 1: them drop out of school, right Like, they had a
Speaker 1: lot of other things going on in their lives and
Speaker 1: it was a convergence. Yeah, And and you know, it's
Speaker 1: easy to get into. You could you could do a
Speaker 1: whole episode just talking about the whole Gateway drug band.
Speaker 1: You know, to what extent is it a gateway drug?
Speaker 1: To what extent is anything a gateway drug? If you
Speaker 1: keep it like legally and socially stored in the box
Speaker 1: with these other things. It's kind of like saying, hey,
Speaker 1: if you keep the bubble gum in the liquor cabinet,
Speaker 1: then bubble gum is the gateway to liquor, right, because
Speaker 1: that is the you inevitably fall in proximity to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the official lingo in one of the studies we
Speaker 1: read says that, yes, they find a consistent association between
Speaker 1: regular cannabis use and poor psycho social outcomes in adulthood. Now,
Speaker 1: my personal experience, I would argue against that, but that's
Speaker 1: very subjective. You know, I am an adult, uh thirty
Speaker 1: eight years old, and I have lots of friends who
Speaker 1: partake in using marijuana, and they make great decisions and
Speaker 1: are pretty stable adults. Now, we mentioned uh, we mentioned smoke,
Speaker 1: We mentioned different methods of consuming cannabis. I do want
Speaker 1: to mention here that for cannabis to release THHD into
Speaker 1: the bloodstream, it must be heated above one hundred degrees
Speaker 1: celsius or two hundred twelve degrees fahrenheit. So it has
Speaker 1: to be cooked, it has to be smoked. And this
Speaker 1: is why we inevitably end up talking about the inhalation
Speaker 1: of cannabis smoke, the brewing of cannabis teeth, the creation
Speaker 1: of cannabis oils that can be absorbed through the skin,
Speaker 1: culinary infusion generally you know, in the form of or
Speaker 1: often in the form of butters and other things that
Speaker 1: are then used in baking. Uh. Some cultures in the
Speaker 1: past just threw it into a communal camp fire and
Speaker 1: everyone um inhaled it that way, and the use of
Speaker 1: pipes was actually rather uncommon until the sixteenth century. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, the whole sort of it's easy to miss
Speaker 1: that given how prevalent the bong and you know, one
Speaker 1: hitter culture is today. But yeah, that is a in
Speaker 1: the long history of human cannabis used. Uh, that's a
Speaker 1: relatively new thing. Yeah, it's kind of worth realizing that,
Speaker 1: like we are only just a little blip on the
Speaker 1: radar of its uh influence on human history, especially like
Speaker 1: when you when you look at how far back it goes. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so hey, on that note, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we're going to dive into
Speaker 1: a little bit on the evolution of cannabis and the
Speaker 1: overall successive cannabis is it just spreads across our world
Speaker 1: through human culture. So cannabis thrives in a sunny environment
Speaker 1: or alternative way, like a massive grow house I'm thinking of,
Speaker 1: like a gyp. Have you seen that movie Attack the Block? Yes,
Speaker 1: the like sky rise grow house that they have that's
Speaker 1: in like one of those like apartment complex. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you can grow pretty much anywhere. Grow Houses are are
Speaker 1: fascinating subject under themselves. I wrote an article for our
Speaker 1: Stuff Works about them several years back, and I'm not
Speaker 1: even sure to what extent with our growing uh, with
Speaker 1: with our shifting acceptance of marijuana, to what extent, grow
Speaker 1: houses are still quite the weird urban spaceship that they were,
Speaker 1: you know, where you basically have an environment that is,
Speaker 1: you know, like a human can barely live inside one
Speaker 1: of these things. Uh, it's all about growing the marijuana plants.
Speaker 1: I don't even know to what extent those are. Those
Speaker 1: are still as extreme a situation as they were a
Speaker 1: few years ago. But um, but for the most part, yeah,
Speaker 1: they need a sunny environment. Uh. We mentioned earlier. They
Speaker 1: probably evolved in um in India, perhaps Central Asia specifically.
