Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Tuck Bride getting his demons out. Man.
Speaker 1: How about this music? Yeah, this is the thanks to
Speaker 1: our guest producer, Noel. Yeah, who is Jerry's actually producing,
Speaker 1: but he's got the musical touch. He's if you want to,
Speaker 1: he's our dub producer. Yeah, if you want to reggae.
Speaker 1: If I your podcast, Noel is the man. Yes, the
Speaker 1: big thanks to Noel. Yeah, and great idea by you.
Speaker 1: I and I Yeah, and I love that. How you doing, man,
Speaker 1: I'm great. You've got some good feelings going on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we've covered grow houses and um, we had
Speaker 1: a medical marijuana right. I don't think so, no, no,
Speaker 1: because a lot of it didn't seem familiar when I
Speaker 1: was looking into it in this article. So we've definitely
Speaker 1: done grow houses, which is kind of backwards. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: not really. You gotta grow up, that's the first true.
Speaker 1: So chuck, here we are. We're talking about pot, and
Speaker 1: as is our thing, we're gonna talk about pot in
Speaker 1: a very like above the boards mature way. Are we?
Speaker 1: I think we can we've talked about some other stuff
Speaker 1: before poop. We've talked about poop plenty of times. Yeah, well, booze.
Speaker 1: Every time we cover drugs, we like to cover the
Speaker 1: scientific aspects to social ramifications, how it's impacted culture. Why
Speaker 1: would this one be any different? Well, and this is
Speaker 1: probably the biggest, you know, it's the most ubiquitous. I
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, you know, yeah, maybe the gateway to
Speaker 1: all the other episode. It's very funny. So uh, I
Speaker 1: guess if you we should start at the beginning. How
Speaker 1: about that? Okay, let's talk about pot and its history.
Speaker 1: It's very long, long, long history, UM. And actually for
Speaker 1: most of that history it has been widely beloved and appreciated.
Speaker 1: The apparently pot has been cultivated or marijuana. We're going
Speaker 1: to use all that, um and interchangeably weed pot marijuana,
Speaker 1: but cannabis. That's probably where it will stop. Like if
Speaker 1: either one of us says ganja or sticky it, we
Speaker 1: should just shut it down it right? Then? All right,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll do the Hey take that back. One
Speaker 1: of us will say that. Okay, uh yeah, But like
Speaker 1: you said, I mean, this is gonna be an overview
Speaker 1: because we could do honestly for shows on the history
Speaker 1: of pot. There's quite a rabbit hole we could go
Speaker 1: down here. We got to avoid it, but we're just
Speaker 1: we'll give you a historical overview about that. So um,
Speaker 1: like I said, pot has been cultivated for years, and
Speaker 1: like I also said that it's mostly been appreciated most
Speaker 1: of that time for two reasons. One, it is um
Speaker 1: in industrial or it was, until the rise of the synthetics,
Speaker 1: a major industrial fiber hemp. And then secondly it was
Speaker 1: a um or it still is a medicinal herb that
Speaker 1: kind of spills over into recreational use as well. So
Speaker 1: in the twenty century in China, uh, it looks like
Speaker 1: it was probably used medicinally and not recreationally. But they're
Speaker 1: definitely records written records of the cultivation of cannabis. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a guy named shen Nung, who was an emperor but
Speaker 1: was also China's first physician, wrote about how ma that's
Speaker 1: what they called pot back then in China was good
Speaker 1: for the yin and the yang, both of them, right,
Speaker 1: which is actually is we'll see, um, that's a pretty
Speaker 1: astute observation early on, because what he's talking about is
Speaker 1: balance or homeostasis, which part definitely affects. Yeah, they have
Speaker 1: found a mummy, a three thousand year old Egyptian mummy,
Speaker 1: and looked into this and it it contained quite a
Speaker 1: few drugs, but it definitely contained th HC. So the
Speaker 1: Egyptians were getting down. Yeah, maybe medicine, who knows. In
Speaker 1: a thousand and one Arabian Nights, it makes an appearance
Speaker 1: called Bang Sad Bad apparently loves this stuff. But supposedly
Speaker 1: his was hatch mixed with opium, which is way more
Speaker 1: hardcore than what we're talking about. Uh yeah, yeah, probably so. Um,
Speaker 1: they think it originated perhaps in India and um north
Speaker 1: of the Himalayas is their best guess. Yeah, they really
Speaker 1: have no idea. And actually there's like a lot of
Speaker 1: debate still over whether there's more than one in um
Speaker 1: type of plant. What do you mean, So there's Cannabis indica,
Speaker 1: Cannabis sativa. Yeah, they're different. There's another one called Cannabis
Speaker 1: ut ruder alice um, and there's there's an ongoing debate
Speaker 1: among botanists over whether they're all actually just different like
Speaker 1: um varieties of the same plant, or if they really
Speaker 1: are different species of plants in the same family. Oh interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think the the current common wisdom is that
Speaker 1: there's at least two cannabis sativa and cannabis indica. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we may as well get into that a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: The Indica is uh the planet itself is shorter and
Speaker 1: fatter and better suited for indoor growing. And the uh
Speaker 1: Sativa is taller. It can get really tall like um
Speaker 1: yeah and thinner. Um. Although I think for cultivation, I
Speaker 1: don't think uh, even though it's grown outdoors, I don't
Speaker 1: think they're growing the twenty five ft plants. No. I
Speaker 1: would imagine the helicopters can see him a lot more easily. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the Indica is known for more of a a
Speaker 1: body high um quote unquote couch locked, yeah, mellow, and
Speaker 1: the sativa is more known for more energetic and cerebral
Speaker 1: and creative, more of a brain high. Right. And then conversely,
Speaker 1: one can make you more paranoid, one can make you
Speaker 1: more druy. Uh yeah. And typically these days, um, if
Speaker 1: you are a recreational or medicinal user, you're probably getting
Speaker 1: some sort of a U hybrid strain. Good point. And
Speaker 1: actually some of the strains, those hybrid strains are have
Speaker 1: some of the best names like green crack. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty good name. A K forty seven, white widow. White
Speaker 1: Widow is actually uh pure strain, isn't it of Indica?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I think it is? Yeah, Maui Wowie.
Speaker 1: The pot names are they're pretty funny. They've definitely gotten
Speaker 1: better from the seventies, like Mauie wow. Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: very Yeah. Um, so should we talk about should we
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about um its history in this country,
Speaker 1: in the United States? Yeah, so I think we should
Speaker 1: get to that because, as I said, Chuck, when you
Speaker 1: look back on pot all of these years, and um,
Speaker 1: it's how it was used. It was generally like appreciated, used, medicinally, used, recreationally,
Speaker 1: not vilified. It wasn't until it hit North America that
Speaker 1: it really started to become vilified. Yeah. Well it had
Speaker 1: a good run here too, uh in the States for
Speaker 1: a couple of hundred years. Um it was hemp was
Speaker 1: grown and cultivated and widely used. Some people say it's,
Speaker 1: you know, the most versatile plant on earth as far
Speaker 1: as the different us as you can get out of it.
Speaker 1: And it was in the six nineteen Virginia Assembly Assembly
Speaker 1: they even said, do you have to grow hemp if
Speaker 1: you're a farmer in Virginia. So not only was it encouraged,
Speaker 1: it was actually law in Virginia at least. So I
Speaker 1: had had a good run until the early nineteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and nineteen twenties. Well, what's what's interesting is back in
Speaker 1: this time, you remember that part in Days and Confused,
Speaker 1: where um the like the the biggest owner of the
Speaker 1: whole group is talking about George Washington like like planning
Speaker 1: camp all day and then comes home and smokes a
Speaker 1: big bowl of it. It's not clear whether or not
Speaker 1: any of them were smoking pot, and it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that they weren't, because the idea of smoking pot was
Speaker 1: lost to the ages for a very long time. Um,
Speaker 1: and the Greeks actually grew marijuana, but they didn't smoke it.
