Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Happy Saturday. This is Chuck here to introduce
Speaker 1: you to this week's Saturday Select, and we are going
Speaker 1: with a classic from the archives, How Marijuana Works. Why
Speaker 1: are we releasing this today on a Oh because we're juveniles,
Speaker 1: that's why, everybody. I hope you enjoy. It's very insightful episode.
Speaker 1: And here we go with how Marijuana Works. Welcome to
Speaker 1: stuff you should know from how stuff works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Tuck Bride getting his demons out, man. And how about
Speaker 1: this music? Yeah, this is a thanks to our guest
Speaker 1: producer Noel. Yeah, who is Jerry's actually producing, but he's
Speaker 1: got the musical touch. He's if you want to, he's
Speaker 1: our dub producer. Yeah, if you want to reggae. If
Speaker 1: I your podcast, Nol is the man. Yes, the big
Speaker 1: thanks to Noel. Yeah, and great idea by you. I
Speaker 1: and I yeah, yeah, I and I love that. How
Speaker 1: you doing, man, I'm great. You've got some good feelings
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah. I mean we've covered grow houses and um,
Speaker 1: we had 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. Yes, well
Speaker 1: not really. You gotta grow up. That's the first two.
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,
Speaker 1: I think booze. Every time we cover drugs, we like
Speaker 1: to cover the scientific aspects, social ramifications, how it's impacted culture.
Speaker 1: Why would this one be any different? Well, and this
Speaker 1: is probably the biggest, you know, it's the most ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, you know, yeah, maybe the gateway
Speaker 1: to all the other episodes. Very funny, So, uh, I
Speaker 1: guess if you we should start at the beginning. How
Speaker 1: about that? Let's talk about pot and its history. It's
Speaker 1: very long, long, long history, UM, and actually for most
Speaker 1: 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, we'd pot marijuana,
Speaker 1: but cannabis, that's probably where it will stop. Like if
Speaker 1: either want of us as ganja or sticky, it's in
Speaker 1: this article, we should just shut it down it right then,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, we'll do the Hey take that back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of us will say that. Okay, uh yeah, But
Speaker 1: like you said, I mean, this is gonna be an
Speaker 1: overview because we could do honestly, four shows on the
Speaker 1: history of pot. There's quite a rabbit hole we could
Speaker 1: go down here. Yeah, we got to avoid it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we're just we'll give you a historical overview about that.
Speaker 1: So um, like I said, pot has been cultivated for years,
Speaker 1: and like I also said that it's mostly been appreciated
Speaker 1: most of that time for two reasons. One it is
Speaker 1: um in industrial or it was, until the rise of
Speaker 1: the synthetics, a major industrial fiber hemp. And then secondly
Speaker 1: it was a um or it still is a medicinal
Speaker 1: herb that kind of spills over into recreational use as well.
Speaker 1: So in the century in China, uh, it looks like
Speaker 1: it was probably used medicinally yea, and not recreationally. But
Speaker 1: they're 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. H was
Speaker 1: good 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 pot definitely affects. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: They have found a mummy, a three thousand year old
Speaker 1: Egyptian mummy, and looked into this and it it contained
Speaker 1: quite a few drugs, but it definitely contained th HC.
Speaker 1: So the Egyptians were getting down. Yeah, maybe medicinally, who knows.
Speaker 1: In a thousand and one Arabian Nights, it makes an
Speaker 1: appearance called bang g Sambad apparently loves this stuff, but
Speaker 1: supposedly his was hash mixed with opium, which is way
Speaker 1: more hardcore than what we're talking about. Uh yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: probably so. Um they think it originated perhaps in India
Speaker 1: and um north of the Himalayas is their best guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they really have no idea. And actually there's like a
Speaker 1: lot of debate still over whether there's more than one
Speaker 1: um type of plant. What do you mean, So there's
Speaker 1: Cannabis indica, Cannabis sativa. Yeah, they're different. There's another one
Speaker 1: called Cannabis rude or alice um. And there's there's an
Speaker 1: ongoing debate among botanists over whether they're all actually just
Speaker 1: a different like um varieties of the same plant, or
Speaker 1: if they really are different species of plants in the
Speaker 1: same family. Interesting. Yeah, but I think the the current
Speaker 1: common wisdom is that there's at least two Cannabis sativa
Speaker 1: and Cannabis indica. Uh. Yeah, we may as well get
Speaker 1: into that a little bit. Um. The indica is uh,
Speaker 1: the plan itself is shorter and fatter and better suited
Speaker 1: for indoor growing. And the uh sativa is taller, it
Speaker 1: can get really tall like um yeah, and thinner um.
Speaker 1: Although I think for cultivation, I don't think uh, even
Speaker 1: though it's grown outdoors, I don't think they're growing the
Speaker 1: twenty five ft plants. No. I would imagine the helicopters
Speaker 1: can see them a lot more easily. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: indica is known for more of a a body high
Speaker 1: um quote unquote, couch locked, yeah, mellow, and the sativa
Speaker 1: is more known for more energetic and cerebral and creative,
Speaker 1: more of a brain high. Right, and then conversely, one
Speaker 1: can make you more paranoid, one can make you more druy.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. And typically these days, um, if you are
Speaker 1: a recreational or medicinal user, you're probably getting some sort
Speaker 1: of a uh hybrid strain. Good point. And actually some
Speaker 1: of the strains, those hybrid strains are have some of
Speaker 1: the best names, like green crack. It's a pretty good name.
Speaker 1: A K forty seven white widow. White Widow is actually
Speaker 1: uh pure strain, isn't it of Indica. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I think it is? Yeah, Maui wowie. The pot names are,
Speaker 1: they're pretty funny. They've definitely gotten better from the seventies.
