Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go on into the vault. That's right, it's
Speaker 1: not just Saturday, it's it's four day It is no way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a right. Well, I guess you all just saw
Speaker 1: the man behind the curtain. We don't actually record these
Speaker 1: on Saturday mornings. I'm I'm sorry to say. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: bank these ahead of time. So this is an episode
Speaker 1: you did with Christian about weed, right, yes, this is
Speaker 1: so yes, technically this is an episode from back in May.
Speaker 1: Often it was one of two episodes that we recorded
Speaker 1: together about marijuana. This first one was a Humanity's th
Speaker 1: HC Odyssey, which is kind of an overview on some
Speaker 1: of the history of of marijuana usage th HC usage.
Speaker 1: We also did another one about medicinal marijuana. Um, but
Speaker 1: we're not really re airing that one. I'm not I'd
Speaker 1: have to look back and see, you like, where the
Speaker 1: science is and everything. I feel like that's something we
Speaker 1: would need to revisit as opposed to just simply you run.
Speaker 1: But but this episode, this has some fun stuff in it.
Speaker 1: Some of the history of marijuana usage and it's legal
Speaker 1: status in the United States, as well as getting into
Speaker 1: some you know, ideas about how marijuana may or may
Speaker 1: not have played into different ancient societies. Sounds great, Well,
Speaker 1: you folks at home or wherever you are, even if
Speaker 1: you're not at home, enjoy this classic episode. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. Hey, Robert, who said
Speaker 1: the following, The illegality of cannabis is outrageous and impediment
Speaker 1: to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the
Speaker 1: serenity and insight, sensitivity, and fellowship so desperately needed in
Speaker 1: this increasingly mad and dangerous world. Oh well, well, of
Speaker 1: course a quote from Mr X from the early nineteen seventies. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mr X. He's that guy who was on The X Files.
Speaker 1: He replaced the deep throat character in like season three. Right,
Speaker 1: Is that true? There's a Mr X on there? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: totally totally. He was like their inside informat. Uh, he's
Speaker 1: the guy from twenty one Jump Street. He said that. No, No,
Speaker 1: it turns out this was actually Carl Sagan what Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mr mr X was his 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 quarte, like it's a full piece. Yeah,
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 part
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 rent each week. You can 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 uh you
Speaker 1: know 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 west
Speaker 1: in two pieces here. Yeah, we we did our best
Speaker 1: to condense is down. Robert's right. There's an absolute infinity
Speaker 1: of pot research out there, and that's a good thing
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of things that we have to
Speaker 1: learn from this one plant that are our species has
Speaker 1: become totally obsessed with. Yeah, I mean we stand it
Speaker 1: in 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 tend
Speaker 1: oney thirty years from who knows. Yeah, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna give it the old stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Shake here and if there, if you want more information
Speaker 1: or you want a lot more of just a general overview,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of great articles over how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, one on marijuana, how Marijuana Works, another
Speaker 1: one 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 explore
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 how Medicinal Marijuana Works episode that you should
Speaker 1: 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 otter
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 going to break and we'll
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 the gist 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 and that that could be again like that
Speaker 1: could be its own podcasts. All the ways that you
Speaker 1: can use hemp, right, uh, And I mean it is
Speaker 1: important to hit because because essentially you have two very
Speaker 1: common subspecies of cannabis. You have Cannabis sativa L. And
Speaker 1: the L stands for Carl Linnaeus, Carl Linnaeus who named
Speaker 1: it in seventy three, and this is the non psychoactive
Speaker 1: hemp variety. This is the version of of cannabis that
Speaker 1: is used to create these various textiles and has been
Speaker 1: used for ages, as we'll discuss in a little bit
Speaker 1: um and and and to put that in perspective, hemp
Speaker 1: contains less than one percent th HC. Meanwhile, you have
Speaker 1: Cannabis sativa, the psychoactive cannabis plant, and that when that
Speaker 1: one you'll see t h t HC levels that range
Speaker 1: from four to and the upper end of that the
Speaker 1: twenty percent area. You're going to see that in some
Speaker 1: of the specially strains that humans have cultivated. So then
Speaker 1: there's also Cannabis indica and there's another one called Cannabis
Speaker 1: rut alis, and these are different species. There's variants the subspecies.
Speaker 1: But one thing that's worth saying right up front about
Speaker 1: these is that these categorizations sometimes get used over simplistically,
Speaker 1: and this is gonna be something that we keep coming
Speaker 1: back to over and over again, especially with medicinal use. Uh.
Speaker 1: The idea, for instance, that indica makes you sleepy but
Speaker 1: sativa makes you hyper. But then there you can find
Speaker 1: strains of both that have totally opposite effects. Right. So
Speaker 1: there's like there's a lot more going on here. And
Speaker 1: the reason why is this plant is like incredibly dynamic
Speaker 1: and complicated. It has more than five hundred chemicals in it,
Speaker 1: including th HC. A hundred and nine of those chemicals
Speaker 1: are what we call cannabinoids, and those are the important
Speaker 1: ones when we're talking about the effects on the brain.
Speaker 1: But this thing is really diverse. It's got a lot
Speaker 1: going on inside of it. Uh. And depending on how
Speaker 1: it's bread, depending on the different strains whatever, it's going
Speaker 1: to have different effects, right. I mean, the effects of
Speaker 1: th HC of consumption is going to depend down the strain,
Speaker 1: how much you took, how you took it, your your
Speaker 1: individual makeup, your past usage, a number of different factors. Um.