Speaker 1: They just used it for its fibers. And it almost
Speaker 1: appears like they had no idea you could smoke it
Speaker 1: and it was psychoactive. So it's possible that they our
Speaker 1: forefathers didn't smoke pot, you know, and they were they
Speaker 1: were just growing it for industrial uses. And meanwhile Native
Speaker 1: Americans were like, you guys are crazy. Rope. Rope is
Speaker 1: nice but you know it can be both, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: In UM, the early nineteen hundreds, the Mexican Revolution in
Speaker 1: nineteen ten, this is one of the big turning points
Speaker 1: because a lot of Mexican immigrants came to the US
Speaker 1: and they were like, hey, you know, you can smoke
Speaker 1: this stuff. It's pretty nice. And because Mexican immigrants had
Speaker 1: a UM, we're sort of looked down upon all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, Putt was looked down upon. Really Mexican immigrants
Speaker 1: were looked down upon somewhere in the US history. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the whole thing about um pot being vilified or UM.
Speaker 1: I guess there was a moral panic basically is what
Speaker 1: they call it that erupted around it. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it was based in racism towards UM, Mexican
Speaker 1: Americans or Mexican immigrants. Yeah. In the nineteen thirties, especially
Speaker 1: in the depression, UM, they were sort of had a
Speaker 1: bad name because you know, they're immigrants in this country
Speaker 1: and we're Americans and we're in depression and we want
Speaker 1: the work and uh. Kind of a lot of the
Speaker 1: same arguments here these days. But UM, the association with
Speaker 1: Pott was definitely, uh, part of it it definitely was.
Speaker 1: But also I read this, um, this MPR blog code
Speaker 1: switch about this very topic, and they were saying, like, yes,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of racism that led to the criminalization
Speaker 1: of pots, but Mexico was twenty years ahead of the
Speaker 1: US and criminalizing pot as well. So you can't just say, well,
Speaker 1: it was just Americans disdain or dislike or distrust of Mexicans.
Speaker 1: It was you know, it's more complex than that. And
Speaker 1: this guy was saying that, really you can conclude there
Speaker 1: was a fear of what this drug did. And the
Speaker 1: reason why there was a fear of what the drug
Speaker 1: did was because the newspaper reports at the time had
Speaker 1: people like killing entire families and like wandering around the
Speaker 1: streets like with somebody's head, um covered in blood because
Speaker 1: they just smoked a joint. And um, they were really
Speaker 1: trying to unpack this, like why would that happen? Did
Speaker 1: it happen? We're all of them just overblown reports. The
Speaker 1: fact was, when you picked up the Los Angeles Times
Speaker 1: of the New York Times, there were front page stories
Speaker 1: about this and they were like brown skin Mexican kills,
Speaker 1: white family of eight on marijuana cigarette. And that's why
Speaker 1: and actually the word marijuana was kind of used as
Speaker 1: a derogatory term to kind of Mexican afi cannabis, which
Speaker 1: is what it had been called prior to that. I
Speaker 1: did not know that. I'm off my soapbox. Look at
Speaker 1: you teaching me? Well, movies like Reefer Madness definitely didn't help.
Speaker 1: In nine six, the famous propaganda movie from French director
Speaker 1: Louis Gasnier, it's, you know, required viewing for any college
Speaker 1: students at some Yeah, it's it's not very good and
Speaker 1: it's not very enjoyable, but it is kind of funny
Speaker 1: showing the the reeferradics, you know, driven to insanity by
Speaker 1: the marijuana cigarettes. And somebody gets murdered, right, I think
Speaker 1: someone murders somebody else because they smoked pot. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then a ninety seven um, a year after we for Madness,
Speaker 1: Congress packs past the marijuanat Tacks Act, and this is
Speaker 1: basically where the tide turn. And it was essentially criminalized
Speaker 1: because it called for restricting possession just two individuals who
Speaker 1: paid attacks wh was just like a thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: medical or industrial use. So in other words, if you're
Speaker 1: just you know, Sammy Podead, you can't live that way
Speaker 1: anymore in this country. Now. You would basically have to
Speaker 1: show set up a shell organization, pay the thousand dollar tacks,
Speaker 1: and then you'd be able to import marijuana, but if
Speaker 1: you were caught with smoking it, you'd still get busted.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal when that happened. And you
Speaker 1: can kind of lay all of this at the feet
Speaker 1: of one guy, a moral crusader who ran the Federal
Speaker 1: Bureau of Narcotics in the thirties, well the thirties until
Speaker 1: the sixties. His name was Harry Ann Slinger, and he
Speaker 1: was the one who really kind of started this crusade
Speaker 1: against Pott and got the government to um turn against it,
Speaker 1: got the press to turn against it, and got the
Speaker 1: Marijuana Tacks Act passed. But even while this guy's like
Speaker 1: sitting there shouting like all marijuana is gonna kill us
Speaker 1: all as a horrible drug and it's it's as bad
Speaker 1: as it gets, there were studies, independent studies that were
Speaker 1: um funded by the government that we're showing, like, you
Speaker 1: guys are kind of overstating this a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mayor Leaguardia of New York issued a report that basically
Speaker 1: said that it doesn't induce violence, insanity, or sex crimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was a moral reformer himself, remember you doing
Speaker 1: after the Minsky brothers in the burlesque episode. So it's
Speaker 1: not like he was just some big pothead, Like he
Speaker 1: was a moral reformer himself, and he still founded this report. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good point that led to. Um. The the sentencing
Speaker 1: laws over time have kind of waffled back and forth. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the fifties they were pretty strict because of the
Speaker 1: Bogs Act and the Narcotics Control Act, And that's when
Speaker 1: they started setting mandatory men of mum's for basically any
Speaker 1: drug but including marijuana of course. Yeah, like you would
Speaker 1: go to prison for a long time if you got
Speaker 1: caught with pot. Yeah, two to ten years for a
Speaker 1: first uh, first time offender. In the nineteen fifties getting
Speaker 1: caught with pot, Yeah, that's it any any amount. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in the sixties things relaxed a little bit, um
Speaker 1: in every way you can imagine in this country. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, President Kennedy and UH and lb J issued
Speaker 1: reports that found kind of the same thing as they
Speaker 1: found out in the forties. It doesn't induce violence. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in these reports it said it didn't it wasn't
Speaker 1: a gateway drug either. Yeah, in the nineteen sixties, which
Speaker 1: is still up for debate. Really. Yeah, Now, because you
Speaker 1: read every other report you read, it's gonna say something
Speaker 1: a little different about what the gateway drug is. And plus,
Speaker 1: I think defining what makes a gateway drug too has
Speaker 1: never been fully established. Yeah, you can't. Can you test
Speaker 1: something scientifically if it's you don't have it defined, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the that led to the nineteen sixties led to
Speaker 1: a repeal of a lot of the mandatory minimums in
Speaker 1: the seventies. Um. But then, of course Ronald Reagan in
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties brought a lot of that stuff back.