Speaker 1: Some theories say Mongolia or southern Siberia, though you'll also
Speaker 1: find people to make a case for the Honghi River,
Speaker 1: valley of Hindu Kush Mountains, South Asia or Afghanistan. It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that's ultimately kind of lost to history.
Speaker 1: This is that thing where you go, all, right, hold up,
Speaker 1: how long have people been interacting with cannabis. Well, the
Speaker 1: first written account is in Chinese records from the twenty
Speaker 1: eight century BC. That's way back. I mean, it's pretty far.
Speaker 1: And then when you look at it, you know, around
Speaker 1: twenty or sorry, around twelve thousand BC, humans started domesticating
Speaker 1: the crop, and this is where it steadily started moving
Speaker 1: across the world. And let's talk about that for a
Speaker 1: little bit. We've got like a map here in front
Speaker 1: of us that well we'll try to translate to you listener.
Speaker 1: Uh that it's just fascinating how it kind of made
Speaker 1: its way around the world. Right, So it's best we
Speaker 1: can tell by two thousand BC, you had cannabis in China, Japan, Korea, Persia,
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe, and India. And then during the first millennia
Speaker 1: um u it spreads through northern Africa and in the
Speaker 1: following millennium travels north into western Europe, South into Southern Africa,
Speaker 1: into Southeast Asia, and then in the centuries to follow
Speaker 1: it follows the wave of colonialism into the New World.
Speaker 1: So we're talking South America in the eighteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: then the early twentieth century it's making its way into
Speaker 1: North America and becoming firmly rooted there. And you may
Speaker 1: be wondering, well, well, how do we know this other
Speaker 1: than like you know, a general historical record. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: this is a fascinating thing that I read about in
Speaker 1: a Newsweek article. There's a guy out there. His name
Speaker 1: is Maudli Holmes, and he operates a lab called the
Speaker 1: philos Bioscience Lab, and the whole point of this lab
Speaker 1: is to try to sequence the DNA of every kind
Speaker 1: of cannabis in the world. And the goal is basically
Speaker 1: that they're gonna sample all of it so that they
Speaker 1: can clarify, you know, what all these different types are
Speaker 1: in the marijuana u unquote market. And it's called cannabis genomics.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about subspecies, we're talking about strains, all
Speaker 1: the weird ways that cultivation is is tweaking the marijuana.
Speaker 1: Like I've seen it pointed out before that if you
Speaker 1: look at pictures of just basic cannabis crop from just
Speaker 1: fifty years ago. It's it's often just unrecognizable compared to
Speaker 1: like your modern, um, uh centerfold cannabis. You don't know
Speaker 1: what is the magazine high times, Like like it doesn't
Speaker 1: even look like the same plant because we've just we've
Speaker 1: micromanaged its development so much. Yeah. And also like it's
Speaker 1: worth considering too that like a lot any kind of
Speaker 1: like botanical improvements that have been going on have been
Speaker 1: going on behind closed doors for the most part, right,
Speaker 1: so there hasn't been a whole lot of like, uh
Speaker 1: shared information about this. And and this is kind of
Speaker 1: this Mowgli homes goal. He's he's sort of like the
Speaker 1: Alexander Shulgin of of marijuana, it seems, uh and um,
Speaker 1: the only way that they can research this cannabis because
Speaker 1: it's illegal on the federal level here in the United States,
Speaker 1: is to get approval from both the U s d
Speaker 1: A and the f d A. But uh, there are
Speaker 1: federally funded universities that are reluctant to even host anything
Speaker 1: like this. And I remember I was talking about at
Speaker 1: the beginning with academics who study this because of the
Speaker 1: stigma attached to it. But Homes and his team have
Speaker 1: a way around this. They handle only the DNA of
Speaker 1: the marijuana and not the marijuana itself. So he's collected
Speaker 1: specimens of DNA from all over the world Colombia, Thailand, Mexico, Afghanistan, India, Uruguay, Namibia,
Speaker 1: and South America. And this process is extremely time consuming
Speaker 1: because they have to design a new method for DNA
Speaker 1: extraction for every sample collected. It's not like there's the
Speaker 1: same formula. They have to go in and basically build
Speaker 1: it from scratch. So the goal is that they're gonna
Speaker 1: complete this plan, they're gonna hand over all the data
Speaker 1: they have to a group that's called the in Cannabis Project.
