History, 157-178

Ancient Forms and Distinctions about Usage, 157

The Spread to Europe and Africa, 159

Early American Experience with Cannabis, 164

The Anslinger Era, 166

Governmental Investigations and Other Reports, 170

Moves toward Decriminalization, 173

Smuggling and Cash Crops, 175

Other Developments, 176

Botany, 179-185

Uniqueness, 179

Life Cycle, 180

Chemistry, 185-188

Cracking the THC molecule, 185

Analogues and Mixtures, 186

Physical Effects, 188-200

Coursing through the Body, 189

Medical Safety, 189

Medical Use, 196

Mental Effects, 200-208

Strength of Cannabis Preparations, 201

The Tart Study, 201

Old Myths Dispelled, 203

Other Aspects of Pot, 207

Inspiration, 207

Forms and Preparations, 208-213

Distinguishing among Marijuana Samples, 208

Hashish and Hash Oil, 215

THC and Analogues, 219

Smoking, 220

Eating Marijuana, 221

Leonard Fuchs' woodcut of Cannabis sativa in an early herbal from 1543- This plant is the main source of marijuana, a mixture of its leaves and flowers, and of hashish, made from the resin in its flowers. This plant is also grown for its strong fibers, which hare been used in producing hemp rope, fabrics and fine papers.

CHAPTER THREE

Marijuana and Hashish

. . , icon for the faithful, a windfall for the glib, a bonus for under-employed experts, a thrill for the naive, a whipping-boy for the ambitious, a tool for mystic explorers, a tantalizing mystery for scientists, a cash crop for peasants; hassles, joy, shouting, tranquility, apoplexy, fear, rebellion all wash over Western man in the presence of the little green weed.

—William Daniel Drake, Jr.

HISTORY

Ancient Forms and Distinctions about Usage

Origin of the marijuana plant is lost in pre-history, although it is likely native to central Asia, or possibly China. It is among humanity's earliest cultivated crops, going back to the beginning of agriculture: Now it may well be the most widely distributed cultivated plant. Earliest archaeological evidences date back some 10,000 years and show twisted strands of hemp being used in Taiwan in the making of patterns on clay pots. The ancient Chinese wove clothes, shoes and rope from the fibers of this plant, and produced the first paper from it.

Even today (late 1982), debate continues as to whether there is more than one species of the Cannabis plane. Most experts now agree that there are at least three species, with the most important differences among them appearing in the seeds, stalk, growth habits and, Co a lesser extent, resin content.

The species probably appearing first in China is known scientifically as Cannabis saliva Linneaus, classified in 1753 by Linneaus, the father of modern botanical identification. Until quite recently Cannabis sativa was the main species spread throughout North America. This form is distinguished by its height, often up to fourteen to sixteen feet—sometimes over twenty feet. It produces strong fibers but generally not very much resin, which contains the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. However, certain strains of the species, such as "Acapulco Gold" and "Homegrown Haze," exude a considerable amount of resin.

The earliest reference to mind-altering effects from Cannabis appears in the Atharva-Veda of the second millenium B.C., when it was already regarded as one of the five sacred plants of India, Ernest L. Abel in his Marihuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years, describes much of the early use of Cannabis in the daily life of China and India. Schultes and Hofmann in Plants of the Gods document its use in Tibet:

157

Three Species of Cannabis /59

The Tibetans considered Cannabis sacred. A Mahayana Buddhist tradition maintains that during the six steps of asceticism leading to enlightenment, Buddha lived on one Hemp seed a day . ... In Tantric Buddhism of the Himalayas of Tibet, Cannabis plays a very significant role in the meditative ritual used to facilitate deep meditation and heightened awareness. Both medicinal and recreational secular use of Hemp [are] likewise so common now in this region that the plant is taken for granted as an everyday necessity.

Cannabis indica Lamarck, classified by Lamarck in 1783, is a shorter plant that's more densely branched. Seldom over eight feet tall, it has short, brittle fibers and thus is not very useful for fiber but generally contains the greatest amount by weight of Cannabis resin. Until recently, it's cultivation has been mainly restricted to India, Persia and the Arab countries, where its leaves are often made into a milkshake and its resin is pressed into hashish.

The third species of the marijuana plant, Cannabis ruderalis Janischewsky, was identified in 1924 in southern Siberia, but it also grows wild in other parts of Russia. Rarely over two feet tall, this species has little psychoactivity in its resin but matures much faster than the others (in about seven weeks).

The earliest record we have of Cannabis ruderalis comes from the tireless Greek traveler Herodotus, often considered the first Western historian. In 450 B.C., he described the funeral rites that took place when a king died among the Scythians, a nomadic tribe that roamed the steppes from Turkestan to Siberia. To purify themselves the Scythians set up small tepee-like structures covered by rugs, which they would enter to inhale the fumes of hemp seeds thrown onto red-hot stones. "It smolders and sends forth such billows of smoke that no Greek steambath could surpass it," comments Herodotus. "The Scythians howl with pleasure at these baths."