Speaker 1: And Nixon too, he fought that tooth and nail, Like,
Speaker 1: even though the tide in the country was turning one way,
Speaker 1: Nixon was like, Nope, we're going to keep pot as
Speaker 1: illegal as possible, and as a matter of fact, we're
Speaker 1: gonna put it on the same level as heroin and cocaine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And during the Nixon administration, the Schaefer Commission was a
Speaker 1: bipartisan commission found again that it should be decriminalized, and
Speaker 1: Nixon was just like, well, I don't, I don't want
Speaker 1: to hear that. Sorry, I'm gonna make up my own
Speaker 1: mind about I'm the president exactly. Yeah. So, like you said,
Speaker 1: the Reagan era brought it back, um not brought pot back,
Speaker 1: no probt back any kind of um anti government sentiment
Speaker 1: toward pot itself was redoubled in the eighties under the
Speaker 1: Reagan administration. Just say, no mandatory minimums were or mandatory
Speaker 1: sentences were reenacted. Um in six things to the Anti
Speaker 1: Drug Abuse Act. If you got caught with a hundred
Speaker 1: marijuana plants, you got the same um jale time as
Speaker 1: if you were caught with a hundred grams of heroin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Plants versus grahams. It's sort of a apples
Speaker 1: orange in comparison. Yeah, plants versus heroin, plants versus zombies.
Speaker 1: I know at one point this is sort of off
Speaker 1: topic topic, but I don't know if they've changed it,
Speaker 1: but at one point they were sentencing LSD users by
Speaker 1: the weight, right, and when't that the deal is? Like
Speaker 1: they would like if you were an LSD dealer and
Speaker 1: you had twenty sheets of acid, they would weigh it.
Speaker 1: And they were like, well, wait a minute, you can't
Speaker 1: weigh the paper that's like weighing the suitcase. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think that's still the same though, didn't it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I do know you're talking about and
Speaker 1: apparently like if they would if you had it mixed
Speaker 1: in with liquid or something like diluted into liquid form,
Speaker 1: they take the weight of all the liquid rather than
Speaker 1: the proportion of it. Yeah. I don't know. It could
Speaker 1: be we could be like showing our our gullibility for
Speaker 1: urban legend or not. But I know that's the case.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it still is, but I know
Speaker 1: it definitely was. Definitely was, Yeah, because I saw like
Speaker 1: an HBO special on these LSD dealers. So we're basically
Speaker 1: serving like life sentences for dealing acid right alongside murders
Speaker 1: and rapists. Um. Yeah, I'll have to check into that
Speaker 1: and people who were caught with pot in the thirties.
Speaker 1: That's right. So pot these days, cost wise, um, varies
Speaker 1: a lot depending on quality. Obviously it ranges. Um. I
Speaker 1: love that in this article it says a dollar seventy
Speaker 1: seven to seventeen dollars and sixty six cents per gram
Speaker 1: at like one gram of marijuana. Please. Yeah, that's interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: but these days you can expect to pay um for
Speaker 1: you know, what people consider good mayor I wanna about
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty dollars for uh a quarterback, which
Speaker 1: is a quarter of an ounce, right, which is seven grams, right,
Speaker 1: because there's twenty eight grams in and out. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think between seven eight grams. But it depends on if
Speaker 1: the dealer likes you exactly. Yeah, but that's generally how
Speaker 1: it breaks down. As you know, you have it by
Speaker 1: the pound, which is you know, the pot dealer, I guess,
Speaker 1: and then they break it down into ounces and then
Speaker 1: to quarterbacks and dime bags and whatever people can afford.
Speaker 1: I guess. Well. It's funny because in the state of
Speaker 1: the country right now, like you can take dealer and
Speaker 1: dispensary and basically flip them and interchange them, and no
Speaker 1: matter what you're talking about, virtually the sentence is going
Speaker 1: to remain unchanged basically, you know, because the marijuana dispensaries
Speaker 1: are following like basically the same format that marijuana dealers
Speaker 1: in this country have for decades, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like pricing and yeah, the pricing, the um, the way
Speaker 1: it's sold by weight. Oh sure, sure, Like I think
Speaker 1: you still't buy like like quarters and half ounces and
Speaker 1: ounces and stuff, which makes sense. But they're also getting
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff from people who are growing
Speaker 1: it indoors in their basement. And it's like now they
Speaker 1: have licenses for all this. But it's basically like all
Speaker 1: the people who were doing it illegally before, or some
Speaker 1: of the people who are doing illegally before point and
Speaker 1: applied for licenses and now they're doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: but they just have like a a license to do
Speaker 1: it in a frame on their wall. Yeah, and dispensaries,
Speaker 1: you're going to find a lot of other things, uh,
Speaker 1: like edibles and um. They even have now cannabis strips,
Speaker 1: like you know, the little listing breath strips. They have
Speaker 1: little cannabis strips. It's just a little uh edible strip
Speaker 1: of concentrated cannabis and I guess you put it under
Speaker 1: your tongue and that's better for your lungs. I would
Speaker 1: imagine if you're a oh yeah, a cancer patient or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that in a little bit. Let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about the plane itself. Chuck. Um. Maybe the
Speaker 1: most recognizable plant that leaf, you know, yeah, which is um.
Speaker 1: Here's a little fact for you. The botanical description of
Speaker 1: the way that marijuana leaves are arranged is groovy called
Speaker 1: palmately like the palm of a hand with five fingers outstretched.
Speaker 1: That's the pot leaf. That's you. You can find on
Speaker 1: lighters and baseball caps, gas stations, um and the like
Speaker 1: you said, the planet itself, depending on which variety it
Speaker 1: is either very tall or kind of tall, depending on
Speaker 1: whether it's trimmed or not. Um and the the buds
Speaker 1: or whatever that are smoked are actually the flowers of
Speaker 1: the plants, the flowers of the female which apparently are
Speaker 1: that's sent semia. So the definition of the word sent
Speaker 1: semia are female flowers that have reached maturity without being
Speaker 1: um pollinated. I can't hear that word without thinking of
Speaker 1: cat check what I don't remember that part. Phil Murray
Speaker 1: A little California sens to me. Yeah, so that's what
Speaker 1: that means. Yes, that's the term sense of meia means.
Speaker 1: So basically, unless you're like fourteen, if you're smoking pot,
Speaker 1: you're smoking censemia. So yes, the term senemia means pot. Okay,
Speaker 1: the pot that's smoked. Although the male flowers do have
Speaker 1: some thhd, it's just far far less of female than female. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a cultivator, males are not what you want. In fact,
Speaker 1: males can can disturb the cycle of the female plants.
Speaker 1: So the goal of the cultivator is to get the
Speaker 1: male out of there as quickly as it can be identified. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and weeds actually good moniker for pot because it's it
Speaker 1: spreads very easily. There. Um, pollen is like twenty four microns,
Speaker 1: which apparently is very easily wind born and goes very
Speaker 1: great distances. There's very few obstacles to pollenization. Um. So
Speaker 1: if you have female plants and you have what you
Speaker 1: suspect to be a male plant anywhere nearby, you want
Speaker 1: to get rid of the male plant and then tell
Speaker 1: the officer, Uh, they must have just blown over here
Speaker 1: and taken roots. Are these hundred plants in my backyard
Speaker 1: came from my neighbor? There? Pollens is twenty four microns?
Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, he says, he says, tell your story
Speaker 1: to the judge, my friend, Um, there are about uh,
Speaker 1: we should also say they're hermaphroditic plants. Hermaphroditic plants that
Speaker 1: feature both male and female flowers. Those are probably a mess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that maybe that's a good thing. I think
Speaker 1: that's like a lot of hybrid ones are hermaphroditic. Okay, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: there are hundreds of chemicals in the marijuana plant um
Speaker 1: A hundred nine of which are cannabinoids. About thirty three
Speaker 1: are cancer causing, and we'll we'll get to that stuff
Speaker 1: later too. But ironically they also are cancer killing some
Speaker 1: of them. It is an on plant. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: get to all that stuff too, write um, and your
Speaker 1: th HC is really the main psychoactive ingredient. What's the
Speaker 1: long name for it, Delta nine tetra hydro cannabin all
Speaker 1: that is th HC. That is what the high that
Speaker 1: you're seeking. It lies within that chemical. Yeah. And actually
Speaker 1: you can point to the part of the plant where
Speaker 1: it is um. If you've ever seen a marijuana plant
Speaker 1: and it has kind of this hazy a period appearance
Speaker 1: from far away, and you get up close and you
Speaker 1: realize that haze is actually made up of a bunch
Speaker 1: of little, clear, sticky protrusions coming off of the leaves.