Speaker 1: This is a nonprofit that's building an archival record of
Speaker 1: every strain for the sake of the public domain. And
Speaker 1: the idea here is this will be better regardless of
Speaker 1: whether it's legal or not, because, like I said, even
Speaker 1: growers don't really know what they're growing out there. Much
Speaker 1: of the marijuana that's consumed in the US today comes
Speaker 1: from strains that were smuggled over here from Afghanistan and Thailand,
Speaker 1: but we also know it was here long before that,
Speaker 1: and we don't know why, so we want to know
Speaker 1: where it originated and even more, what can it tell
Speaker 1: us about human migratory patterns too. Indeed, because we see
Speaker 1: time and time again where people go where if people
Speaker 1: have cannabis in their culture, they bring it with them
Speaker 1: when they travel. Yeah. Absolutely, and it quite literally takes
Speaker 1: route wherever it goes. This is pretty much the entire
Speaker 1: premise of Sleep's Dope Smoker album. So we already mentioned
Speaker 1: the literary records going back to about on the Gates
Speaker 1: century BC, and there'll be more on the specifics of
Speaker 1: that in our next episode because of concerns the medicinal
Speaker 1: history of cannabis, But as far as just the earliest
Speaker 1: known archaeological traces UH, some of our earliest traces of cannabis,
Speaker 1: they relate not to UH the drug, but rather just
Speaker 1: to the use of hemp in fiber arts, which is
Speaker 1: important because it shows that the plant was out there
Speaker 1: people were using it. So we see ten thousand year
Speaker 1: old Taiwanese pottery shards that reveal hemp rope imprints in
Speaker 1: the pottery. Additionally, we see weaving design and himp cloth
Speaker 1: imprints from on pottery from around UH fifteen to thirty
Speaker 1: five hundred thirty five b C. Found in uh Vanpo villages.
Speaker 1: These are the the earliest examples of Neolithic and possibly
Speaker 1: UH matriarchal Uh young Shall culture. UH. And this is
Speaker 1: from the Shanzi province in northwest China. Uh. So again
Speaker 1: just to go back, you know, China was was one
Speaker 1: of the earliest regions that would have add access to cannabis.
Speaker 1: Burned cannabis seeds have been found in Kurgan burial grounds
Speaker 1: of the Pazyak tribes in Siberia dating back to around
Speaker 1: three thousand BC. And I can only imagine, um, my,
Speaker 1: my Highlander history is little foggy that I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: the Kurgan. Uh, maybe that's it. Yeah, yeah, probably very
Speaker 1: heavy marijuana user, the Kurgan. Yeah. Yeah, we had a
Speaker 1: lot of brown. That's how you get that, like really
Speaker 1: nice smoky deep voice. That's smoky ground clancy brown. Uh. Additionally,
Speaker 1: we see from eleven twenty two to nine BC Chinese
Speaker 1: Child Dynasty burial sites that reveal himpcloth fragments. In Egypt,
Speaker 1: we've seen cannabis pollen in the tombs of Uh in
Speaker 1: the tomb of ram Ramesses the second and that's from
Speaker 1: around twelve seventy nine to twelve thirteen BC, and several
Speaker 1: mummies UH from that time period contain trace cannabinoids as well.
Speaker 1: You know, based on our episode on preparing mummies in
Speaker 1: Egyptian burial and knowing all of the different like spices
Speaker 1: and things like that they stuffed inside the orifices of bodies,
Speaker 1: I wonder if they were stuffing um cannabis in there
Speaker 1: as well, has like a potential, uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like way of preserving the corpse. So then we get
Speaker 1: to a thousand BC, and this is when hemp cloth
Speaker 1: from a debris pile is found in modern day Turkey
Speaker 1: near Anjara, Jordan's and fragments of paper containing hemp fiber
Speaker 1: have been found in Chinese graves dating back to the
Speaker 1: first century of BC. Now we're closing in on our
Speaker 1: own present age here, but in two d b c.