Speaker 1: Like Maui wowie. Yeah, that sounds very slapping. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so should we talk about we should we talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about um its history in this country, in
Speaker 1: the United States. Yeah, so, I think we should get
Speaker 1: to that because, as I said, Chuck, when you look
Speaker 1: back on pot all of these years, and um, it's
Speaker 1: 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 uses you can get out of it.
Speaker 1: And it was in the sixty 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 this the biggest owner of
Speaker 1: the whole group is talking about George Washington like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: like planning camp all day and then comes home and
Speaker 1: smokes Martha. It's not clear whether or not any of
Speaker 1: them were smoking pot, and it's entirely possible that they
Speaker 1: weren't because the idea of smoking pot was law to
Speaker 1: the ages for a very long time. Um and the
Speaker 1: Greeks actually grew marijuana, but they didn't smoke it. They
Speaker 1: just used it for its fibers. And it almost appears
Speaker 1: like they had no idea you could smoke it and
Speaker 1: it was psychoactive. So it's possible that they our forefathers
Speaker 1: didn't smoke pot, you know, and they were they were
Speaker 1: just growing it for industrial uses. And meanwhile Native Americans
Speaker 1: were like, you guys are crazy. Rope rope is nice,
Speaker 1: but you know it can be both, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: In um the early nineteen hundreds, the Mexican Revolution of
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 all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, putt was looked down upon. Really, Mexican
Speaker 1: immigrants were looked down upon somewhere in the US history. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the whole thing about um pot being very ified
Speaker 1: or UM. I guess there was a moral panic basically
Speaker 1: is what they call it, that erupted around it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it was based in racism towards um,
Speaker 1: Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants. Yeah, in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: especially in the depression, UM, they were sort of had
Speaker 1: a bad name because you know, they're immigrants in this
Speaker 1: country and we're Americans and we're in depression and we
Speaker 1: want the work and uh, kind of a lot of
Speaker 1: the same arguments here these days. But um, the association
Speaker 1: with Pott was definitely a 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 pot, 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 could 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, right, um, covered in blood
Speaker 1: because they just smoked a joint. And um, they were
Speaker 1: really trying to unpack this, like why would that happen?
Speaker 1: Did it happen? Where all of them just overblown reports.
Speaker 1: The fact was when you picked up the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Times of the New York Times, there were front page
Speaker 1: stories 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 n six The Family, a propaganda movie from French
Speaker 1: director Louis Gasnier, it's, you know, required viewing for any
Speaker 1: college student at some Yeah, it's it's not very good
Speaker 1: and it's not very enjoyable, but it is kind of
Speaker 1: funny showing the the reefer addicts, you know, driven to
Speaker 1: insanity by the marijuana cigarettes. And somebody gets murdered, right,
Speaker 1: I think someone murders somebody else because they smoked pot. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then a n seven um a year after refer madness,
Speaker 1: Congress packs past the Marijuana 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, which is like a thousand dollars for medical
Speaker 1: or industrial use. So in other words, if you're just
Speaker 1: you know, Sammy pod head, 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 tax,
Speaker 1: and then you'd be able to impore 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 Anslinger, and he was
Speaker 1: the one who really kind of started this crusade against
Speaker 1: 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: in Mayor Leaguardia of New York issued a report that
Speaker 1: basically said that it doesn't induce violence, insanity, or sex crimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was a moral reformer himself, remember doing on
Speaker 1: after the Minsky brother there's the burlesque episode. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it's not like he was just some big pothead, Like
Speaker 1: he was a moral reformer himself and he still founded
Speaker 1: this report. Yeah, that's good point that led to um
Speaker 1: the The sentence and laws over time have kind of
Speaker 1: waffled back and forth. Uh. In the fifties they were
Speaker 1: pretty strict because of the Bogs Act and the Narcotics
Speaker 1: Control Act, and that's when they started setting mandatory minimums
Speaker 1: for basically any drug but including marijuana of course. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you would go to prison for a long time
Speaker 1: if you got caught with pot. Yeah, two to ten
Speaker 1: years for a first uh, first time offender in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties getting caught with pot. Yeah, that's it, any
Speaker 1: any amount. Uh. And in the sixties, things relaxed a
Speaker 1: little bit, um in every way you can imagine in
Speaker 1: this country. And uh, you know, President Kennedy and UH
Speaker 1: and lb J issued reports that found kind of the
Speaker 1: same thing as they found out in the forties. It
Speaker 1: doesn't induce islands. Uh. And then these reports it said
Speaker 1: it didn't wasn't a gateway drug either. Yeah. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, which is still up for debate. Really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've ever been definitively because you read every other report
Speaker 1: you read, it's going to say something a little different
Speaker 1: about what the gateway drug is. And plus I think
Speaker 1: defining what makes a gateway drug two has never been
Speaker 1: fully established. Yeah you can how can you test something
Speaker 1: scientifically if it's you can't have it defined, you know. Yeah. 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: going to put it on the same level as heroin
Speaker 1: and cocaine. Yeah. And during the Nixon administration, the Schaefer Commission,
Speaker 1: it was a bipartisan commission, found again that it should
Speaker 1: be decriminalized. And Nixon was just like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear that. Sorry, I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: up my own mind about it. I'm the president exactly. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: like you said, the Reagan era brought it back. Um,
Speaker 1: not brought pot back, No, brought back any kind of um.
Speaker 1: Anti government sentiment toward pot itself was redoubled in the eighties.