Speaker 1: Those are called tricombs, and that is where the THC
Speaker 1: is stored. That's right, And depending on the plant in
Speaker 1: the variety and how it's grown and when it's harvested,
Speaker 1: in the genetics and how you process it. It's that's
Speaker 1: all gonna affect the th HC level. And it's a cultivator.
Speaker 1: Your goal is to have the th HC level how
Speaker 1: as you can get it. Yeah, that is up for
Speaker 1: debate as well. From what I've seen there, Um, apparently
Speaker 1: they're just going higher and higher and higher as far
Speaker 1: as THHC content goes. And there's a lot of recreational
Speaker 1: pot users and um medicinal pot users. So we're saying
Speaker 1: too much. Dude like k has a bit about how
Speaker 1: when he was in like the in the seventies could
Speaker 1: smoke like a whole joint and be like totally mellart cool.
Speaker 1: Now I was saying, it takes like one hit and
Speaker 1: you go totally insane. Um, And apparently there is like
Speaker 1: a point where it's just like that's too much. Well,
Speaker 1: Louis can afford better pot these days to know, But
Speaker 1: you're right, it all depends on the the end user,
Speaker 1: you know what they're into. But generally speaking, uh, the
Speaker 1: cultivator wants to deliver the most bang for the buck,
Speaker 1: you would think, so, sure, so chuck, let's figuratively smoke
Speaker 1: some pot and follow it through the body. Okay, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: you know what, we probably shouldn't do this ourselves. No,
Speaker 1: we like our jobs exactly, and we might be fired
Speaker 1: for even figuratively smoking pop. Well, yeah, and who wants
Speaker 1: to Let's let's get how about that scruffy looking guy,
Speaker 1: farmer Ted. Yeah, he's look at him. He's game. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know this, but we have
Speaker 1: a friend named farmer Ted who has the very strange
Speaker 1: um characteristic of having entirely translucent skin. He's kind of
Speaker 1: like the Invisible Man or something like that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: what better person than to follow the trail of th
Speaker 1: HC in the human body then you can actually see yeah,
Speaker 1: because the rest of his organs or anything aren't translucent.
Speaker 1: It's just a skin. Yeah, and uh, thank you for
Speaker 1: coming in, Ted. Um. So, Ted is going to smoke
Speaker 1: a joint a marijuana cigarette. Yes, and uh, he's going
Speaker 1: to smoke what is a typical marijuana cigarette, approximately five
Speaker 1: milligrams of marijuana, which translates to roughly, um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe ten milligrams of th HC. So he's going to
Speaker 1: take a lighter and take it to the end of
Speaker 1: this joint. I'm making air quotes here because it's it's vernacular.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. The th HC is going to be
Speaker 1: burned and carried into his lungs, so farmer Ted is
Speaker 1: kind of high already. Um. The the th HC in
Speaker 1: the smoke is carried to the aviola in the lungs,
Speaker 1: and the aviola is where gas exchange occurs. It's where
Speaker 1: your oxygen, you priv blood comes to get a refill
Speaker 1: of oxygen to be replenished. And since there's THHC smoke
Speaker 1: present in that oxygen in the lungs, the TCC is
Speaker 1: gonna hit your ride into the bloodstream and travel through
Speaker 1: the body. So it just takes seconds. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: the places it's going to go is the brain. Uh.
Speaker 1: And when it hits the brain, it starts doing some
Speaker 1: pretty funky stuff. That's right. We could ask farmer Ted
Speaker 1: how he's feeling right now, and he'll probably say, yeah,
Speaker 1: he can't talk. He might say that my eyes are
Speaker 1: dilating and the colors are a lot more vivid. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I'll be hungry soon. I'll be hungry soon. My other
Speaker 1: senses are enhanced as well, but hold on, I'm starting
Speaker 1: to feel a paranoid. Yes, let's let's get into this.
Speaker 1: Let's let's get into how pot affects the brain, because
Speaker 1: it is pretty gosh dar and interesting if you ask me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and this is how it the physiological effects Um,
Speaker 1: the end user might have different reactions depending. It didn't
Speaker 1: make everyone paranoid necessarily, No, And I really looked into
Speaker 1: it hard to find out why some people are paranoid
Speaker 1: and some people don't. Part of it is it? Well,
Speaker 1: there's two things. One and I didn't find anything definitive,
Speaker 1: which I'm I'm sad about. But one the two things
Speaker 1: that came up with it's one, it depends on the pot. Sure,
Speaker 1: if there is a difference between indica and sativa, the
Speaker 1: prevailing wisdom is that if you smoke indicate you're going
Speaker 1: to be less likely to be paranoid. Okay. Uh. The
Speaker 1: other reason is it would depend probably on the existing
Speaker 1: brain chemistry of the user. My brain chemistry is not
Speaker 1: the same as yours, um, and neither one of ours
Speaker 1: are just the same as Jerry. So of course when
Speaker 1: we introduce the psychoactive chemical into that chemistry, it's going
Speaker 1: to affect it differently. So that's what I came up with. Basically,
Speaker 1: I wonder if one of the reasons indica is less
Speaker 1: likely is because that's the couch bound one, and you're
Speaker 1: less likely to be a paranoid sitting on your couch
Speaker 1: rather than the more active one like smoking and going
Speaker 1: to the Renaissance festival where you'd be freaked out stone sober,
Speaker 1: where you'd meet John Strickland and he would mess with
Speaker 1: you if you found out your stone anyway, I'm curious. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. Yeah. I've also found there's recent research
Speaker 1: UM that shows the the cannabin als there's a precursor
Speaker 1: um chemical to them that's called cannaba dialic acid CBD,
Speaker 1: and cbd UM has been found that to actually counteract
Speaker 1: the schizoid effects of pot, like the stuff that makes
Speaker 1: you paranoid, that symptom if you get if you smoke
Speaker 1: pot that has a higher CBD to th HC ratio.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's even or something like that. Uh, the CBD
Speaker 1: is going to cut down on the schizophrenic symptoms while
Speaker 1: leaving like the rest of the stuff intact interesting and
Speaker 1: that weird. So I wonder if if indica, just by
Speaker 1: nature has a higher CBD content. Yeah maybe, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are people that know this. Okay, So back in
Speaker 1: the sixties, there was a researcher his name escapes me,
Speaker 1: who started looking into what the heck made POT make
Speaker 1: you loco? Right, and he found th HC. So TC
Speaker 1: was isolated in the sixties, and from that they reverse engineered,
Speaker 1: um how th HC affected the brain and effectively discovered
Speaker 1: an entire system that we didn't know existed thanks to
Speaker 1: POT research. It's called the endocannabinoid system, and it's a
Speaker 1: very ancient system that's found in everything from C squirts
Speaker 1: to every VERTI braid on the planet s C squirts,
Speaker 1: very primitive animals all the way up to us. Well
Speaker 1: I know that, Uh, I didn't quite get the indocannabinoid parts,
Speaker 1: so take it away, okay, So I know it works backwards. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a very important point. So you know, when like um,
Speaker 1: when we do anything from our brain says grab coffee
Speaker 1: mug right to um to us thinking about how we're
Speaker 1: feeling at any given point, all of that is based
Speaker 1: on the transmission among neurons. Right, Yeah, we've covered that
Speaker 1: a lot. The neurotransmitters kind of cover that gap. Between
Speaker 1: the neurons and deliver the message. And then depending on
Speaker 1: where the neuroprint transmitter is and what chemical has come across,
Speaker 1: then different things happen. Right. Well, the endocannabinoid system is
Speaker 1: this kind of dimmer switch, uh, that is around all
Speaker 1: neurons that works backward to kind of say, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: let's not pump those neurochemicals out as frequently or in
Speaker 1: as much abundance. And the whole point of the endocannabinoid
Speaker 1: system is to maintain homeostasis or good for your good
Speaker 1: for your yangs. Right, and that weird, Okay, So when
Speaker 1: you smoke pot, your endocannabinoid system, which has receptors all
Speaker 1: throughout the body. There's CB two receptors which are mainly
Speaker 1: associated with your immune system, and then CB one receptors
Speaker 1: are throughout the brain. And when you smoke pot, the cannabinoids,
Speaker 1: the phytocannabinoids which is th HC in this case, go
Speaker 1: into these reasons of your brain and stick to your brain,
Speaker 1: to your endocannabinoid receptors. Yeah, they basically just kind of
Speaker 1: hijacked the system. So these the systems that the endocannabinoid
Speaker 1: receptors are meant to regulate are no longer being regulated
Speaker 1: by our bodies endocannabinoids. They're being hijacked by th HC,
Speaker 1: which is not subject to our body's whims and and
Speaker 1: all that. We just basically have to ride that snake
Speaker 1: out until it's over. So you end up with all
Speaker 1: these different weirdo symptoms that you normally wouldn't have, which
Speaker 1: is basically the result of your endocannabinoid system going hey
Speaker 1: wired because it's been hijacked by th HC. Right, so
Speaker 1: like your hippocampus, Yes, we've talked about that. That's good
Speaker 1: for learning, Yeah, it is. And when the endocannabinoid receptors
Speaker 1: are full of th HC, uh, you're not learning or
Speaker 1: making memories as well as normal. We're talking short term memory.