Speaker 1: Chulie writes of hemp's use as a fiber in particular,
Speaker 1: there's evidence of cannabis as a domesticated seed crop. So
Speaker 1: we know that, you know, somewhere through those times it's
Speaker 1: it's domesticated, it's become part of agriculture, and uh, it's
Speaker 1: being is medicinally. Yeah, it does hemp too. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's easily it's easy to sort of put ourselves in
Speaker 1: the in the mindset of of early individuals who like
Speaker 1: maybe they discovered the the use of himp first and
Speaker 1: then began to discover this other property. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they sort of discovered each independently, but pretty early.
Speaker 1: On cannabis, in one form or another, it becomes an
Speaker 1: important crop and a crop that that that knowledge of
Speaker 1: is passed from generation degeneration. Yeah. Now, and this is
Speaker 1: one of those like I can only imagine, uh, like
Speaker 1: horrible pot humor of like a bunch of stoners sitting
Speaker 1: around and being like man like who first figured this out?
Speaker 1: Like that they just like smoke every plant they came across, well,
Speaker 1: you know, in a way. And we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: There's a there is concerning that. Um. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of this we've talked about this concerning that
Speaker 1: they help. But what about the actual smoking of the marijuana,
Speaker 1: the actual consumption of of the cannabis and the THHC. Well,
Speaker 1: some of our earliest known evidence here takes us back
Speaker 1: to thirteen twenty C. And here you'd have to travel
Speaker 1: to the Labiala Caves of Ethiopia, where we find two
Speaker 1: ceramic pipe bowls containing traces of cannabis uh. And then
Speaker 1: the Artharva Veda in two thousands to fourteen hundred BC
Speaker 1: references something called bang not bong uh, a concoction of
Speaker 1: dried cannabis leaves, seeds, and stems. And this is considered
Speaker 1: like mild Indian cannabis, about half the strength of ganja. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I know we're sort of moving around in time
Speaker 1: a little bit here, but so so sorry. For instance,
Speaker 1: this last you might get doctor who uh, tour of
Speaker 1: the marijuana. Yeah. You will also find cannabis use interwoven
Speaker 1: into tantric to traditions that have influenced both Hinduism and Buddhism.
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean really we could just go on
Speaker 1: and on. You can't even begin to look at cannabis's
Speaker 1: role in every culture in a UM. But you know,
Speaker 1: we thought to be interesting to discuss a few key
Speaker 1: examples that are they're either interesting or have some sort
Speaker 1: of importance later on in our discussions. So one that
Speaker 1: probably comes to a lot of people's minds is that
Speaker 1: of the assassins. I'm not sure how how familiar people
Speaker 1: are with this. I feel like the Assassin's Creeds Getting
Speaker 1: Creed games get into this a little bit. So maybe
Speaker 1: I've played half of those, but I don't remember there
Speaker 1: being anything particularly connected to this. But I haven't played
Speaker 1: the first one. And that's the like if if my
Speaker 1: memory is correct about those games, that they're uh chronological
Speaker 1: in order. Yeah, and they have time travel and they
Speaker 1: do so. Just to clarify, hashish comes from the Arabic
Speaker 1: for dry herb, and it consists of purified cannabis resin
Speaker 1: and is considerably more potent. And this would have spread
Speaker 1: through the Arab world from seven to the thirteen centuries
Speaker 1: due to trade, travel and war, which are generally the
Speaker 1: things that move cannabis historically. And here's the thing, though
Speaker 1: it was around not necessarily accepted. It's often considered an
Speaker 1: intoxicant in Islamic communities and is therefore prohibited, though some
Speaker 1: Sufi holy men have allegedly used it in their rights
Speaker 1: as well, so that much is more or less accepted.
Speaker 1: As for the idea that the Assassins that there are
Speaker 1: these dreaded um uh ashishing warriors that would have imbued
Speaker 1: and hashish prior to their attacks on Western Crusaders during
Speaker 1: the Holy Wars. Well, that is that that remains either
Speaker 1: unclear or complete fabrications. There's nothing really to back up
Speaker 1: that idea. Um, the Crusaders were the ones circulating these tales,
Speaker 1: and it is a huge possibility that these tales were
Speaker 1: just about downplaying um Muslim bravery, saying oh, well, sure
Speaker 1: they beat but that was because they're they're they're crazy.