Speaker 1: It's also worth a stressing here that the female cannabis
Speaker 1: plant is the one that produces the sticky resin that
Speaker 1: contains the cannabinoids, most notably delta nine tetra hydro cannabinal
Speaker 1: which is th h h C. So th HC. Let's
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, endocannabinoids are in your
Speaker 1: brain right now, regardless of if your past usage or
Speaker 1: nine usage of marijuana. And there's one plant that also
Speaker 1: produces them, and that's cannabis. So keep that in mind
Speaker 1: throughout all of this, Right, is that, like the things
Speaker 1: that are going on, the effects of cannabis on the
Speaker 1: human body are basically mimicking things that we are already
Speaker 1: going on right increasing or decreasing them. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because you can you can sort of say that for
Speaker 1: from for pretty much any Yeah, that's true. Substance, it's
Speaker 1: not like a magic hand, supernatural force reaching into your brain.
Speaker 1: Is the substance that is causing your brain to do
Speaker 1: things that it already does, though perhaps in different intensities
Speaker 1: and in different ways. Yeah, I just kind of want
Speaker 1: to dispel the notion of the and you and I
Speaker 1: grew up with this the this is your brain on
Speaker 1: drugs type commercials where it's like the drugs are doing
Speaker 1: the things to you, and yeah, like and they are.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a cause and effect relationship, but like
Speaker 1: the chemistry sets already there in your skull, right, an
Speaker 1: egg does not fry itself exactly, all right, So an
Speaker 1: individual takes th HC it can We already mentioned that
Speaker 1: the exact results are going to depend on strain, dosage,
Speaker 1: delivery method, individual frequency of use, but the it's gonna
Speaker 1: ultimately produce a variety of effects a both sensory and psychological,
Speaker 1: including uh, one of the sources listed its mild revery,
Speaker 1: which show we were just talking about about that off air. Well,
Speaker 1: what's what's a more relatable term for that? Fun? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what I would think of it as that's
Speaker 1: that's another thing that like, I guess we should point
Speaker 1: out as like along the way and the research of
Speaker 1: this is of course academics who are studying marijuana or
Speaker 1: cannabis and its effects like they're in this sort of weird,
Speaker 1: precarious situation right where they want to be as scientifically
Speaker 1: accurate as possible to maintain their standing of this being
Speaker 1: a serious study. Uh because and and I read this
Speaker 1: in multiple pieces, they're like, well, there's a stigma on
Speaker 1: people who study this as like, you know, we're just
Speaker 1: a bunch of hippies who just want to smoke weed
Speaker 1: or something like that, while while also holding professorship and
Speaker 1: almost like they're paranoid about it. Almost Yeah, uh so
Speaker 1: there is almost uh an impenetrable language use in some
Speaker 1: of these, including uh frequent reverie. Yeah, and they rarely
Speaker 1: use the word dank, but yeah. Some of the other
Speaker 1: effects include a euphoria, a 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 what happens when
Speaker 1: you smoke weed. Yeah. I mean, if you just watch television,
Speaker 1: you see varying levels. So like the guy in this
Speaker 1: show he smokes a little Jess Pinkman on breaking back,
Speaker 1: suddenly he's a little more creative, creative. Or oh, this
Speaker 1: character in this show aida pot brownie and then just
Speaker 1: set there thinking about death for an hour, you know.
Speaker 1: Then yeah, totally, a lot of people are gonna be
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: hippocampus are cerebellum and our basil ganglia. The THHC binds
Speaker 1: with the receptors there and interferes with our recollection of
Speaker 1: recent events. So this is the whole memory thing. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk a lot about this um. In fact, I
Speaker 1: had previously written an up pisode for our video series
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff on how much marijuana actually affects your memory,
Speaker 1: so I was able to incorporate a lot of that
Speaker 1: research here, and of course, as we also know, it
Speaker 1: affects your coordination and your muscle movement. So okay, like
Speaker 1: we said, our brains have already got these endocannabinoids in them, right,
Speaker 1: and cannabis cannabis basically hijacks this process. Now, the system,
Speaker 1: the endocannabinoids system, influences our pain, our memory, our mood,
Speaker 1: and our appetite, all those things that Robert just listed
Speaker 1: as 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 is already involved in a number of of the
Speaker 1: 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 now,
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about more, but like research
Speaker 1: is relatively recently in the last five years, is that
Speaker 1: the end cannabinoid 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 grown 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 end of cannabinoid system, we've only known about this
Speaker 1: thing since the late nineties, so, uh, we know, okay,
Speaker 1: we know it's a complex neural system. We know it
Speaker 1: affects these couple of things that I just mentioned, but
Speaker 1: we're only beginning to understand it. So it's weird when
Speaker 1: you go down the rabbit hole on marijuana research because
Speaker 1: there's tons of it. Like we mentioned, it's everywhere, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it is the same, Like, here's this
Speaker 1: endocannabinoid thing. We sort of get it, but not really.