Historians considered this passage by Herodotus to be romantic embellishment until the late 1940s, when in the Altai mountains of Siberia Scythian tombs were found that had been covered with ice since about 400 B.C Alongside these tombs were well-preserved corpses and little tents containing copper cauldrons filled with stones, ice and hemp seeds. Differences in Cannabis seeds enabled Janischewsky to distinguish C. ruderalis from the saliva and indica species, and when Soviet botanists examined the frozen seeds they were declared to be of the ruderalis species. C. ruderalis remains largely unfamiliar to botanists outside the U.S.S.R.

The Spread to Europe and Africa

Of the three species of Cannabis, the saliva type was the first to be

spread widely around the globe, probably because of its having strong fibers

and lots of edible seeds. The earliest known pharmacy book, published in

, China in the third millenium B.C. recommends hemp for everything from

rheumatism to constipation—even absent-mindedness.

160 Marijuana and Hashish

Differences in the internal structure of wood between Cannabis sativa (left) and C. indica. These microscopic cross-sections illustrate how the usually single conductive vessels in the former species vary with the consistently grouped vessels in the latter.

There appears to have been little acquaintance with this herb in the West until classical Greek times, when it was brought westward by various barbarian tribes, mainly the Scythians. Democritus wrote that it was occasionally drunk with wine and myrrh to produce visionary states; Dioscorides and Galen indicated that it was valued for its medicinal and therapeutic uses. Galen also recorded that this herb was often passed around at banquets to promote hilarity and joy.

Strangely, the ancient Greeks and Romans paid hardly any attention to the fiber in this plant, although its use for ropes and sails had been introduced from Gaul as early as the third century B.C It was not until the first century A.D. that Pliny the Elder outlined the grades and preparations of hemp fiber.

Scythians and other tribes introduced hemp into northern Europe as well. An urn containing leaves and seeds of the Cannabis plant, unearthed rear Berlin, is believed to date from about 500 B.C Although few records remain from this time, it is evident that the hemp plant soon made its way to England, Scotland and Ireland. Archeological remains show that hemp was

Awareness Spreads West in the Nineteenth Century 161

growing at Old Buckenham Mere in England by 400 A.D. From this point on, there was a tremendous spread of its cultivation in the British Isles. The plant was valued then for its fibers (made in to cloth) and its seeds (which, as earlier in China, were used for food and oil).

Paracelsus, often regarded as the father of alchemy, first became acquainted with Cannabis products while in Basel, Switzerland, where the pharmaceutical firm of Sandoz now stands. It was also there that the botanist Leonhardt Fuchs sketched a charming, classic drawing of the saliva plant in lM3. By this time, the inebriating effects of sativa's resin had been discovered by Europeans. Francois Rabelais, writing in the early sixteenth century devoted three small chapters of his Third Book of Pantegruel to this herb's botanical and psychoactive properties.

Meanwhile, the indica species of the plant spread gradually from the Far East to Egypt and Persia. Schultes and Hofmann cite a "questionable specimen of Hemp" in an Egyptian tomb dating as far back as three or four thousand years ago. Arab traders brought Cannabis to the Mozambique coast of Africa around the thirteenth century. From there, its use spread rapidly inland to virtually all African tribes. Archeological evidence of this transmission includes fourteenth-century water-pipes containing Cannabis residue.

European interest in the indica species of Cannabis began in the nineteenth century, as a result of the British colonization of India and Napoleon's conquest of Egypt (his doctors brought back many kilos of hashish in the 1790s). By the 1840s, monographs by Aubert-Roche, O'Shaughnessy and Moreau had spurred inquiry into how the drug would be useful in Western medicine.

W.B. O'Shaughnessy brought Cannabis into Western medical practice- He had been associated with the British East India Co. as a surgeon and was a professor of chemistry at the University of Calcutta. In 1839, he published a forty-page article describing the history of Cannabis products in the East, tests he had carried out on animals confirming the drug's safety and his successes with this agent as an analgesic in the treatment of rheumatism, severe convulsions and tetanus.

French psychologist Jean Joseph Moreau de Tours, observing the effects of Cannabis preparations in Egypt and other parts of the Near East, suggested that this drug might be used by doctors, enabling them to understand and to empathize with psychotic states experienced by asylum patients. His view predated the classification of any pharmaceuticals as "psychoto-mimetics."

Awareness of the effects of Cannabus spread beyond medical circles after Moreau gave a sample to Theophile Gautier, one of the leading French literary figures at the time. The after-dinner experiences at "Le Club des Haschischins" became notorious, and perhaps as a consequence accounts of the drug were somewhat exaggerated. Dr. Moreau, who usually administered the drug, noted that he became aware that the effects had begun when he

162 Marijuana and Hashish

found himself fencing with a bowl of fruit. Baudelaire claimed that "if you are smoking, by some sort of transposition or intellectual quid pro quo, you will feel yourself evaporating and will attribute to your pipe, in which you feel yourself crouching and packed together like tobacco, the strange power of smoking yourself . . . ."