Speaker 1: They took some drug that gave them essentially superpowers and
Speaker 1: made them into mad man and came at us. So
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna show my ignorance here because this
Speaker 1: is one of the sections that I researched. Is this
Speaker 1: connected to the whole legend of Hassana Saba? This is
Speaker 1: the old old man in the mouth? Yeah very much? Okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so so the these were a real group, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: they existed. The idea that they smoked hashish some sort
Speaker 1: of like a pre attack ritual, there's little or nothing
Speaker 1: to back that up. Very different from our episode on
Speaker 1: Wolf Spain, in which we did find that there was
Speaker 1: some kind of a connection between was it what was
Speaker 1: it vikings or not vikings in particular, but a particular
Speaker 1: kind of like northern European warrior that's sort of like
Speaker 1: smear wolf Spain on their lips, so that they had
Speaker 1: like foam at the mouth. Yeah, it's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: interesting because on one hand, you can imagine that being
Speaker 1: the case. We know that there are various properties, uh,
Speaker 1: in various substances that would be advantageous prior to rushing
Speaker 1: into battle. But it also allows the loser to explain
Speaker 1: away their losses like that, oh yeah, they beat us,
Speaker 1: but they were totally doping. Yeah, exactly. It's the early
Speaker 1: finger pointing of stereo ideas. And it's also interesting because
Speaker 1: we see marijuana's use in the demonization of another culture
Speaker 1: or or racial group and the idea that it turns
Speaker 1: people into into you know, monsters of some sort. And
Speaker 1: all this comes up again when we start looking at
Speaker 1: the twentieth century America. Yeah, yeah, totally. Another cultural entity
Speaker 1: that has has become pretty synonymous with marijuana uses that
Speaker 1: of the Rastafari movement. Uh certainly, you know, you know
Speaker 1: Jamaican music, um be a, you know, dub or reggae.
Speaker 1: They're huge, huge influence of cannabis. Yeah, those artful and
Speaker 1: I think like through most of like present day a
Speaker 1: Western pop culture that is like a stereotype. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: but certainly the Rostoi Rastafari movement is real. It's a
Speaker 1: Jamaican Abrahamatic faith that rose in the nineteen thirties following
Speaker 1: the coordination of highly Selassie the First as Emperor of Ethiopia,
Speaker 1: and they thrived to this day. They recognized Selassie as
Speaker 1: the Messiah, and they regard cannabis as a spiritual act
Speaker 1: and a metaphor for the burning bush of the Old
Speaker 1: Old Testament. Uh. And by the way, cannabis would have
Speaker 1: spread to the Caribbean during the nineteenth century via Indian
Speaker 1: laborers brought in by the British um So, but this
Speaker 1: is an interesting modern example where we see cannabis as
Speaker 1: as a part of a religion, as a religious right.
Speaker 1: Here in the States, you have you also have various
Speaker 1: movements of i think varying levels of seriousness, such as
Speaker 1: the Christian THHC Ministry, the Cannabis Assembly, the Church of
Speaker 1: Cognitive Arapy, of course Temple for twenty. The list goes
Speaker 1: goes on and on. But but throughout human history you
Speaker 1: do see cannabis playing a role to varying degrees. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe not as extreme as rastafari. But you see it
Speaker 1: playing varying degrees in religious right. Yeah, that certainly makes
Speaker 1: sense given it's a biochemical properties. Uh. And this thoroughly
Speaker 1: connects right back to two of our more recent episodes,
Speaker 1: the Cargo Cults episode and the hyper Real Religions episode. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And again we could we could spend a whole series
Speaker 1: of episodes just going through all the various different cultural examples.