Speaker 1: More research is needed. Uh. And then here's my fun
Speaker 1: fact for the episode. The reason you can't overdose on
Speaker 1: marijuana is because our cannabinoid receptors aren't densely packed inside
Speaker 1: the medulla. The medulla controls our cardiovascular system. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you use heroin and you overdose on heroin, that'll
Speaker 1: shut down your respiratory control center. But pot can't do
Speaker 1: anything like that. Do not mistake as when we say
Speaker 1: you cannot overdose on marijuana, we are not saying that
Speaker 1: you cannot take too much JA. You cannot. You can
Speaker 1: take more marijuana than than is than you should or
Speaker 1: is comfortable for the user experience. Um, but you can
Speaker 1: say that about anything, right. You can say that about chocolate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one, So you can say that about plenty
Speaker 1: of things just in your on your spice rack that
Speaker 1: take too much of it you and they can have
Speaker 1: dire consequences. Bottom line being, you cannot overdose, but you
Speaker 1: can't take too much. Okay, So we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: the positive effects. But I'd like to think that most
Speaker 1: of the people out there, again, like whether you've had
Speaker 1: personal experience with it or you've just watched it on
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 reduced 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. Just just like with m D
Speaker 1: m A. Uh, that same Maps Search 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 a 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 year's worth of studies that
Speaker 1: show that THHC 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. There are
Speaker 1: varying levels of memory disruption, and it's not just the
Speaker 1: black and white I remember and oh I have a
Speaker 1: black hole in my life. Yeah, yeah, totally totally, which
Speaker 1: reminds me of like, you know, I mean, I have
Speaker 1: friends who over the years used too much alcohol and
Speaker 1: that was kind of their experience with that, which was
Speaker 1: just like the the whole in in time and space.
Speaker 1: They don't remember what happened, or at least they say
Speaker 1: they don't remember what happened. I have far less friends
Speaker 1: who use marijuana that have said the same thing. So,
Speaker 1: but let's let's clarify too. 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 that they can use
Speaker 1: th HC to help people with forgetting add memories associated
Speaker 1: with PTSD, and the reason why is because the end
Speaker 1: o cannabinoid system regulates memory formation, but it also is
Speaker 1: involved with how we quote make negative memories extinct. That's
Speaker 1: a weird phrasing, but apparently there's has something to do
Speaker 1: with us. Basically, Like I guess, like the metaphor would
Speaker 1: be like putting a negative memory in a box and
Speaker 1: shoving it in a closet way in the back of
Speaker 1: your brain, right and just being like I'm done with this.
Speaker 1: But you know, this touches again on the complexity of
Speaker 1: THHC because it's a substance that almost paradoxically involves sometimes
Speaker 1: the like the the the overexamination of a negative element
Speaker 1: in one's memories or in this case, we're discussing now
Speaker 1: the potential eradication of of negative connotations for a memory. Right.
Speaker 1: And we didn't do a lot of like real deep
Speaker 1: dive research into the PTSD application here, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to guess based on all the stuff that we did
Speaker 1: on m D m A and PTSD, they probably has
Speaker 1: a similar use. And then it's done in conjunction with therapy,
Speaker 1: and that you know, you use it a little bit
Speaker 1: with a trustworthy therapist and then you talk your way
Speaker 1: through the memories and the problems. Rather than it's it's
Speaker 1: not like this magical thing where like you take a
Speaker 1: certain amount of marijuana and your memory just goes into
Speaker 1: the closet, right, Like, we need to stop thinking about
Speaker 1: it as being like this just magic wand thing. Okay.
Speaker 1: The chronic use effects are important to consider as well,
Speaker 1: because as we age, chronic use of marijuana can hasten
Speaker 1: the loss of neurons in our hippocampus. So teens, and
Speaker 1: this is where it comes into the like growing up
Speaker 1: and how it affects your brain thing. Teens who smoke
Speaker 1: it for three or more years may have abnormally shaped
Speaker 1: hippocamp i, and they get more abnormal the longer they
Speaker 1: use it chronically. Now, these deformations are connected to poor
Speaker 1: performance on memory tests and they don't go away either. Uh.
Speaker 1: They've been observed in individuals who are in their early
Speaker 1: twenties who stopped using marijuana up to two years before.
Speaker 1: So it's like there's this window in your life and
Speaker 1: let's be honest, for a lot of us, that's the
Speaker 1: window when we're most likely to use marijuana. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and it if it's used on enough of a regular basis,
Speaker 1: it can affect the shape of your brain. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this is the period of time in our development
Speaker 1: where we're hardwired really to to break out and uh
Speaker 1: and and attached to different peer groups as like a
Speaker 1: survival instinct, to to take more risks as a survival instinct.