Speaker 1: It definitely impairs that. And um, that's why if you've
Speaker 1: ever hung out with a bunch of pot heads, you'll
Speaker 1: hear the phrase what were we just talking about? A lot?
Speaker 1: Because it's gonna affect the hippocampus in that way you're
Speaker 1: not forming memories. It's also gonna affect your coordination, which
Speaker 1: is the cerebellum, so you may be a little clumsier.
Speaker 1: And then you have the basil ganglia and that directs
Speaker 1: your unconscious muscle movements. Yeah. Uh, so the reason farmer
Speaker 1: Ted is paranoid. He doesn't like that plant looking at
Speaker 1: him the way it is, right. Uh, he's paranoid because
Speaker 1: his bazom medial um amygdala has been affected. It's endocannabinoid
Speaker 1: receptors have been hijacked by th HC, and it's this
Speaker 1: region of the brain where we learn to fear dangerous situations.
Speaker 1: Farmer Ted is learning to fear things he normally wouldn't
Speaker 1: fear because the endocannabinoids that the body normally makes they're
Speaker 1: not um operating the way that they're supposed to be.
Speaker 1: So he's now afraid of that plant. Now. Isn't that
Speaker 1: this aren't the endocannabinoids the same system that they have
Speaker 1: finally been pointed the munchies activates the munchies. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: your hypothalamus um you're grilling production, Remember grilling, It's that
Speaker 1: chemical that makes you feel hungry, so you go eat.
Speaker 1: You're grilling production and absorption, uh is mediated by endocannabinoids
Speaker 1: and the hypothalamus, which gets hijacked by THHC, which suddenly
Speaker 1: all food looks irresistible. Yeah, and which is why it
Speaker 1: is prescribed for people going through chemotherapy and of things
Speaker 1: because they lose their appetite and lose a lot of weight.
Speaker 1: And uh, aside from helping the stem nausea, it also
Speaker 1: will stimulate the appetite. So that's the endocannabinoid system and
Speaker 1: that is how pot affects it. I feel like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we left out the biggest part. It also causes a
Speaker 1: release of dopamine, which is what makes you feel. Any
Speaker 1: euphoric feeling comes from that release of dopamine. But it's
Speaker 1: also possible that any paranoia or those schitzoid symptoms that
Speaker 1: come along with it are from too much dopamine. Right,
Speaker 1: So that too high a release of dopamine can lead
Speaker 1: to feelings of paranoia and anxiety. Yeah, and these feelings. Um,
Speaker 1: the effect of th HC period is gonna last a
Speaker 1: couple of hours, depending on obviously how good the pot
Speaker 1: is and how much you smoked. Um, but the chemicals
Speaker 1: are going to be in your body a lot longer
Speaker 1: than that, with the terminal half life of twenty hours
Speaker 1: to ten days after you've smoked it. So um, if
Speaker 1: you get you know, if you're one of the how
Speaker 1: many percentage of companies drug test fifty seven, yeah, fifty something,
Speaker 1: fifty three maybe, yeah, depending on your weight and how
Speaker 1: much you smoked and how long you smoked. Right, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna either pass that drug test here or not.
Speaker 1: It can stain your body for you know, weeks though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, and there's no way to tell because it
Speaker 1: depends on you your metabolism and the pot potency of
Speaker 1: the pot too. Um. But yeah, your body breaks it
Speaker 1: down into five metabolites and they test for all five
Speaker 1: to just using a basic immuno essay where they introduce
Speaker 1: an antibody to your urine and it reacts or doesn't
Speaker 1: react and turns it a pretty color, a pretty bad color. Right, chuck,
Speaker 1: We got a little more on the body. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: we'll get to it after this break. How about that?
Speaker 1: It sounds good? Okay, form it said? Um, stand back up,
Speaker 1: let's abuse you some more. Although it seems like he's
Speaker 1: enjoying it, he's a little he's a little cooler now.
Speaker 1: He was petting that plant, I mean, and I think
Speaker 1: so if you can see his liver right here right there. Um,
Speaker 1: so farmer tend is gonna eat some pot this time.
Speaker 1: So what's gonna happen. He's ingested pot orally one way
Speaker 1: or another, whether cooked in a brownie or just eating
Speaker 1: the pot, and the body is going to take this
Speaker 1: and break it down, metabolize it and send it to
Speaker 1: the liver. And when this happens, it's going to the
Speaker 1: THHC is going to hit the bloodstream in this stomach anyway,
Speaker 1: so he's gonna get some sort of buzz or whatever.
Speaker 1: But in the liver he's going to metabolize it into
Speaker 1: another psychoactive chemical that isn't really present when you smoke it,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't it's the effects aren't quite as pronounced,
Speaker 1: but they last longer. And there's an additional weirdo thing
Speaker 1: to it. Well it's gonna take longer, but last longer,
Speaker 1: and um, the effects of it exactly. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: also the extra psycho active chemical it's produced in the
Speaker 1: liver that's not really produced when you smoke it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that weird. It is weird, and it's also the
Speaker 1: reason why um, new young travelers to Amsterdam, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to try their first pot brownie. They don't
Speaker 1: think it's working, then they try another one. And this
Speaker 1: is the ones you see like sitting alongside the canal
Speaker 1: like rocking themselves. Yes, because it takes a little while.
Speaker 1: It does when you when you ingested via smoke, it's
Speaker 1: almost instantaneous. When you ingest it by eating it, it's
Speaker 1: going to take a lot longer, that's right. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I guess we should talk a little bit about whether
Speaker 1: or not it's addictive, because that's another raging debate for
Speaker 1: years and years. How addictive is pot? Uh? There are
Speaker 1: all kinds of studies that contradict one another, and um,
Speaker 1: I think it's one of these things that probably comes
Speaker 1: down to the person somewhat if you have that addictive personality.