Speaker 1: Now when we get to the United States in our
Speaker 1: modern times, well we pretty much have to mention reefer
Speaker 1: madness because, uh, this was if you were not familiar
Speaker 1: with this, this was this game on the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: and it was an exploitation propaganda film about how marijuana
Speaker 1: turns young people into just raving maniacs, like joker faced,
Speaker 1: maniacal crazy people or just like complete you know, gut
Speaker 1: or crawling junkies. Yeah, and it's funny. I mean, like
Speaker 1: the thirties, twenty years before the nineteen fifties when the
Speaker 1: same thing was going on with comic books. Right, It's
Speaker 1: a real tradition in the last century of American life
Speaker 1: of finding a thing and blaming it for juvenile uh,
Speaker 1: delinquents or hyperactivity or just behaviors that we don't find
Speaker 1: that fits to the conformity of of quote traditional America, right, right,
Speaker 1: and and in this case too, helping to bring about
Speaker 1: moral panic surrounding the thing, which of course ties back
Speaker 1: into our episode on a satanic panic. But essentially, you
Speaker 1: had u s laws against marijuana and other drugs, drugs
Speaker 1: popping up in the nineteen twenties. Uh though marijuana laws
Speaker 1: at the time they didn't differentiate between himp and psychoactive cannabis.
Speaker 1: And this is apparently doing a large part to the
Speaker 1: influence of the cotton industry because they didn't want the
Speaker 1: the industry to come in and take away their business
Speaker 1: because it's like significantly cheaper, isn't it. Yeah, that's my
Speaker 1: understanding of it. And then, uh so, so you have
Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of narcrott and Narcotics under Harry J.
Speaker 1: And Swinger, and he waged war on marijuana just throughout
Speaker 1: the thirties. He rejected clinical analysis that even at the
Speaker 1: time concluded that marijuana did not induce violent behavior or
Speaker 1: lead to the use of more, you know, heavily addictive drugs. Instead,
Speaker 1: he waged this campaign of yellow journalism and propaganda tied
Speaker 1: in the evils of jazz. So you're you're getting, you know,
Speaker 1: some racist tendencies right where we got the jazz cigarette.
Speaker 1: The jazz cigarette also tied it into imperial Japan and
Speaker 1: communism as well. So again this idea of that, um,
Speaker 1: this heavy tone of this marijuana is tied to this
Speaker 1: ethnic threat to the white female. Uh, because you see
Speaker 1: that in some of the posters at the time. You
Speaker 1: see like the marijuana brandishing individuals kind of a darker
Speaker 1: demonic figure and of course he's preying on the the
Speaker 1: the the Caucasian woman. Um. So it's it's really like
Speaker 1: it's really ify the more and more you look at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like refor madness is one of those things
Speaker 1: that like a lot of people, especially of our generation,
Speaker 1: like kind of look at and they're like, oh, isn't
Speaker 1: that ironic? Funny? Ha ha ha, But like it's just
Speaker 1: another example of humanity just like pointing its fingers at
Speaker 1: the wrong things, you know, and not really kind of
Speaker 1: like taking a decent step back and looking at like
Speaker 1: what the actual situation is. Right, And even though today
Speaker 1: we can we can watch reefer madness and laugh at it,
Speaker 1: that might even be on Netflix or something like that. Yeah, periodically.
Speaker 1: I think it's it may be in the public domain.