Speaker 1: Uh So, it's it's it's unfortunate. This is also the
Speaker 1: time where we should we should probably not be experimenting
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of different substances. Yeah. I know,
Speaker 1: Like reading this, like I almost thought like wow, like
Speaker 1: in a in a mature society would be And I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's like some kind of uh like smaller
Speaker 1: micro 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 yeah, the rum
Speaker 1: spring of marijuana where you're ready and it won't affect
Speaker 1: how your brain is shaped and and and and affect
Speaker 1: your cognition. Basically, it's basically your programming here is too
Speaker 1: is to rebel, run away from your tribe and go
Speaker 1: find another tribe that you can breed with and find
Speaker 1: safety among But yeah, wait to get to other tribe
Speaker 1: until you trial these substances should be the caveat there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, that would be interesting. I wonder if
Speaker 1: any of the listeners out there aware of, like, if
Speaker 1: there's some there must be I would assume that there's
Speaker 1: got to be some kind of mature society where that
Speaker 1: is how it's handled, although I guess like based on
Speaker 1: sort of like Nations eight regulations, we wouldn't necessarily be
Speaker 1: able to do that anymore. Well, I think you do
Speaker 1: see traditional uses of marijuana and other substances where control
Speaker 1: of the substances held by shamans and religious individuals, and
Speaker 1: therefore you would have to reach a certain age a
Speaker 1: certain place in your life before they would be administered
Speaker 1: to you. That's so that would be I think the
Speaker 1: most likely form of that. Okay, Yeah, that's interesting to
Speaker 1: consider going forward with us. Um. So, yeah, so we
Speaker 1: know this endocannabinoid system, even though it's super complex and
Speaker 1: we're only just now learning about it, it's important to
Speaker 1: how our signaps is form. It's important to our early
Speaker 1: brain development during adolescent uh. And so yes, it's possible
Speaker 1: that marijuana is affecting the development of our brains. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we know, of course they also adversely affect our
Speaker 1: motor coordination, our attention, our judgment. It also can raise
Speaker 1: our heart rate, cause anxiety, and it has irritans inside
Speaker 1: the smoke that possibly caused cancer. And this is a
Speaker 1: good moment for us to all Right, so memories the
Speaker 1: big one, right, that's the big like quote unquote adverse effect.
Speaker 1: But let's go through a list of other adverse effects
Speaker 1: that have been tracked through science. All Right, It's been
Speaker 1: linked to having a thirty lower sperm count. You have
Speaker 1: used at least once a week. It's also it's not
Speaker 1: highly addictive. However, ten percent 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. Just
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 fyel 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 c B one receptors
Speaker 1: that we have in our brains, and that too could
Speaker 1: be leading to addiction of some type. It's also been
Speaker 1: linked to cardiovascular problems, long damage for heavy smokers, high
Speaker 1: risk of developing chronic cabronchitis, but its effects on respiratory
Speaker 1: function and respiratory cancer unclear, mostly because of mixed use
Speaker 1: with tobacco. So on a lot of this, we're just
Speaker 1: talking about the fact that the primary method of consuming
Speaker 1: it is the smoke, So of course you're going to
Speaker 1: end end up with smoke a relation issues. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: 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 annabis use during pregnancy you can modestly reduce birthwight, 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 elithic 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 is socio cultural role and its scientific effects on
Speaker 1: the human body. And some studies suggest that cannabis is
Speaker 1: a contributing cause to these things like for instance, that
Speaker 1: you'll drop out of school or something, while others are
Speaker 1: argue doing that. Yeah, there's a relationship there, but there's
Speaker 1: also lots of other shared causes, right like makes me
Speaker 1: think of wicked problems. Uh, there's a lot going on there.
Speaker 1: And just from my own personal experience growing up with
Speaker 1: with with kids who dropped out of school and we're
Speaker 1: pot smokers, Like, I don't think it was necessarily just
Speaker 1: the pot that made them drop out of school, right, Like,
Speaker 1: they had a lot of other things going on in
Speaker 1: their lives and it was a convergence. Yeah. And and
Speaker 1: you know, it's easy to get into. You could you
Speaker 1: could do a whole episode just talking about the whole
Speaker 1: gateway drug ban. You know, to what extent is it
Speaker 1: a gateway drug? To what extent is anything a gateway
Speaker 1: drug if you keep it, like legally and socially stored
Speaker 1: in the box with these other things. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like saying, hey, if you keep the bubble gum in
Speaker 1: the liquor cabinet, then bubble gum is the gateway to liquor, right,
Speaker 1: because 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 in
Speaker 1: between 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 th HC
Speaker 1: into the bloodstream, it must be heated above one hundred
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or two hundred twelve degrees fahrenheit. So it
Speaker 1: has to be cooked, it has to be smoked. And
Speaker 1: this is why we inevitably end up talking about the
Speaker 1: inhalation of cannabis smoke, the brewing of cannabis teeth, the
Speaker 1: creation 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 through into a communal campfire and um inhaled
Speaker 1: it that way. And the use of pipes was actually
Speaker 1: rather uncommon until the sixteenth century. So so yeah, the
Speaker 1: whole sort of it's easy to miss that given how
Speaker 1: prevalent the bong and one hitter culture is today. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a in the long history of human cannabis use. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a relatively new thing. Yeah, it's kind of worth
Speaker 1: realizing that, like we are only just a little blip
Speaker 1: on the radar of its uh influence on human history,
Speaker 1: especially like when you when you look at how far
Speaker 1: back it goes. Indeed, So hey, on that note, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we're
Speaker 1: going to dive into a little bit on the evolution
Speaker 1: of cannabis and the overall success of cannabis as it
Speaker 1: just spreads across our world through human culture. So cannabis
Speaker 1: thrives in a sunny environment or alternatively, like a massive
Speaker 1: grow house I'm thinking of like a have you seen
Speaker 1: that movie Attack the Block? Yes, the like sky rise
Speaker 1: grow house that they have that's in like one of
Speaker 1: those like apartment complex. Oh yeah, you can grow pretty
Speaker 1: much anywhere. Grow Houses are are fascinating subject under themselves.
Speaker 1: I wrote an article for How Stuff Works about them
Speaker 1: several years back, and I'm not even sure to what
Speaker 1: extent with our growing uh, with with our shifting acceptance
Speaker 1: of marijuana, to what extent, grow houses are still quite
Speaker 1: the weird urban spaceship that they were, you know, where
Speaker 1: you basically have an environment that is, you know, like
Speaker 1: a human can barely live inside one of these things.