Speaker 1: Under the Reagan administration, mandatory minimums were or mandatory sentences
Speaker 1: were reenacted. Um in six things to the Anti Drug
Speaker 1: Abuse Act. If you got caught with a hundred marijuana plants,
Speaker 1: you got the same um jale time as if you
Speaker 1: were caught with a hundred grams of heroin. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: interesting plants versus grahams. That's sort of a apples orange
Speaker 1: in comparison. Yeah, plants versus heroin. It's like 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, But
Speaker 1: at one point they were sentencing LSD users by the weight, right,
Speaker 1: and when that the deal is like they would like
Speaker 1: if you were an LSD dealer and you had twenty
Speaker 1: sheets of acid, they would weigh it. And they were like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you can't weigh the paper. That's like
Speaker 1: weighing the suitcase the cocaine comes. Yeah, and uh, I
Speaker 1: think that's still the same though, didn't it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I do know what you're talking about. And apparently
Speaker 1: like if they would if you had it mixed in
Speaker 1: with liquid or something like diluted into liquid form, they'd
Speaker 1: take the weight of all the liquid rather than the
Speaker 1: proportion of it. Yeah. I don't know. It could be
Speaker 1: we could be like showing our gullibility for urban legend
Speaker 1: or not, but I know that's the case. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it still is, but I know it definitely was.
Speaker 1: Definitely was yeah, because I saw like an HBO special
Speaker 1: on he's LSD dealers, So we're basically serving like life
Speaker 1: sentences for dealing acid right alongside murders and rapists. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll have to check into that and people who were
Speaker 1: caught with pott in the thirties. That's right. So pot
Speaker 1: these days, costwise, um, varies a lot depending on quality.
Speaker 1: Obviously it ranges. Um. I love that in this article
Speaker 1: it says a dollar seventy seven to seventeen dollars and
Speaker 1: sixty six cents per graham, like one gram of marijuana. Please. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Um, but these days you can expect to
Speaker 1: pay um for you know, what people consider good marijuana
Speaker 1: about a hundred and twenty dollars for uh a quarterback,
Speaker 1: which is a quarter of an ounce, right, which is
Speaker 1: seven grams, right, because there's twenty eight grahams in and out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think between seven eight grams. But um, it depends
Speaker 1: on if the dealer likes you exactly. Yeah. But that's
Speaker 1: generally how it breaks down. As you know, you have
Speaker 1: it by the pound, which is you know the pot,
Speaker 1: uh dealer, I guess, and then they break it down
Speaker 1: into ounces and then to quarterbacks and dime bags and
Speaker 1: whatever people can afford. I guess. Well. It's funny because
Speaker 1: in the state of the country right now, Like you
Speaker 1: can take dealer and dispensary and basically flip them and
Speaker 1: interchange them, and no matter what you're talking about, the
Speaker 1: virtually the sentence is going to remain unchanged basically, you know,
Speaker 1: because the marijuana dispensaries are following like basically the same
Speaker 1: format that marijuana dealers in this country have for decades,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like pricing and yeah, the pricing, um,
Speaker 1: the way it's sold by weight, like I think you
Speaker 1: still't buy like like quarters and half ounces and ounces
Speaker 1: and stuff, which makes sense. But they're also getting a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff from people who are growing at
Speaker 1: indoors in their basement. And it's like now they have
Speaker 1: licenses for all this, but it's basically like all the
Speaker 1: people who were doing it illegally before or some of
Speaker 1: the people who are doing illegally before point and applied
Speaker 1: for licenses and now they're doing the same thing, but
Speaker 1: they just have like a a license to do it
Speaker 1: in a frame on their wall. Yeah, and dispensaries, you're
Speaker 1: gonna find a lot of other things, uh, like edibles
Speaker 1: and um, they even have now cannabis strips, like you know,
Speaker 1: the little listing breath strips. They have a little cannabis strips.
Speaker 1: It's just a little uh edible strip of concentrated cannabis.
Speaker 1: And I guess you put it under your tongue and
Speaker 1: that's better for your lungs. I would imagine if you're
Speaker 1: a oh, yeah, a cancer patient or something. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a little bit. Let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about the planet itself, chuck. Um. Maybe the most
Speaker 1: 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, that 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 sentemia. So the definition of the word sentema are
Speaker 1: female flowers that have reached maturity without being um pollinated.
Speaker 1: I can't hear that word without thinking of Caddyshack. What
Speaker 1: I don't remember that part Bill Murray A little California
Speaker 1: sens to me. Yeah, yeah, so that's what that means. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the term sense of mea means. So basically, unless
Speaker 1: you're like fourteen, if you're smoking pot, you're smoking centemia.
Speaker 1: So yes, the term centemia means pot, the pot that's smoked.
Speaker 1: Although the male flowers do have some THHD, it's just
Speaker 1: far far less of female than female. Yeah. As a cultivator,
Speaker 1: males are not what you want. In fact, males can
Speaker 1: can disturb the cycle of the female plan. So the
Speaker 1: goal of the cultivators to get the mail out of
Speaker 1: there as quickly as it can be identified. Basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and weed's actually good moniker for pop 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 plan anywhere nearby, you want
Speaker 1: to get rid of the mail plant and then tell
Speaker 1: the officer, Uh, they must have just blown over here
Speaker 1: and taken roots. Are right, These d plants in my
Speaker 1: backyard came from my neighbor. The 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 are hermaphroditic plants. Hermaphroditic plants
Speaker 1: that feature both male and female flowers 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 and nine of which are cannabinoids. About thirty
Speaker 1: three are cancer causing, and we'll we'll get to that
Speaker 1: stuff later too. But ironically they also are cancer killing
Speaker 1: some of them. It is an odd plant. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to all that stuff too, right, Um, And
Speaker 1: your th HC is really the main psychoactive ingredient. What's
Speaker 1: the long name for it, Delta nine tetra hydro cannabin
Speaker 1: all that is th HC. That is what the high
Speaker 1: that you're seeking. It lies within that chemical. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: actually you can point to the part of the plant
Speaker 1: where it is. UM. If you've ever seen a marijuana
Speaker 1: plant and it has kind of this hazy a period
Speaker 1: appearance from far away and you get up close and
Speaker 1: you realize that haze is actually made up of a
Speaker 1: into a little clear, sticky protrusions coming off the leaves.