Speaker 1: But they do see effects of pot cessation your ability anxiety, depression,
Speaker 1: maybe sleeplessness and insomnia, restlessness, and that's if you quit
Speaker 1: the pot after having been a user. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: psychologically addictive. Like any drug, you're gonna crave it if
Speaker 1: you want it. Sure apparently, um it can have an
Speaker 1: impact on your levels of anxiety, like you might not
Speaker 1: feel anxious when your stone, but you could feel anxious
Speaker 1: when you're not stoned, so you get stone more often,
Speaker 1: which while not necessarily a classic addiction because the addiction
Speaker 1: model follows the strictly the limbic system, and I think
Speaker 1: activates it somewhat, but it's not really acting specifically on
Speaker 1: that is acting more on the endocannabinoid system, right, So
Speaker 1: indirectly it might be hitting the limbic system, but it's
Speaker 1: not following that classic addiction route. But at the very least,
Speaker 1: that's habitual. If you need to smoke something to get
Speaker 1: back to normal, that's a habit and a bad one
Speaker 1: because you have a crutch there. Yeah, unless you're Willie
Speaker 1: Nelson and then you're just like, what's the problem, You
Speaker 1: just keep smoking it? Um really know that? What are
Speaker 1: some Uh well, I guess we can talk about some
Speaker 1: of the medicinal uses. Um. We did talk about cancer
Speaker 1: and AIDS patients to stimulate appetite. Um. The old glaucoma
Speaker 1: card is a big one to play. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: applying for your medical marijuana card, it relieves ie pressure.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find how it does that, Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: been that's one of the earliest uses of Hell. You
Speaker 1: remember remember when all this first started to hit California
Speaker 1: past uh um legal medicinal marijuana. It was almost all
Speaker 1: glaucoma at the time, in which it seemed like everybody
Speaker 1: was like, you are so facant glaucoma, you need pop
Speaker 1: or glaucoma. And then it just became more and more
Speaker 1: established as fact became associated with helping more and more maladies.
Speaker 1: And of course if you go to get your card,
Speaker 1: then you go to the dispensary. They have a long
Speaker 1: list of things that it can help, right, basically, anything
Speaker 1: you can think of they will they will put on
Speaker 1: their list. As long as you have a prescription card.
Speaker 1: I think they're cool with that. Well, no, that's to
Speaker 1: get the card like the you know the yeah that's
Speaker 1: a new doctor where stocks. Yeah, you can probably get
Speaker 1: a medicinal marijuana card from him, but don't see him
Speaker 1: for anything else. Um, it can help with epileptic seizures.
Speaker 1: In fact, here in Georgia that's been on the table
Speaker 1: due to a famous story of a boy here in
Speaker 1: Georgia who whose seizures were like massively cut down by
Speaker 1: taking a marijuana oil which has no THHC like the
Speaker 1: kids not getting high. Basically it doesn't have psychoactive properties.
Speaker 1: And Georgia is, believe it or not, trying to speed
Speaker 1: through I know it didn't go through initially a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, just because I think they didn't have time
Speaker 1: to get it through. But there seems to be support
Speaker 1: for it. But just for yeah, just for the marijuana
Speaker 1: oil though not uh like dispensaries or anything like that. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it could be the beginning of it, or
Speaker 1: it could be a sea change in how in Georgia states,
Speaker 1: you know, legalized marijuana. I'd be surprised. Well, but I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if it's a change like, Okay, this medicinal marijuana
Speaker 1: oil works, We'll just all we can legalize that and
Speaker 1: that's it and it'll be like the model for other states. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see what you mean. Uh. And then MS multiple
Speaker 1: sclerosis UM decreases muscle spasms and I've seen this firsthand
Speaker 1: with a good friend really helps him out. And Montell
Speaker 1: Williams is uh famously come out as an MS sufferer
Speaker 1: who is a longtime advocate for using marijuana. Well it
Speaker 1: makes sense again. I mean, if you're having muscle spasms,
Speaker 1: perhaps your endocannabinoid system is not functioning correctly and the
Speaker 1: THHC goes in and actually supplements it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and also I remember I said that it fights cancer.
Speaker 1: Ye oh yeah, if you're go onto cancer dot COVN
Speaker 1: type cannabis and cinal cannabis. I think it brings up
Speaker 1: basically a laundry list of all of the ways that
Speaker 1: marijuana helps. And it's been found to fight to destroy
Speaker 1: cancer cells like THHC goes in and destroys cancer cells
Speaker 1: in the liver. Apparently it's been shown to destroy cancer
Speaker 1: breast cancer cells like not helps you feel better when
Speaker 1: you have cancer, can actually cure cancer in some cases. Um,
Speaker 1: it was a carcinoma in the liver that it was
Speaker 1: shown to be able to cure. It's definitely worth checking
Speaker 1: out too. And it also alleviates pain and um uh
Speaker 1: inflammation associated with um injury or disease. The way it
Speaker 1: does that is what the other cannabinoid receptors, the CB
Speaker 1: two receptors in the body are related to the um
Speaker 1: immune system. So it goes in and messes with those
Speaker 1: and says, hey, everybody calmed down with stuff being so inflamed.
Speaker 1: Well that's uh, yeah, I guess that's why it's prescribed
Speaker 1: a lot for arthritic conditions these days. That makes sense, Yeah,
Speaker 1: rhuma toid arthritis, and that's called Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that with the differences between rhuma toyed and regular arthritis.
Speaker 1: You should do one uthritis? How about that? Um, it
Speaker 1: is still despite all the medical research, it is still
Speaker 1: scheduled as a m or classified as a Schedule one substance,
Speaker 1: which is uh the most dangerous drugs that currently have
Speaker 1: no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
Speaker 1: And there have been many pushes over the years to
Speaker 1: get it reclassified uh and not in the same group
Speaker 1: as heroin and cocaine and ecstasy. But um, that has
Speaker 1: not been successful as of yet, but I think that
Speaker 1: will probably happen at some point soon. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's going that way. But supposedly around the time Normal
Speaker 1: was found in the National Organization for the re Legalization
Speaker 1: of Marijuana legislation. Is that right? I'm pretty sure. It's
Speaker 1: quite a mouthful. Festivals used to have in Peamont Park
Speaker 1: in the nineties, the Normal rally, Hashbash. Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: the black girls there once. It was great, right, um so,
Speaker 1: But yeah, Norman was found in the seventies at a
Speaker 1: time when it looked like I mean Carter was president,
Speaker 1: Willie Nelson had smoked to join on the White House
Speaker 1: roof like it was the time for you know, hoot
Speaker 1: to be decriminalized, and everybody thought like it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: It's happening, it's happening, and apparently, nope, it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: They pulled back from the brink. So it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that what looks right now to be the wind of
Speaker 1: change that is very much sweeping through the country. It
Speaker 1: could could be stopped. Baffled, I guess, so it's the
Speaker 1: the fat Lady has not sung yet. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the first step toward a federal and the difference here is,
Speaker 1: you know, federal laws versus state laws. It's still federally
Speaker 1: not accepted, but in states like of course Colorado and Washington,
Speaker 1: and then how many states have medical like eleven? Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: if anything's gonna happen federally, it's got to be reclassified
Speaker 1: away from Schedule one first. Uh So until that happens,
Speaker 1: you're probably not gonna see any um federal laws enacted
Speaker 1: or repealed. And we should say the mood of the
Speaker 1: country right now is about split a little bit in
Speaker 1: favor toward UM pot pro pot. So like in Washington
Speaker 1: and Colorado, both votes were like fifty four, fifty five,
Speaker 1: forty three something like that. And then a CBS poll
Speaker 1: from two thousand fourteen, I think in January found about
Speaker 1: the same of Americans favor legalizing pot um opposed to
Speaker 1: like I think forty four or forty three. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's it's clearly moved out of you know, just the
Speaker 1: hippie stoners at the normal rally and two people supporting
Speaker 1: that kind of legislation that don't even use marijuana because
Speaker 1: there is a groundswell of support that hey, uh, it's
Speaker 1: not a schedule wonder, it's not a schedule one drug.