Speaker 1: I know there's a riff track on it and and
Speaker 1: it is just goofy and and an awful But we're
Speaker 1: still to a large extent living in its shadow, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that that era of of cannabis, a version
Speaker 1: of moral panics around surrounding cannabis like that never truly
Speaker 1: completely went away. I mean, it's certainly that we had
Speaker 1: cultural shifts we had the nineteen sixties and in the
Speaker 1: post nineteen sixties. Um. And we've touched on this before
Speaker 1: in a M d m A episodes just about like
Speaker 1: the difficulty of coming back from that even with just
Speaker 1: clinical research. Yeah, right, exactly, and that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that more in the next episode, the sequel to this
Speaker 1: about medicinal applications. But it's like tremendously difficult to do
Speaker 1: studies on this stuff because of the results of this
Speaker 1: sort of movement that Robert's describing. So where this interesting
Speaker 1: point in history, right, We've we've seen a great deal
Speaker 1: of post drug war decriminalization overall and overall cultural acceptance
Speaker 1: outside of the US, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands
Speaker 1: and Belgium of all decriminalized marijuana possession to varying degrees,
Speaker 1: and it's also quite villa, but it's also quite vilified
Speaker 1: and outlawed in such places as the United Ara, Memirates, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Speaker 1: the Philippines, and Japan. I can tell you having lived
Speaker 1: in Singapore as they could, it is not very welcome there. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because I just recently took a trip
Speaker 1: to Portland, Oregon, uh and the medical dispensaries are all
Speaker 1: over the place there now. Uh. And it was so
Speaker 1: it was such a like culture shock thing, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm in America, but this is a very different America
Speaker 1: than Georgia, where I can't imagine the medical dispensaries happening
Speaker 1: anytime soon. But like, yeah, it was like dunkin Donuts,
Speaker 1: Like on every block there was a little shop with
Speaker 1: and they're very professional looking. They didn't look like head
Speaker 1: shops or anything, you know. They had like nice, nice
Speaker 1: signs with a little green uh plus symbol to to
Speaker 1: signify what it was for. It was everywhere. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's interesting to just try and figure out where we
Speaker 1: are in the overall continuing history of marijuana, Like, is
Speaker 1: this is this the peak? Like every is everything about
Speaker 1: to go? Uh in an entirely different direction? Is it? Can? Can? Can?
Speaker 1: Can you continue to change towards acceptance and research? I
Speaker 1: think our generation Maybe it's just the people that I
Speaker 1: spend time with, but I really feel like our generation
Speaker 1: isn't as easily fooled by the whole reefer madness rhetoric, right,
Speaker 1: Like we think about it a little bit more maturely
Speaker 1: than that and and realize like the actual benefits and
Speaker 1: adversities of cannabis on the brain at least, I like
Speaker 1: to think, so, um yeah, So hopefully that like the
Speaker 1: current generation and then even the most the most recent
Speaker 1: generations to sort of reach that acceptable ami acceptable however
Speaker 1: you want to look at it, uh, you know, drug
Speaker 1: experimentation age, Like hopefully they are injuring into it with
Speaker 1: a lot more balanced information and not just like fearmongering
Speaker 1: on one side and uh and you know hippie mumbo
Speaker 1: jumbo on the other, but the middle path that incorporates
Speaker 1: some level headed decision. Yeah, totally. Like I said, like,
Speaker 1: I would love to see us go back to some
Speaker 1: kind of like shamanistic cultural thing where you know, we
Speaker 1: celebrate that when you've reached the age that it will
Speaker 1: no longer deform your brain. So on that note, I
Speaker 1: think we should pause, uh, sign out for today, and
Speaker 1: then you can rejoin us in the next episode, which
Speaker 1: will publish on Thursday, where we will talk about medicinal
Speaker 1: marijuana and all the different things that can be used.
Speaker 1: It can be used for it's associated with, right, And
Speaker 1: if there's something that we just briefly touched on in
Speaker 1: this episode, or that we briefly touch on in the
Speaker 1: next episode, and you think yourself, hey, I'd like to
Speaker 1: hear more on that, let us know, because there's there
Speaker 1: are so many areas in these two episodes that we
Speaker 1: could really blow it out and do an additional episode
Speaker 1: or two related to the content. Yeah. And in addition
Speaker 1: to you know, we've been talking, like I said at
Speaker 1: the top of the episode, about doing like a sort
Speaker 1: of ongoing series of these where you know, not like
Speaker 1: every week, but every you know, a couple of months,
Speaker 1: will explore a different drug. And you know, like we've
Speaker 1: thrown around the idea of doing one on ayahuasca. I
Speaker 1: think Joe's interested and is it d M t um
Speaker 1: So you know, let us know, if there's a particular
Speaker 1: thing out there that you want us to cover, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, let us know, uh and and we'll try to,
Speaker 1: you know, basically take the same framework and apply it there. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and hey, in the meantime, you want to check out
Speaker 1: past episodes, including that two part on M d M A,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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