Speaker 1: It's all about growing the marijuana plants. I don't even
Speaker 1: know to what extent those are. Those are still as
Speaker 1: extreme a situation as they were a few years ago.
Speaker 1: But um, but for the most part, yeah, they need
Speaker 1: to sunny environment. Uh. We mentioned earlier. They probably evolved
Speaker 1: in um in India, perhaps Central Asia specifically. Some theories
Speaker 1: say Mongolia or southern Siberia, though you'll also find people
Speaker 1: to make a case for the Honghi River valley of
Speaker 1: the Hindu Kush Mountains, South Asia or Afghanistan. It's one
Speaker 1: of those things that's ultimately kind of lost to history.
Speaker 1: And this is that thing where you go, all, right,
Speaker 1: hold up, how long have people been interacting with cannabis. Well,
Speaker 1: the first written account is in Chinese records from the
Speaker 1: twenty eight century BC. That's way back. I mean it's
Speaker 1: pretty far. And then when you look at it, you know,
Speaker 1: around twenty or sorry, around twelve thousand BC, humans started
Speaker 1: domesticating the crop. And this is where it steadily started
Speaker 1: moving across the world. And let's talk about that for
Speaker 1: a little bit. We've got like a app here in
Speaker 1: front of us. Uh. Well, we'll try to translate to
Speaker 1: you listener, uh that it's just fascinating how it kind
Speaker 1: of made its way around the world. Right, So it's
Speaker 1: best we can tell by two thousand BC, you had
Speaker 1: cannabis in China, Japan, Korea, Persia, Eastern Europe, and India.
Speaker 1: And then during the first millennium it spreads through northern Africa,
Speaker 1: and in the following millennium travels north into western Europe,
Speaker 1: south into Southern Africa, into Southeast Asia, and then in
Speaker 1: the centuries to follow it follows the wave of colonialism
Speaker 1: into the New World. So we're talking South America in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds and then the early twentieth century it's
Speaker 1: making its way into North America and becoming firmly rooted there.
Speaker 1: And you may be wondering, well, well, how do we
Speaker 1: know this other than, like you know, a general historical record. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: this is a fascinating thing that I about in a
Speaker 1: Newsweek article. There's a guy out there. His name is
Speaker 1: Maudli Holmes, and he operates a lab called the philos
Speaker 1: Bioscience Lab, and the whole point of this lab is
Speaker 1: to try to sequence the DNA of every kind of
Speaker 1: cannabis in the world. And the goal is basically that
Speaker 1: they're gonna sample all of it so that they can clarify,
Speaker 1: you know what all these different types are in the
Speaker 1: marijuana quote unquote market. And it's called cannabis genomics. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about subspecies, we're talking about strains, all the
Speaker 1: weird ways that cultivation is is tweaking the marijuana. Like
Speaker 1: I've seen it pointed out before that if you look
Speaker 1: at pictures of just basic cannabis crop from just fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, it's it's often just unrecognizable compared to you
Speaker 1: like your modern um uh centerfold cannabis in what is
Speaker 1: the magazine high times, Like like it doesn't even look
Speaker 1: like the same plant because we've just we've micro managed
Speaker 1: its development so much. Yeah, And also like it's worth
Speaker 1: considering too that like a lot any kind of like
Speaker 1: botanical improvements that have been going on have been going
Speaker 1: on behind closed doors for the most part, right, so
Speaker 1: there hasn't been a whole lot of like, uh shared
Speaker 1: information about this. And and this is kind of this
Speaker 1: Mowgli homes goal. He's he's sort of like the Alexander
Speaker 1: Shulgin of of marijuana, it seems, uh, and so 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 Holmes 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 Open 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, it 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: root 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 twenty century PC,
Speaker 1: and there'll be more on the specifics of that in
Speaker 1: our next episode because it concerns the medicinal history of cannabis.
Speaker 1: But as far as just the earliest known archaeological traces,
Speaker 1: some of our earliest traces of cannabis, they relate not
Speaker 1: to uh the drug, but rather just to the use
Speaker 1: of hemp in fiber arts, which is important because it
Speaker 1: shows that the plant was out there people were using
Speaker 1: it to So we see ten thousand year old Taiwanese
Speaker 1: pottery shards that reveal hemp rope imprints in the pottery. Additionally,
Speaker 1: we see weaving design and hemp cloth imprints from on
Speaker 1: pottery from around UH fifteen to thirty five thirty five
Speaker 1: b C. Found in Bandpo villages. These are the the
Speaker 1: earliest examples of Neolithic and possibly uh matriarchal Uh young
Speaker 1: Shall culture uh And this is from the Schanzi province
Speaker 1: in northwest China. So again just to go back, you know,
Speaker 1: China was was one of the earliest regions that would
Speaker 1: have had access to cannabis. Burned cannabis seeds have been
Speaker 1: found in Kurgan burial grounds of the Pazak tribes in
Speaker 1: Siberia dating back to around three thousand BC. And I
Speaker 1: can only imagine, um, my, my Highlander history is little
Speaker 1: foggy that I'm assuming that the Kurgan uh a, maybe
Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah, yeah, probably very heavy marijuana user, the Kurgan. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of ty clancy brown. That's how
Speaker 1: you get that like really nice smoky deep voice. That's
Speaker 1: smoky groundtown Clancy brown. Uh. Let's the Additionally, we see
Speaker 1: from two to nine b C Chinese Child Dynasty burial
Speaker 1: sites that reveal hemp cloth fragments. In Egypt, we've seen
Speaker 1: cannabis pollen and the tombs of h in the tomb
Speaker 1: of Rams Ramesses the second and that's from around twelve
Speaker 1: seventy nine to twelve thirteen BC, and several mummies UH
Speaker 1: from that time period contained trace cannabinoids as well. You know,
Speaker 1: based on our episode on preparing mummies in Egyptian burial
Speaker 1: and knowing all of the different like spices and things
Speaker 1: like that they stuffed inside the orifices of bodies, I
Speaker 1: wonder if they were stuffing um cannabis in there as well.