Speaker 1: Those are called tri combs, and that is where the
Speaker 1: th HC is stored. That's right. And depending on the plant,
Speaker 1: in 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 THHC level. And it's a cultivator.
Speaker 1: Your goal is to have the th HC level as
Speaker 1: how as you can get it. Yeah, that is up
Speaker 1: for debate as well. From what I've seen there, UM,
Speaker 1: apparently they're just going higher and higher and higher as
Speaker 1: far as th HC content goes. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of recreational pot users and um medicinal pot users, so
Speaker 1: we're saying too much. Dude like K has a bit
Speaker 1: about how when he was in like the in the seventies,
Speaker 1: he can smoke like a whole joint and be like
Speaker 1: totally mellor cool. Now he's saying, it takes like one
Speaker 1: hit and you go totally insane. Um. And apparently there
Speaker 1: is like a point where it's just like that's too much. Well,
Speaker 1: Louis c cake in for better pot these days to now.
Speaker 1: But 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,
Speaker 1: you know what, we probably shouldn't do this ourselves. No,
Speaker 1: we we like our jobs exactly, and we might be
Speaker 1: fired for even figuratively smoking pot. Well, yeah, and who
Speaker 1: wants to Let's let's get how about that scruffy looking
Speaker 1: guy farmer Ted. Yeah, he's he's look at him. He's game.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people don't know this, but we
Speaker 1: have a friend named farmer Ted who has the very
Speaker 1: strange um characteristic of having entirely translucent skin. He's kind
Speaker 1: of like the Invisible Man or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what better person than to follow the trail of
Speaker 1: THHC And 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 that'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 a viola in the lungs,
Speaker 1: and the aviola is where gas exchange occurs. It's where
Speaker 1: your oxygen to pride blood comes to get a refill
Speaker 1: of oxygen to be replenished. And since there's th HC
Speaker 1: smoke present in that oxygen in the lungs, the t
Speaker 1: HC is gonna hit your ride into the bloodstream and
Speaker 1: travel through the body, so it just takes seconds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of 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 at 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 darn 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 to 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: I came up with, it's one. It depends on the pot.
Speaker 1: Sure if if there is a difference between indica and sativa,
Speaker 1: the prevailing wisdom is that if you smoke indicate, you're
Speaker 1: going to be less likely to be paranoid. Okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other reason is it would depend probably on the
Speaker 1: existing brain chemistry of the user. My brain chemistry is
Speaker 1: not the same as yours, um, and neither one of
Speaker 1: ours are just the same as Jerry, So of course
Speaker 1: when we introduce the psychoactive chemical into that chemistry, it's
Speaker 1: going to affect it differently. So that's what I came
Speaker 1: up with. Basically, I wonder if one of the reasons
Speaker 1: indica is less likely is because that's the couch bound one,
Speaker 1: and you're less likely to be a paranoid sitting on
Speaker 1: your couch rather than the more active one like smoking
Speaker 1: and going to the Renaissance festival where you'd be freaked
Speaker 1: out stone sober, where you'd meet John Strickland and he
Speaker 1: would mess with you if he found out your stone anyway.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, Um, Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I've also
Speaker 1: found there's research um that shows the the cannabin als
Speaker 1: there's a precursor um chemical to them that's called cannabin
Speaker 1: dialoic acid CBD and cbd UM has been found that
Speaker 1: to actually counteract the schizoid effects of pot, like the
Speaker 1: stuff that makes you paranoid, that symptom if you get
Speaker 1: if you smoke a pot that has a higher CBD
Speaker 1: T th HC ratio maybe it's even or something like that. Uh,
Speaker 1: the CBD is going to cut down on the schizophrenic
Speaker 1: symptoms while leaving like the rest of the stuff intact
Speaker 1: interesting and that weird. So I wonder if if indicate
Speaker 1: just by 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, right, and he found th HC. So
Speaker 1: TC was isolated in the sixties, and from that they
Speaker 1: reverse engineered um how th HC affected the brain and
Speaker 1: effectively discovered an entire system that we didn't know existed
Speaker 1: thanks to pot research. It's called the endocannabinoid system, and
Speaker 1: it's a very ancient system that's found in everything from
Speaker 1: C squirts to every vertebrate on the planet squirts 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 neurotrans ter's kind of cover that gap
Speaker 1: between the neurons and deliver the message, and then depending
Speaker 1: on where the neuroprint transmitter is and what chemical has
Speaker 1: come across, then different things happen. Right. Well, the endocannabinoid
Speaker 1: system is this kind of dimmer switch, uh that is
Speaker 1: around all 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 in,
Speaker 1: good for your yang 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 cbtwo receptors which are mainly associated
Speaker 1: with your immune system, and then CB one receptors are
Speaker 1: throughout the brain. And when you smoke pot, the cannabinoids,
Speaker 1: the phytocannabinoids, which is THHC in this case, go into
Speaker 1: 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 bodies 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: whire because it's been hijacked by th HC. So like
Speaker 1: your hippocampus, yes, we've talked about that that's good for learning,
Speaker 1: and when the endocannabinoid receptors are full of th HC, uh,
Speaker 1: you're not learning or making memories as well as normal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking short term memory. It definitely impairs that. And um,
Speaker 1: that's why if you've ever hung out with a bunch
Speaker 1: of pot heads, you'll hear the phrase what were we
Speaker 1: just talking about quite a lot. Because it's gonna affect
Speaker 1: the hippocamp us in that way, you're not forming memories.