Speaker 1: Alcohol is more destructive to uh, to your life, in
Speaker 1: your body, and why are you gonna outlaw this plant
Speaker 1: uh and put people in prison with a war on
Speaker 1: pot that isn't working. It's like wasting money, whereas we
Speaker 1: could tax it and raise money. So there's uh, there's
Speaker 1: been a big title shift in the past decade, really
Speaker 1: in the past twenty years, but in the past ten
Speaker 1: Like if you had asked me ten years ago if
Speaker 1: there would be recreational use all out in any state,
Speaker 1: I would have said probably not. But here we are
Speaker 1: with Washington and Colorado, here we are like where you
Speaker 1: can grow it. You can buy it and have it.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much, but I think you're allowed
Speaker 1: to have a certain small amount, right, Yeah, Like you
Speaker 1: can't drive around with ten pounds in your trunk or anything.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much you can um. It's it's
Speaker 1: definitely more than just like a small amount, but you
Speaker 1: um and you can just literally go to the store
Speaker 1: and pot. There's actually an awesome New Yorker article called
Speaker 1: buzz Kill from late last year, and it's about this
Speaker 1: economist that Washington State hired to basically create the framework
Speaker 1: for their legal pot industry, like the economic model. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like on a on a macro economic level and
Speaker 1: a microeconomic level. He's like, we're whether you like it
Speaker 1: or not, you're going to be competing with dealers still.
Speaker 1: And so you want to make your text money, but
Speaker 1: you don't want to make so much that you price
Speaker 1: yourself out of the market and the black market stays open.
Speaker 1: You want to get rid of the black market by
Speaker 1: basically competing against them, competing amount of business. And there's
Speaker 1: just all these different factors that this guy like was
Speaker 1: kind of laying out and it was really interesting. Buzz Kill.
Speaker 1: Want to check that out? Yea. Um. Alright, let's take
Speaker 1: another break here and then we get back. We'll talk
Speaker 1: a bit about the potency of marijuana over the years.
Speaker 1: All right, there's a debate that I don't quite understand
Speaker 1: about the potency of marijuana, and like the sixties and
Speaker 1: seventies versus today. The debate is that that pot is
Speaker 1: much more potent than it was in the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 1: And first of all, they didn't they didn't test a
Speaker 1: wide variety of marijuana strains in the sixties and seventies, right,
Speaker 1: it was like stems and seeds Mexican like. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that's the only way you can tell a true test
Speaker 1: of potency is to study a wide variety. They didn't.
Speaker 1: They never did that. They didn't test the MAUI wowie.
Speaker 1: They never did that in the sixties seventies. And you
Speaker 1: can't go back in the time machine. So what's the
Speaker 1: point in debating it. The pot today is is how
Speaker 1: it is. It is. And basically, what the best you
Speaker 1: could hope to do is like have Dennis Hopper smokes
Speaker 1: some pot and be like huh, and he can be
Speaker 1: like dead. Hopper is dead, dude, since when Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just saw him on like an insurance commercial years ago.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, that's sad, it is said, Sorry,
Speaker 1: a state of Dennis Hopper. Get Willie Nelson though, Peter Fonda, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's alive, Okay, So you just have Peter Fond to
Speaker 1: tell you. He can tell you. There's plenty of people
Speaker 1: who could say. The point is that is largely irrelevant
Speaker 1: because we're not dealing with creating pot policy based on
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. We're dealing with pot policy today. And
Speaker 1: we know very clearly that pot is more potent today
Speaker 1: than it was even a couple of decades ago. And
Speaker 1: we know that in part because it's something called the
Speaker 1: University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project. Basically, they get their
Speaker 1: hands on seized pot that the cops get their hands on,
Speaker 1: they send some of it to Mississippi, and Mississippi tests
Speaker 1: it for potency. And they said that between two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, the UM average, the average amount of th
Speaker 1: HC across all samples, rose from three point four percent
Speaker 1: to eight point eight percent from two eight and it's
Speaker 1: going up up up, apparently now with the rise of
Speaker 1: dispensaries and the UM openly shared knowledge of how to
Speaker 1: cultivate pot and do you know what you want to
Speaker 1: genetically select for it's up to a quarter like supposedly
Speaker 1: and I didn't see that figure disputed th HC content.
Speaker 1: That's insane. That's that will drive you and say, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that if the average is eight point eight
Speaker 1: or was three point four and is now up to
Speaker 1: that's potent and that's I guess for the top of
Speaker 1: the line most expensive pot you can buy. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I predict that there's going to be like kind of
Speaker 1: retro vintage push back, not necessarily that, but something that's
Speaker 1: like way more toned down, or it'll be like marketed
Speaker 1: to people who like don't want like that level of
Speaker 1: high I guess like seventies weed. Yeah, like all they
Speaker 1: have to do to market at green leisure suit or
Speaker 1: something like that boom success. Although I don't know if
Speaker 1: anybody would want to go back to the seventies because
Speaker 1: I think it really was very low potency comparatively speaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, should we cover some of the ways that
Speaker 1: it's smoked. Well, I already covered um the joint, right,
Speaker 1: that's what slim hand Slim had the joint. Um. I
Speaker 1: do know that slim happens to prefer the blunt, and
Speaker 1: that is a cigar that is sliced open and tobacco
Speaker 1: is taken out and generally mixed back in with some
Speaker 1: of the pot and it's um was the right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called a blunt. I didn't know that the tobacco
Speaker 1: was ever mixed back in. It depends on I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't have to. Like a spliff is popular in Europe,
Speaker 1: and that's with regular tobacco like drum, yeah, whatever, just
Speaker 1: any kind of loosely tobacco mixed in with with the pot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the blunt's usually they take most of the
Speaker 1: cigar tobacco out. I think you're probably right, and then
Speaker 1: you don't even need to buy a cigar. Now they
Speaker 1: have blunt wrappers like basically cigar rolling papers. Oh really Yeah,
Speaker 1: and flavored ones too. You I've heard of those. Interesting man. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can have your just traditional pipe. If you go
Speaker 1: into any head shop, you're gonna find a big variety
Speaker 1: of all sorts of handmade glass pipes. Or remember the
Speaker 1: brass ones with the the little kind of tied eye
Speaker 1: plastic thing in the middle for holding because the brass
Speaker 1: would get so hot. Apparently remember that. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that from the nineties, Like, did you go to Lollapalooza. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to Lollapaluza. Well, then you saw those things.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I smell pot It was
Speaker 1: at a concert and uh, he was like, and it
Speaker 1: was such a foreign I think I've talked about this
Speaker 1: on the show. I was just like, what in the
Speaker 1: world is that? Like, I've never smelled anything like that
Speaker 1: in my life. It's like someone burning a spare tire
Speaker 1: or something. Uh. And then you've got the bong the
Speaker 1: or water pipes and uh that uses water to uh
Speaker 1: to I guess cool down the smoke. And I remember
Speaker 1: that from the Scott Bayo after school special Stone. Did
Speaker 1: you ever see that one? No? I saw Zapped. That
Speaker 1: was a regular movie, but he was growing pot in
Speaker 1: that one. He was I think we're going to at school? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Stone was one of the classic after school specials
Speaker 1: where he was a pothead that like ended up accidentally
Speaker 1: killing his brother or something like he went swimming and
Speaker 1: knocked him on the head with the oar of a boat,
Speaker 1: but he may not have died, though he may have
Speaker 1: rescued him. The after school special that I remember most
Speaker 1: vividly is the one where Helen Hunt took PCP oh
Speaker 1: yeah and jumped out the window like the great story
Speaker 1: of her school. I mean, they scared the pants off
Speaker 1: of us, which is the point. Nancy Reagan was like
Speaker 1: off on the set, like, but I remember hearing the
Speaker 1: bong he smoked out of the bong Scott Bao did,
Speaker 1: and I heard that the bubbling sound, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: that's a weird sound. And then you heard it on
Speaker 1: the Cypress Hill album years later and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: Scott THEO. And then of course we talked about the
Speaker 1: edibles um and vaporizing, which is like all the rage
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah, and I imagine it just hit me
Speaker 1: the other day. I'll bet everyone who smokes pot uses
Speaker 1: East cigarettes as like little vaporizer one hitters, don't they? Uh,
Speaker 1: some do, I would imagine. So Yeah. In fact, you
Speaker 1: can buy like pre made cartridges of like hash oil
Speaker 1: and things to stick in your little cigarette. I know
Speaker 1: they saw those in Colorado stick that in your East cigarettes.