Speaker 1: Maybe so 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 grays 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 BC Chulie
Speaker 1: writes of hemp's use as a fiber in particular, there's
Speaker 1: evidence of cannabis as a domesticated seed crop. So we
Speaker 1: know that, you know, somewhere through those times it's it's domesticated,
Speaker 1: it's become part of agriculture, and uh, it's being used medicinally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as hemp too. Yeah. So it's easily it's easy
Speaker 1: to to sort of put ourselves in the in the
Speaker 1: mindset of of early individuals who like maybe they discovered
Speaker 1: the the use of hemp first and then began to
Speaker 1: discover this other property. Um, you know, maybe they sort
Speaker 1: of discovered each independently, but pretty early on cannabis in
Speaker 1: one form or another, it becomes an important crop and
Speaker 1: a crop that that that knowledge of is passed from
Speaker 1: generation to generation. Yeah. Now, and this is one of
Speaker 1: those like I can only imagine, uh, like horrible pot
Speaker 1: humor of like a bunch of stoners sitting around being
Speaker 1: like man like who first figured this out? Like did
Speaker 1: 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 a one myth concerning that. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of this we've talked about this
Speaker 1: concerning about them, but what about the actual smoking of
Speaker 1: the marijuana, the actual consumption of of the cannabis and
Speaker 1: the THHC. Well, some of our earliest known evidence here
Speaker 1: takes us back to thirteen twenty C. And here you'd
Speaker 1: have to travel to the Libiala Caves of Ethiopia where
Speaker 1: we find two ceramic pipe bowls containing traces of cannabis uh.
Speaker 1: And then the Artharva Vada in two thousand to fourteen
Speaker 1: hundred b C. References something called bang not bong uh,
Speaker 1: a concoction of dried cannabis leaves, seeds, and stems. And
Speaker 1: this is considered like mild Indian cannabis, about half the
Speaker 1: strength of ganja. Yeah, and I know we're sort of
Speaker 1: moving around in time a little bit here, but so
Speaker 1: so sorry for this. Last you might get doctor who
Speaker 1: tour of of marijuana. Yeah, you will also find m
Speaker 1: cannabis use interwoven into tantric to traditions that have influenced
Speaker 1: both Hinduism and Buddhism. And uh, I mean, really, we
Speaker 1: could just go on and on. You can't even begin
Speaker 1: to look at cannabisiness role in every culture and age um.
Speaker 1: But you know, we thought to be interesting to discuss
Speaker 1: a few key examples that are they're either interesting or
Speaker 1: have some sort of importance later on in our discussions.
Speaker 1: So one that probably comes to a lot of people's
Speaker 1: minds is that of the Assassins. I'm I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how how familiar people are with this. I feel like
Speaker 1: the Assassin's Creeds getting Creed games get into this a
Speaker 1: little bit. So maybe I've only I've played like half
Speaker 1: of those, but I don't remember there being anything particularly
Speaker 1: connected to this. But I haven't played the first one.
Speaker 1: And that's the like if if my memory is correct
Speaker 1: about those games, that they're uh chronological in order, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they have time travel and they do so. Just
Speaker 1: to clarify, hashish comes from the Arabic for dry herb,
Speaker 1: and it consists of purified cannabis resin and is considerably
Speaker 1: more potent. And then this would have spread through the
Speaker 1: Arab world from seven to the thirteenth centuries due to trade,
Speaker 1: travel and war, which are generally the things that move cannabis.
Speaker 1: Sure historically, and here's the thing that it was around
Speaker 1: not necessarily accepted. It's often considered an intoxicant in Islamic
Speaker 1: communities and is therefore prohibited, though some Sufi holy men
Speaker 1: have allegedly used it in their rights as well, so
Speaker 1: that much is more or less accepted. As for the
Speaker 1: idea that the assassins that there are these dreaded um
Speaker 1: uh Ashishin warriors that would have imbued and hashish prior
Speaker 1: to their attack on Western crusaders during the Holy Wars,
Speaker 1: well that is that that remains either unclear or complete fabrication.
Speaker 1: There's there's nothing really to back up that idea. The
Speaker 1: Crusaders were the ones circulating these tales, and it's a
Speaker 1: huge possibility that these tales were just about downplaying um
Speaker 1: Muslim bravery and saying, oh, well, sure they beat us,
Speaker 1: but that was because they're they're they're crazy. They took
Speaker 1: some drug that gave them essentially superpowers and made them
Speaker 1: into mad men and came at us. So all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna show my ignorance here because this is one
Speaker 1: of the sections that I researched. Is this connected to
Speaker 1: the whole legend of Hassana Saba. This is the old,
Speaker 1: old man in the Mountain, Yes, very much. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: so the these were a real group, Yeah, they they existed.