Speaker 1: It's also gonna affect your coordination, which is the cerebellum,
Speaker 1: so you may be a little clumsier. And then you
Speaker 1: have the basil ganglia and that directs your unconscious muscle movements. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so the reason farmer Ted is paranoid. He doesn't
Speaker 1: like that plant looking at him the way it is right. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's paranoid because his bazo medial um amygdala has been affected.
Speaker 1: It's uh, endocannabinoid receptors have been hijacked by THHC, and
Speaker 1: it's this region of the brain where we learn to
Speaker 1: fear dangerous situations. Farmer Ted is learning to fear things
Speaker 1: he normally wouldn't fear because the endocannabinoids that the body
Speaker 1: normally makes there not um operating the way that they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be. So he's now afraid of that plant. Now,
Speaker 1: isn't that this aren't the endocannabinoids the same system that
Speaker 1: they have finally been pointed the munchies activates the munchies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and your hypothalum miss um. You're grilling production. Remember grilling,
Speaker 1: it's that chemical that makes you feel hungry, so you
Speaker 1: go eat. You're grilling production and absorption UH is mediated
Speaker 1: by endocannabinoids in the hypothalamus, which gets hijacked by THHC,
Speaker 1: which suddenly all food looks irresistible. Yeah, and which is
Speaker 1: why it is prescribed for people going through chemotherapy and
Speaker 1: other things, because they lose our appetite and lose a
Speaker 1: lot of weight and UH, aside from helping the stem nausea,
Speaker 1: it also will stimulate the appetite. Yeah. So that's the
Speaker 1: endocannabinoid system, and that is how pot affects it. I
Speaker 1: feel like that. Yeah, we left out the biggest part.
Speaker 1: It also causes a release in dopamine, which is what
Speaker 1: makes you feel high. Any euphoric feeling comes from that
Speaker 1: release of dopamine. But it's also possible that any paranoia
Speaker 1: or those schizoid symptoms that come along with it are
Speaker 1: from too much dopamine. Right, So that too high a
Speaker 1: release of dopamine can lead to feelings of paranoia and anxiety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these feelings. Um, the effect of THHC period is
Speaker 1: gonna last a couple of hours, depending on obviously how
Speaker 1: good the pot is and how much you smoked. Um,
Speaker 1: but the chemicals are going to be in your body
Speaker 1: a lot longer than that, with a terminal half life
Speaker 1: of twenty hours to ten days after you've smoked it.
Speaker 1: So um, if you get you know, if you're one
Speaker 1: of the how many percentage of companies drug test fifty yeah,
Speaker 1: fifty some and fifty three maybe yeah, depending on your
Speaker 1: weight and how much you smoked, on how long you smoked, 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. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's no way to tell because it depends on
Speaker 1: you your metabolism and the pot potency of the pot too. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, your body breaks it down into five metabolites
Speaker 1: and they test for all five to just using a
Speaker 1: basic immuno essay where they introduce an antibody to your
Speaker 1: urine and it reacts or doesn't react and turns it
Speaker 1: a pretty color, a pretty bad color, right, Okay, farmer Ted. Um,
Speaker 1: stand back up, let's abuse you some more. Although he
Speaker 1: seems like he's enjoying it, he's a little he's a
Speaker 1: little cooler now. He was petting that plant. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think they made up. So if you can
Speaker 1: see his liver right here right there. Um, so farmer
Speaker 1: Ted is going to eat some pot this time. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what's going to happen. He's ingested pot orally one
Speaker 1: way or another, whether cooked in a brownie or just
Speaker 1: eating the pot. And the body is going to take
Speaker 1: this and break it down, metabolize it and send it
Speaker 1: to the liver. And when this happens, it's going to
Speaker 1: the th HC is going to hit the bloodstream in
Speaker 1: this stomach anyway, so he's gonna get some sort of
Speaker 1: buzz or whatever. But in the liver he's going to
Speaker 1: metabolize it into another psychoactive chemical that isn't really present
Speaker 1: when you smoke it, so it doesn't it's the effects
Speaker 1: aren't quite as pronounced, but they last longer. And there's
Speaker 1: an additional weirdo thing to it. Well, it's gonna take longer,
Speaker 1: but lasts longer, and um, the effects of it, yeah exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But there's also the extra psychoactive chemical that's produced in
Speaker 1: the 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, um, irritability, 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 card.
Speaker 1: It is a big one to play. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: applying for your medical marijuana card, it relieves I 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 remember,
Speaker 1: remember when all this first started to hit California past
Speaker 1: u UM legal medicinal marijuana. It was almost all glaucoma
Speaker 1: at the time, in which it seems like everybody was like,
Speaker 1: you are so facant glaucoma, you need pop for glaucoma.
Speaker 1: And then it just became more and more established as
Speaker 1: fact became associated with helping more and more maladies. And
Speaker 1: of course if you go to get your card and
Speaker 1: you go to the dispensary, they have a long list
Speaker 1: of things that it can help, right, basically anything you
Speaker 1: can think of they will they will put on their list.
Speaker 1: As long as you have a prescription card. I think
Speaker 1: they're cool with that. Well, no, that's to get the card.
Speaker 1: Oh like the you know the Yeah that's what new
Speaker 1: doctor wears Birkenstocks. Yeah, you can probably get a medicinal
Speaker 1: marijuana car from him, but don't see him for anything else. Um.
Speaker 1: It can help with epileptic seizures. In fact, here in
Speaker 1: Georgia that's been on the table due to a famous
Speaker 1: story of a boy here in Georgia who whose seizures
Speaker 1: were like massively cut down by taking a marijuana oil
Speaker 1: which has no THHC, like the kids not getting high.
Speaker 1: Basically it doesn't have psychoactive properties. When Georgia is believe
Speaker 1: it or not, trying to speed through. I know it
Speaker 1: didn't go through initially a few weeks ago, just because
Speaker 1: I think they didn't have time to get it through.