Speaker 1: But we should point out, we say kids these days
Speaker 1: and teenagers um, although marijuana use and teenagers has escalated
Speaker 1: over the years, you can't pin it down to one demographic. Um,
Speaker 1: I think you would be surprised if everybody who smoked
Speaker 1: pot on a semi regular basis was outed about. Who
Speaker 1: you would see. Um. I've heard stories from friends whose
Speaker 1: fathers were like CEO executives and they had cannabis clubs
Speaker 1: where all the other CEOs that they were friends with
Speaker 1: like grew their own specialty pot and traded it among
Speaker 1: each other. So a wide range of people UH use it,
Speaker 1: although the vast majority is supposedly I don't know vast
Speaker 1: majorities right, Although according to polls or surveys, the vast
Speaker 1: majority are teenagers, followed by post teens. Yeah, but in
Speaker 1: between nine and marijuana used among teenagers doubled. And you
Speaker 1: know what, I lay that almost exclusively, at least at
Speaker 1: first at the feet of Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg.
Speaker 1: You think, so I put it out there. Yes, with
Speaker 1: the Chronic, absolutely, Yeah, that was a great album. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I listen. I can when I hear that album, I
Speaker 1: think of Street Fighter two. Did you play a lot
Speaker 1: of that? Then? We we would sit around in college
Speaker 1: listen to the Chronic and play street Fighter two. It's
Speaker 1: a good album. It was a great game. I never
Speaker 1: really played Street Fighter. Yeah, they were really good. Uh
Speaker 1: So I found a study here. Um. I have to
Speaker 1: interjects one another thing. Um, have you seen the YouTube
Speaker 1: of Mike Tyson clips set to the street Fighter sound effects?
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome from his one man show or No
Speaker 1: No from his boxing career. It fits like perfectly. He's like,
Speaker 1: shy are you getting at one point? I'll have to
Speaker 1: see that. Uh So, if you're smoking pot, it's obviously
Speaker 1: not going to be great for your lungs in your
Speaker 1: body because you're inhaling smoke. And like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: there's their thirty three cancer causing chemicals in marijuana, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna deposit tar into your lungs just like cigarettes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you smoke equal amounts of marijuana
Speaker 1: and regular tobacco, it's gonna deposit about four times as
Speaker 1: much tar as regular tobacco. What's called the tar burden,
Speaker 1: is it? Uh? However, there was a large scale long
Speaker 1: term study UM released recently UM by the University of
Speaker 1: Alabama at Birmingham, and they collected data from five thousand
Speaker 1: adults for more than many years. Which these are always
Speaker 1: my favorite studies, you know, because you can tell stuff
Speaker 1: long term. Uh. And they found that low to moderate
Speaker 1: use of pot is less harmful to your lungs than
Speaker 1: exposure to tobacco, and I think it's uh. They measured
Speaker 1: airflow rate, which is the speed which you can blow
Speaker 1: out air, and then lung volume, which is the amount
Speaker 1: of air you can hold um in your lungs, and
Speaker 1: they found that with tobacco there's a one to one relationship.
Speaker 1: The more you lose, the more loss you have lung wise,
Speaker 1: and with marijuana, up to a certain rate, it actually
Speaker 1: increased the airflow rate. And um. Their rationale was that
Speaker 1: a cigarette smoker, like a moderate to heavy smoke or
Speaker 1: smoking like you know, twenty cigarettes today, whereas no one's
Speaker 1: going out there and smoking you know, well that's not
Speaker 1: true today, Yeah, but it would be probably less than
Speaker 1: that because it's more concentrated. But you don't see people
Speaker 1: smoking five joints to day either unless they have they're
Speaker 1: they're Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg. I'm sorry, SnO Blind? Is
Speaker 1: he still on Snoop Blind? I think so. Um, I
Speaker 1: could see how pot would have an effect on your
Speaker 1: lungs as well, especially compared to cigarettes, because like no
Speaker 1: one uses a filter on their joints. Well, yeah, and
Speaker 1: they you inhale deeper with marijuana than you do with
Speaker 1: a tobacco So those are both factors. But if you're
Speaker 1: smoking a pack of day and you're smoking a lot
Speaker 1: of weed, you're not doing yourself any favors in the
Speaker 1: lung department. Yes, even though it might help you fight
Speaker 1: that cancer, it may give you cancer to begin with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just use some non psychoactive U marijuana oil like they
Speaker 1: give that little kid. Yeah, or marinol, although that's psychoactive,
Speaker 1: uh is it? It's a THHD pill like wasting disease
Speaker 1: and um increase appetite and that kind of stuff. Just
Speaker 1: a mess with the endoconnebinoid system of people who need it.
Speaker 1: That's right. You got anything else? No? I mean this
Speaker 1: could have been a two parter, but well this is a
Speaker 1: a good, good overview, it is. I hope everybody enjoyed it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you learned a little something. Anything else, Nope? Uh. If
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about marijuana a k A. Cannabis,
Speaker 1: type either of those words into the search bart how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and uh, let's see, since we
Speaker 1: said a search bar, it means it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this Australian smoke jumper. Hey, guys, just
Speaker 1: thought i'd write to let you know how you've influenced
Speaker 1: a major change in my life a couple of years ago. Now,
Speaker 1: h you did a podcast on wildfires. Already had a
Speaker 1: strong interest in firefighting, but never heard of the things
Speaker 1: like smoke jumpers or some of the science involved. Uh.
Speaker 1: Since I joined the Rural Fire Service UM last year
Speaker 1: as a volunteer and last week I completed my first
Speaker 1: full bush fire fighter accreditation. It's been a great change
Speaker 1: and it's inspired me to get fitter and more active
Speaker 1: with my community. I'm now working towards getting fit and
Speaker 1: fast enough to be a smoke jumper, which we call
Speaker 1: our a f T units in Australia Remote Area Fire
Speaker 1: Task Force. So thanks guys for giving me the inspiration
Speaker 1: and drive to get out there and challenge myself. I
Speaker 1: could imagine do anything else in my spare time now
Speaker 1: has always loved the show. You keep me mildly distracted
Speaker 1: through my slow days at work, and that is Andrew
Speaker 1: from Australia. Nice. Thanks a lot, Andrew, congratulations, Yeah, keep
Speaker 1: it up, but it's pretty cool work. Agreed. Be safe
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