Speaker 1: The idea that they smoked hashish some sort of like
Speaker 1: a pre attack ritual, there's little or nothing to back
Speaker 1: that up. Very different from our episode on wolf Spain,
Speaker 1: in which we did find that there was some kind
Speaker 1: of a connection between was it what was it Vikings
Speaker 1: or not Vikings in particular, but a particular kind of
Speaker 1: like a Northern European warrior what sort of like smear
Speaker 1: Wolf Spain on their lips so that they had like
Speaker 1: foam at the mouth. Yeah, it's I mean, it's interesting
Speaker 1: because on one hand, you can imagine that being the case.
Speaker 1: We know that there are various properties, uh in various
Speaker 1: substances that would be advantageous prior to rushing into battle.
Speaker 1: But it does it also allows the loser to explain
Speaker 1: away their losses like, oh, yeah, they beat us, but
Speaker 1: they were totally doping. Yeah, exactly. It's the early finger
Speaker 1: pointing of stero ideas. And it's also interesting because we
Speaker 1: see marijuana's use in the demonization of another culture or
Speaker 1: or racial group and the idea that it turns people
Speaker 1: into into monsters of some sort and all this comes
Speaker 1: up again when we start looking at twentieth century America.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, totally. Another cultural entity that has
Speaker 1: that has become pretty synonymous with marijuana uses that of
Speaker 1: the Rastafari movement. Uh. Certainly, you know, you know Jamaican music,
Speaker 1: um be it, you know, dub reggae, they're huge, huge
Speaker 1: influence of of cannabis. Yeah, those artful and I think
Speaker 1: like through most of like present day Western pop culture
Speaker 1: that is like a stereotype. Yeah yeah, but but certainly
Speaker 1: the Rasta far Rastafari movement is real. It's a Jamaican
Speaker 1: abramatic faith that rose in the nineteen thirties following the
Speaker 1: coronation of highly Selassie, the first is 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: labor or is brought in by the British. Um. So,
Speaker 1: but this is an interesting modern example where we see
Speaker 1: cannabis as as a part of a religion, as a
Speaker 1: religious right. Here in the States, you have you also
Speaker 1: have various movements of I think varying levels of seriousness,
Speaker 1: such as the Christian THHC Ministry, the Cannabis Assembly, the
Speaker 1: Church of Cognitive Therapy, of course, Temple for twenty. The
Speaker 1: list goes goes on and on. But but throughout human
Speaker 1: history you do see cannabis playing a role to varying degrees.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe not as extreme as rastafari, but you
Speaker 1: see it playing varying degrees in religious right. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: certainly makes sense given it's a biochemical properties. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this thoroughly connects right back to two of our more
Speaker 1: recent episodes, the Cargo Cults episode and the hyper Real
Speaker 1: Religions episode. Oh yeah, yeah, totally. And again we could
Speaker 1: we could spend a whole series of So I was
Speaker 1: just going through all the various different cultural examples. Now
Speaker 1: when we get to the United States in our modern times,
Speaker 1: well we pretty much have to mention Reefer madness because, uh,
Speaker 1: this was if you were not familiar with this, this
Speaker 1: was this came out the nineteen thirties, and it was
Speaker 1: an exploitation propaganda film about how marijuana turns young people
Speaker 1: into just raving maniacs, like joker faced maniacal crazy people
Speaker 1: or just like complete you know, gut or crawling junkies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's funny. I mean like the thirties, twenty years
Speaker 1: before the nineteen fifties, when the same thing was going
Speaker 1: on with comic books. Right. It's a real tradition in
Speaker 1: the last century of American life of finding a thing
Speaker 1: and blaming it for juvenile uh, delinquents or hyperactivity or
Speaker 1: just behaviors that we don't find that fits to the
Speaker 1: conformity of quote traditional America right. Right, and and in
Speaker 1: this case too, helping to bring about oral panic surrounding
Speaker 1: the thing, which of course ties back into our episode
Speaker 1: on satanic panic. But essentially, you had US laws against
Speaker 1: marijuana and other drugs drugs popping up in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: Uh though marijuana laws at the time they didn't differentiate
Speaker 1: between himp and psychoactive cannabis. And this is apparently doing
Speaker 1: a large part to the influence of the cotton industry
Speaker 1: because they didn't want them industry to come in and
Speaker 1: take away their business because it's like significantly cheaper isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my understanding of And then uh so, so you
Speaker 1: have the Federal Bureau of Narcott and Narcotics under Harry J.