Speaker 1: But there seems to be support for it. But just
Speaker 1: for yeah, just for the marijuana oil though not uh
Speaker 1: like dispensaries or anything like that. Yeah, well, I mean
Speaker 1: it could be the beginning of it, or it could
Speaker 1: be a sea change in how in Georgia states, you know,
Speaker 1: legalized marijuana. I'd be surprised. Well, but I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: it's a change like, Okay, this medicinal marijuana oil works,
Speaker 1: We'll just we can legalize that and that's it and
Speaker 1: it'll be like the model for other states or 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. It really helps him out. And
Speaker 1: Montell Williams is uh famously come out as an MS
Speaker 1: sufferer who is a longtime advocate for using marijuana. Well,
Speaker 1: it 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, you know. And
Speaker 1: also I remember I said that fights cancer. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're going to cancer dot GOVN type cannabis and medicinal cannabis,
Speaker 1: I think it brings up basically a laundry list of
Speaker 1: all of the ways that marijuana helps. And it's been
Speaker 1: found to fight to destroy cancer cells, like th HC
Speaker 1: goes in and destroys cancer cells in the liver. Apparently
Speaker 1: it's been shown to destroy cancer breast cancer cells like
Speaker 1: not helps you feel better when you have cancer, can
Speaker 1: actually cure cancer in some cases. Um it was a
Speaker 1: carcinoma in the liver that it was shown to be
Speaker 1: able to cure. It's definitely worth checking out too. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: And it also alleviates pain and um uh inflammation associated
Speaker 1: with um injury or disease. The way it does that
Speaker 1: is what the other cannabinoid receptors. The CB two receptors
Speaker 1: in the body are related to the um immune system,
Speaker 1: so it goes in and messes with those and says, hey,
Speaker 1: everybody calmed down, let's stop being so inflamed. Well that's uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that's why it's prescribed a lot for um
Speaker 1: arthritic conditions these days. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, rhuman
Speaker 1: TOID arthritis and that's called Yeah. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the what the differences between rheuma TOID and regular arthritis.
Speaker 1: We should do one on arthritis, how about that? Um
Speaker 1: it is still despite all the medical research, it is
Speaker 1: still scheduled as a UM or classified as a Schedule
Speaker 1: one substance, which is uh the most dangerous drugs that
Speaker 1: currently have no accepted medical use and a high potential
Speaker 1: for abuse. And there have been many pushes over the
Speaker 1: years to get it reclassified uh and not in the
Speaker 1: same group as heroin and cocaine and ecstasy, but um
Speaker 1: that has not been successful as of yet, but I
Speaker 1: think that will probably happen at some point soon. It
Speaker 1: seems like it's going that way. But supposedly around the
Speaker 1: time normal was found in the National Organization for the
Speaker 1: re legalization of marijuana legislation is I'm pretty sure it's
Speaker 1: quite a mouthful. Every festivals used to have in Piedmont
Speaker 1: Park in the nineties, the normal rally hashbash. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: saw the Black Crows there once. It was great, right,
Speaker 1: um so, but yeah, normal was found in the seventies
Speaker 1: at a time when it looked like, I mean, Carter
Speaker 1: was president, Willie Nelson had smoked to join on the
Speaker 1: White House roof, like it was the time for you know,
Speaker 1: hot to be decrimin realized, and everybody thought like, it's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. It's happening, it's happening, and apparently nope, it
Speaker 1: didn't happen. They pulled back from the brink. So it's
Speaker 1: entirely possible that what looks right now to be the
Speaker 1: wind of change that is very much sweeping through the country.
Speaker 1: It could could be stopped, baffled, I guess. So it's
Speaker 1: the the fat Lady has not sung yet. Well, I
Speaker 1: think the first step toward a federal and the difference
Speaker 1: here is, you know, federal laws versus state laws. It's
Speaker 1: still federally not accepted, but in states like of course
Speaker 1: Colorado and Washington, and then how many states have medical
Speaker 1: like eleven. Okay, Um, if anything's gonna happen federally, it's
Speaker 1: got to be reclassified away from Schedule one first. Uh
Speaker 1: So until that happens, you're probably not gonna see any
Speaker 1: um federal laws enacted or repealed. And we should say
Speaker 1: the mood of the country right now is about split
Speaker 1: a little bit in favor toward um pot pro pot.
Speaker 1: So like in Washington and Colorado, both votes were like
Speaker 1: fifty four, fifty five, forty three, something like that. And
Speaker 1: then a CBS poll from two thousand fourteen, I think
Speaker 1: in January found about the same of Americans favor legalizing
Speaker 1: pot um opposed to like, I think forty four. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's clearly moved out of you know, just
Speaker 1: the hippie stoners at the normal rally and two people
Speaker 1: supporting that kind of legislation that don't even use marijuana
Speaker 1: because there is a groundswell of support that hey, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not a schedule wonder, it's not a Schedule one drug.
Speaker 1: Alcohol is more destructive to uh, to your life and
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: can attack sit 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 allowed in any state, I
Speaker 1: would have said probably not. But here we are with
Speaker 1: Washington and Colorado. Here we are like where you can
Speaker 1: grow it, you can buy it and have it. I
Speaker 1: don't know how much, but I think you're allowed to
Speaker 1: have a certain small amount, right, Yeah, Like you can't
Speaker 1: drive around to ten pounds in your trunk or anything.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much you can um, but it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely more than just like a small amount, but
Speaker 1: you um and you can just literally go to the
Speaker 1: store and buy pot. There's actually an awesome New Yorker
Speaker 1: article called buzz Kill from late last year, and it's
Speaker 1: about this economist that Washington State hired to basically create
Speaker 1: the framework 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, it'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 tax 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: this all these different factors that this guy like was
Speaker 1: kind of laying out, and it was really interesting. Buzz kill.
