THE CANNABIS PLANT AND ITS PRODUCTS

THE CANNABIS PLANT AND ITS PRODUCTS

Cannabis is a highly versatile plant. Hemp, a strong fiber in the stem, has been used to make rope, cloth, and paper. When dried, the leaves and flowers are used as marijuana for their psychoactive and medicinal effects. The roots of the plant have also been used to make medicines, and the ancient Chinese used the seeds as a food. Cannabis seeds are still used for oil and animal feed.

The two most prevalent species of cannabis are Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. In years past, people cultivated C. sativa to make hemp. Under natural conditions, it will grow as high as a lanky fifteen to twenty feet, and it still grows wild as a weed across the southern United States. C. indica has been cultivated throughout the world mostly for the psy­choactive properties of its resins. These plants generally grow to no more than a few feet in height and develop a thicker, bushier appearance than C. sativa.

The cannabis plant contains more than four hundred chemicals, and several of them are psychoactive. By far the most psychoactive of these is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), found in the plant's resin. The resin is most concentrated in the flowers. In an unfertilized plant, it provides a sticky coating that protects the flowers from excessive heat from the sun and enhances contact by grains of pollen. The vegetative leaves contain a small amount of resin, as do the stalks, but the concentrations in these parts of the plant are so low as to have little intoxicating effect.

Today, much cultivation of 'drug" strain marijuana plants has occurred, but the amount of THC present in the flowers of individual plants varies considerably. In addition to the genetic makeup of the plant, the growing conditions, timing of harvest, drying environment, and stor­age environment can all significantly influence the potency of the final product. As the plant matures, the balance of various chemicals in the resin changes, as does the amount of resin secreted at the flowering tops of the plant. Early in maturation, cannabidiolic acid (CBDA) predomi­nates and is converted to cannabidiol (CBD), which is converted to THC as the plant reaches its floral peak. The extent to which CBD is converted to THC largely determines the "drug quality" of the individual plant. When the plant matures into the late floral and senescent stages, THC is converted to cannabinol (CBN). A plant that is harvested at the peak flo­ral stage has a high ratio of TFIC to CBD and CBN, and the psychoactive effect is often described as a "clear," or "clean," high, with relatively little sedative effect. However, some cultivators allow the plants to mature past this peak to produce marijuana with a heavier, more sedative effect. The difference between the feelings associated with peak- versus late-har­vested marijuana has been described as the difference between being "high" and being "stoned."

Burning marijuana for smoking produces hundreds of additional com­pounds. So when someone smokes a single joint, hundreds upon hun­dreds of chemical compounds enter the body. We know that many of these compounds act on various organs and systems in the body, but we don't know what effects most of them have, either acutely or after pro­longed use. Many scientific studies have, therefore, restricted their atten‑ tion to THC, allowing us to evaluate at least some of the effects of cannabinoids on the brain and behavior.