Speaker 1: And Slinger, and he waged war on marijuana just throughout
Speaker 1: the thirties. He rejected clinical analysis that even at the time,
Speaker 1: concluded that marijuana did not induce violent behavior or lead
Speaker 1: to the use of more heavily addictive drugs. Instead, he
Speaker 1: waged this campaign of yellow journalism and propaganda tied in
Speaker 1: the evils of jazz. So you're, of course you're getting
Speaker 1: you know, some raised racist tendencies right where we got
Speaker 1: the jazz cigarette. The jazz cigarette also tied it into
Speaker 1: imperial Japan and communism as well. So again this idea
Speaker 1: of that, um, this heavy tone of this marijuana is
Speaker 1: tied to this ethnic threat to the white female. Uh
Speaker 1: because you see that in some of the posters at
Speaker 1: the time. You see like the marijuana brandishing individual is
Speaker 1: kind of a darker, demonic figure, and of course he's
Speaker 1: preying on the the the the Caucasian woman. Um So
Speaker 1: it's it's really like, it's really icky the more and
Speaker 1: more you look at Yeah, I mean, like refor madness
Speaker 1: is one of those things that like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially of our generation, like kind of look at and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, isn't that ironic? Funny ha ha, But
Speaker 1: like it's just another example of humanity just like pointing
Speaker 1: its fingers at the wrong things, you know, and not
Speaker 1: really kind of like taking a decent step back and
Speaker 1: looking at like what the actual situation is. Right, And
Speaker 1: even though today we can we can hotch reefer madness
Speaker 1: and laugh at it. It might even be on Netflix
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, periodically, I think it's in
Speaker 1: it may be in the public domain. I know there's
Speaker 1: a riff track on it, and and it is just
Speaker 1: goofy and and and awful. But we're still to a
Speaker 1: large extent living in its shadow, right, I mean that
Speaker 1: that era of of cannabis, aversion of moral panics right
Speaker 1: surrounding cannabis, like that never truly completely went away. I
Speaker 1: mean it's certainly that we had cultural shifts we had
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties and in the post nineteen sixties. Um.
Speaker 1: And we've touched on this before in a M d
Speaker 1: m A episodes just about like the difficulty of coming
Speaker 1: back from that even with just clinical research. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: exactly and that we'll talk about that more in the
Speaker 1: next episode, the sequel to this about medicinal applications. But
Speaker 1: it's like tremendously difficult to do studies on this stuff
Speaker 1: because of the results of this sort of movement that
Speaker 1: Robert's describing. So where this interesting point in history, right,
Speaker 1: We've seen a great deal of post drug war decriminalization
Speaker 1: overall and overall cultural acceptance outside of the US. Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, and Belgium of all decriminalized marijuana possession to
Speaker 1: varying degrees, and it's also quite villa, but it's also
Speaker 1: quite vilified 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 a could, it is not very welcome there. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And um, it's interesting because I just recently took a
Speaker 1: trip to Portland, Oregon, uh, and the medical dispensaries are
Speaker 1: all over the place there now, uh. And it was
Speaker 1: so 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 Duncan 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. They had like nice nice signs of
Speaker 1: a little green uh plus symbol to to signify what
Speaker 1: it was for. It was everywhere. Yeah, So it's interesting
Speaker 1: to just try and figure out where we are in
Speaker 1: the overall continuing history of marijuana, Like is this is
Speaker 1: this the peak? Like is everything about to go uh
Speaker 1: in an entirely different direction? Is it? Can? Can? Can
Speaker 1: you continue to change towards acceptance and research? I think
Speaker 1: our generation Maybe it's just the people that I spend
Speaker 1: time with, but I really feel like our generation isn't
Speaker 1: as easily fooled by the whole reform madness rhetoric, right,
Speaker 1: Like we think about it a little bit more maturely
Speaker 1: than that and realize like the actual benefits and adversities
Speaker 1: of cannabis on the brain at least, I like to think, so, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so hopefully that like the current generation and then even
Speaker 1: the most the most recent generations to sort of reach
Speaker 1: that acceptable semi acceptable if you want to look at it, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, drug experimentation age, Like hopefully they are injuring
Speaker 1: into it with a lot more balanced information and not
Speaker 1: just like fearmongering on one side and uh and you
Speaker 1: know hippie mumbo jumbo on the other. But but but
Speaker 1: a middle path that incorporates some level headed decision make yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Like I said, like, I would love to see us
Speaker 1: go back to some kind of like shamanistic cultural thing
Speaker 1: where you know, we celebrate that when you've reached the
Speaker 1: age that it will no longer deform your brain. So
Speaker 1: on that note, I think we should pause, uh, sign
Speaker 1: out for today, and then you can rejoin us in
Speaker 1: the next episode, which will publish on Thursday, where we
Speaker 1: will talk about medicinal marijuana and all the different things
Speaker 1: that can be used it can be used for its
Speaker 1: associated with right And if there was something that we
Speaker 1: just briefly touched on in this episode, or that we
Speaker 1: briefly touch on in the next episode, and you think yourself, hey,
Speaker 1: I'd like to hear more on that, let us know,
Speaker 1: because there's there's so many areas in these two episodes
Speaker 1: that we could really blow it out and do an
Speaker 1: additional episode or two related to the content. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in addition to you know, we've been talking, like I
Speaker 1: said at the top of the episode about doing like
Speaker 1: a sort of ongoing series of these where you know,
Speaker 1: not like every week, but every you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of months will explore a different drug. And you know,
Speaker 1: like we've thrown around the idea of doing one on ayahuasca.
Speaker 1: I think Joe is interested in as a d M
Speaker 1: t um So, you know, let us know if there's
Speaker 1: a particular 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, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out past episodes, including that two part are in M
Speaker 1: d M A, head on over to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That is our mothership. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find all the podcast episodes. You'll find videos, you'll
Speaker 1: find blog posts. You'll find links out to our social
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Speaker 1: I just spent all day yesterday posting pictures from the
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Speaker 1: a blast on Alien Day on social media. We're on
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