Speaker 1: I have to check that out. Yeah, all right. There's
Speaker 1: a debate that I don't quite understand about the potency
Speaker 1: of marijuana in like the sixties and seventies versus today.
Speaker 1: The debate is that that pot is much more potent
Speaker 1: than it was in the sixties and seventies. And first
Speaker 1: of all, they didn't they didn't test a wide variety
Speaker 1: of marijuana strains in the sixties and seventies, right, it
Speaker 1: was like stems and seeds Mexican like. Yeah, So that's
Speaker 1: the only way you can tell a true test of
Speaker 1: potency is to study a wide variety. They didn't. They
Speaker 1: never did that. They didn't test the mauie wawie. They
Speaker 1: never did that in the sixties seventies. And you can't
Speaker 1: go back in a time machine. So what's the point
Speaker 1: in debating it. The pot today is is how it is.
Speaker 1: It is, And basically, what the best you could hope
Speaker 1: to do is like have Dennis Hopper smokes some pot
Speaker 1: and be like huh, and he can be like dead.
Speaker 1: Hopper is dead, dude, since when Yeah, I just saw
Speaker 1: him on like an insurance commercial he got years ago.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, that's sad. It is sad. Sorry,
Speaker 1: a state of Dennis Hopper. Um get Willie Nelson though.
Speaker 1: Peter Fonda, Yeah he's alive, Okay, So you just have
Speaker 1: Peter Fonda tell you. He can tell you. There's plenty
Speaker 1: of people who could say the point is that is
Speaker 1: largely irrelevant because we're not dealing with creating pot policy
Speaker 1: based on the nineteen sixties. We're dealing with pot policy today.
Speaker 1: And we know very clearly that pot is more potent
Speaker 1: today than it was even a couple of decades ago.
Speaker 1: And we know that in part because of something called
Speaker 1: the University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project. Basically, they get
Speaker 1: their hands on seized pot that the cops get their
Speaker 1: hands on, they send some of it to Mississippi, and
Speaker 1: Mississippi tests it for potency, and they said that between
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, the UM average, the average amount
Speaker 1: of th HC across all samples rose from three point
Speaker 1: four percent to eight point eight percent from two eight
Speaker 1: and it's going up, up, up, apparently now with the
Speaker 1: rise of dispensaries and the UM openly shared knowledge of
Speaker 1: how to cultivate pot and do you know what you
Speaker 1: want to genetically select for? It's up to a quarter
Speaker 1: like twenty five percent supposedly, And I didn't see that
Speaker 1: figure disputed th HC content. That's insane. That's that will
Speaker 1: drive you and say, I can't imagine that if if
Speaker 1: the average is eight point eight or was three point
Speaker 1: four and is now up to that's potent and that's
Speaker 1: I guess for the top of the line most expensive
Speaker 1: pot you can buy. Yeah, but I predict that there's
Speaker 1: going to be like kind of retro vintage push back,
Speaker 1: not necessarily that, but something that's like way more toned down,
Speaker 1: or it'll be like marketed to people who like don't
Speaker 1: want like that level of high I guess like seventies weed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like all they have to do to market at green
Speaker 1: leisure suit or something like that. Boom success. Although I
Speaker 1: don't know if anybody would want to go back to
Speaker 1: the seventies because I think it really was very potency
Speaker 1: comparatively speaking. Yeah, all right, should we cover some of
Speaker 1: the ways that it's smoked. Well, I already covered, um,
Speaker 1: the joint, right, yes, that's what slim hand. Slim had
Speaker 1: the joint. Um. I do know that slim happens to
Speaker 1: prefer the blunt. Oh yeah, and that is a cigar
Speaker 1: uh that is sliced open and U tobacco is taken
Speaker 1: out and generally mixed back in with some of the
Speaker 1: pot and it's um was there, right, it's called a blunt.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that the tobacco is ever mixed back in.
Speaker 1: It depends on I mean, you don't have to. Like
Speaker 1: a spliff is popular in Europe, and that's with regular tobacco,
Speaker 1: uh like drum yeah whatever, just any kind of loose
Speaker 1: leaf tobacco mixed in with with the pot. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the blunt's usually they take most of the cigar
Speaker 1: tobacco out. I think you're probably right, and then you
Speaker 1: don't even need to buy a cigar. Now they have
Speaker 1: blunt wrappers like basically cigar rolling papers. Oh really Yeah,
Speaker 1: And flavored ones too. Yeah, 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 Lalla Palouza. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to Lallapaluza. 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. It's like, I've never smelled anything like
Speaker 1: that in my life. It's like someone burning a spare
Speaker 1: tire or something. Uh. And then you've got the the
Speaker 1: bong the or water pipes and uh that uses water
Speaker 1: to uh to I guess cool down the smoke. And
Speaker 1: I remember that from the Scott Bayo After school special
Speaker 1: Stone Did you ever see that one? No? I saw
Speaker 1: Zapped that was a regular movie, but he was growing
Speaker 1: pot in that one he wasn't, so we're going to
Speaker 1: it's school. Yeah, And Stone was one of the classic
Speaker 1: capture school specials where he was a pothead that like
Speaker 1: ended up accidentally killing his brother or something like he
Speaker 1: went swimming and knocked him on the head with the
Speaker 1: oar of a boat, but he may not have died,
Speaker 1: though he may have rescued him. So the after school
Speaker 1: special that I remember most vividly is the one where
Speaker 1: Helen Hunt took PCP oh yeah and jumped out the
Speaker 1: window like the second story over school. I mean, they
Speaker 1: scared the pants off of us, which is the point
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan was like off on the set, like, but
Speaker 1: I remember hearing the bong he smoked out of the
Speaker 1: bong Scott bo did, and I heard that the bubbling sound,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well, that's a weird sound. And
Speaker 1: then you heard it on the Cypress Hill album years later,
Speaker 1: and like hey Scott beyo. And then of course we've
Speaker 1: talked about the edibles um and vaporizing, which is like
Speaker 1: all the rage these days. Yeah, And I imagine it
Speaker 1: just hit me the other day. I'll bet everyone who
Speaker 1: smokes pot uses East cigarettes as like little vaporizer one hitters,
Speaker 1: don't they? Uh, some do, I would imagine. So Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, you can buy like pre made cartridges of
Speaker 1: like hash oil and things to stick in your little cigarette.
Speaker 1: I know they saw those in Colorado stick that in
Speaker 1: your East cigarettes. But we should point out, we say
Speaker 1: kids these days and teenagers. Um. Although marijuana use and
Speaker 1: teenagers has escalated over the years, you can't pin it
Speaker 1: down to one demographic. Um. I think you would be
Speaker 1: surprised if everybody who smoked pot on a semi regular
Speaker 1: basis was outed about. Who you would see. Um. I've
Speaker 1: heard stories from friends whose fathers were like CEO executives,
Speaker 1: and they had cannabis clubs where all the other CEOs
Speaker 1: that they were friends with like grew their own specialty
Speaker 1: pot and traded it among each other. So a wide
Speaker 1: range of people, UH use it, although the vast majority supposedly,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a fast majority. It's right. Although according
Speaker 1: to polls or surveys, the vast majority are teenagers, followed
Speaker 1: by post teens. Yeah, but in between nine and marijuana
Speaker 1: used among teenagers doubled. And you know what, I lay
Speaker 1: that almost exclusively, at least at first at the feet
Speaker 1: of Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. I think so, I'm
Speaker 1: I put it out there. Yes, with the Chronic absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a great album. Yeah, I listen. I can
Speaker 1: when I hear that album, I think of street Fighter two?
Speaker 1: Did you play a lot of that? Then? We least
Speaker 1: we would sit around in college listen to the Chronic
Speaker 1: and play street Fighter two. Yeah, it was a good album.
Speaker 1: It was a great game. I never really played street Fighter.
Speaker 1: They were really good. Uh So I found a study here. Um,
Speaker 1: I have to interject one another thing. Um, have you
Speaker 1: seen the YouTube of Mike Tyson clips set to street
Speaker 1: Fighter sound effects? It's pretty awesome from his one man
Speaker 1: show or No No, from his boxing career. It fits
Speaker 1: like perfectly. He's like, shy are you getting? At one point?
Speaker 1: I'll have to see that. Uh So, if you're smoking pot,
Speaker 1: it's obviously not going to be great for your lungs
Speaker 1: in your body because you're inhaling smoke. And like we
Speaker 1: said earlier, there's they're thirty three cancer causing chemicals in marijuana,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna deposit tar into your lungs just like cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Uh And in fact, if you smoke equal amounts of
Speaker 1: marijuana and regular tobacco, it's gonna deposit about four times
Speaker 1: as 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 twenty 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 a day, whereas no
Speaker 1: one's going out there and smoking you know, well that's
Speaker 1: not true twenty today, Yeah, but it would be probably
Speaker 1: less than that because it's more concentrated. But you don't
Speaker 1: see people smoking five joints a day either, unless they
Speaker 1: have they're they're Willie Nelson, Snoop Dog. I'm sorry, snoop Lin.
Speaker 1: Is he still on Snoop line? I think so? Um.
Speaker 1: I could see how pot would have an effect on
Speaker 1: your lungs though as well, especially compared to cigarettes, because
Speaker 1: like no one uses a filter on their joints. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and they you inhale deeper with marijuana than you do
Speaker 1: with 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: long 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 uh marijuana oil like they
Speaker 1: give that little kid, Yeah, or marian all although that's psychoactive,
Speaker 1: uh is it? It's a THHC pill, remember, like wasting
Speaker 1: disease and um to increase appetite and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Just a mess with the endoconebinoid system of people who
Speaker 1: need it. That's right, You got anything else. No, I
Speaker 1: mean this could have been a two parter, but well,
Speaker 1: this is a good, good overview, I think it is.
Speaker 1: I hope everybody enjoyed it. Yeah, you learned a little something.
Speaker 1: Anything else, nope. Uh. If you want to learn more
Speaker 1: about arijuana a k A. Cannabis, type either of those
Speaker 1: words into the search bar how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and uh, let's see. Since we said uh, search bar,
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Speaker 1: this Australian smoke jumper. Hey guys, just thought i'd write
Speaker 1: to let you know how you've influenced a major change
Speaker 1: in my life a couple of years ago. Now you
Speaker 1: did a podcast on wildfires. Already had a strong interest
Speaker 1: in firefighting, but never heard of the things like smoke
Speaker 1: jumpers or some of the science involved. Uh. Since I
Speaker 1: joined the Rural Fire Service UM last year as a volunteer,
Speaker 1: and last week I completed my first full bush fire
Speaker 1: fighter accreditation, it's been a great change and it's inspired
Speaker 1: me to get fitter and more active with my community.
Speaker 1: I'm now working towards getting fit and fast enough to
Speaker 1: be a smoke jumper, which we call our a f
Speaker 1: T units in Australia Remote Area Fire Task Force. So
Speaker 1: thanks guys for giving me the inspi ration and drive
Speaker 1: to get out there and challenge myself. I could imagine
Speaker 1: do anything else in my spare time. Now has always
Speaker 1: loved the show. You keep me mildly distracted through my
Speaker 1: slow days at work, and that is Andrew from Australia. Nice.
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