164 Marijuana and Hashish

Early American Experience with Cannabis

In the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs (vol. 11, p. 78), Dr. Jose Luis Diaz from the University of Mexico presents suggestive but uncertified evidence that marijuana may have been known to the Nahuas and other New World tribes before the arrival of the Spaniards. Whether or not Cannabis was growing in the Americas already, the Spanish seem to have taken their own to Chile in 1545 and then to Peru in 1554.

In 1606, the British took it to Canada to be cultivated for maritime purposes. In 1611 (at the time of the Jamestown Settlement), they brought it to Virginia; in 1632, the Pilgrims brought hemp to New England.

During the century and a half that preceded the American Revolution, Cannabis production for textiles throughout New England was subsidized. By 1762, Virginia farmers were penalized if they didn't grow it. It has been estimated that about half of the clothes worn at the time of the American Revolution were made of hemp.

Several of our Founding Fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, cultivated Cannabis. In an entry in his diary, Washington expressed his desire to be present for the separation of male and female hemp plants. Some have argued that he may have been interested in the resin yield of the female plants, but it is more likely that he wanted to improve the fiber quality of the females (which decreases when they are pollinated). No hard evidence indicates that Washington or any of his contemporaries was interested in using Cannabis recreationally.

During the War of Independence, as Kentucky and Ohio were being opened up for settlement, vast tracts in both these states were set aside for hemp planting to provide the fiber with which to make clothes, rope, flags, altar cloths, food bags and fine paper.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, medical interest in Cannabis indica passed from Europe to North America. Soon such Cannabis preparations were available at the corner drugstore.

In 1857, Fitz Hugh Ludlow acquired a tincture of the indica species, stealing some to try it out. Afterward he paid six cents a dose for "Tilden's Extract." Then only sixteen, his imagination enflamed by The Thousand and One Nights, Ludlow called the preparation "the drug of the traveler" because it allowed him to journey mentally around the globe as well as into more mystical, often frightening regions. Encouraged by writings from Bayard Taylor, an American who had reported on his use of Cannabis products in the Near East, Ludlow set about recording his experiences. Ludlow's article in Putnam's Monthly Magazine (1856) and his anonymous The Hasheesh Eater (1857) were the first accounts of the psychoactivity of Cannabis published in North America. Although Cannabis extracts were readily available over the counter, few people at this time were ready to dabble in psychic experiments.

Cultivation for Clothes, Paper, Money and Bibles 265

With the end of the Civil War, the importance of hemp as a commercial crop declined. Emancipation of the slaves cut into the number of laborers harvesting hemp. More importantly, the invention of the cotton gin gave cotton a decided economic advantage over hemp and flax. The development of cheap wood pulp reduced the need for hemp as a source of paper, although it was still used in the manufacture of cigarette papers, money and Bibles-Recreational use of hemp among Americans first showed up in about 1910 in New Orleans and in a few border towns as marijuana cigarettes were brought over by Mexican laborers. (They had already been used in central

766 Marijuana and Hashish

South America and the Caribbean regions for half a century.) Marijuana caught on as a cheap substitute for alcohol among border guards and river travelers and within five years the practice was carried up the Mississippi River into the Ohio Valley. From there, it spread east into New York (especially Harlem). With the passage in 1920 of the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting sale of alcohol in this country, interest in Cannabis as a euphoriant rose.

The Anslinger Era

A year of considerable importance to this history is 1930, when Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon appointed his niece's husband Commissioner of the newly created U.S. Narcotics Bureau. Harry J. Anslinger reigned as Commissioner for three decades. Anslinger was to the inhibition of Cannabis use what Andrew Comstock had at the turn of the century been to the inhibition of American sexual freedom. Although not particularly concerned about marijuana when he took office, he soon became obsessed with "the evils" of this weed, seeing a curse for humanity in the leaves and flowers of the Cannabis plant.

Fear about this largely unknown substance had already been stirred up, especially in the southwestern states, where it was used mainly by blacks and Mexicans. Prohibitions against nonmedical usage had been enacted in California (1915), Texas (1919), Louisiana (1924) and New York (1927). In the mid-1950s, Anslinger did his best to escalate the fear into hysteria. Drawing on his experience as a journalist with a stacatto, sensational style, he came out with "Marihuana, the Assassin of Youth," the first in a series of articles and books recounting the horrors committed under the weed's influence: murder, suicide, seduction of schoolchildren by "friendly strangers." (Several of his examples have since been refuted.)

Once Anslinger got going, he showed little interest as Commissioner in any news about the drug unless it could be worked into his atrocity file on "the Killer Drug," which he claimed was "a powerful narcotic in which lurks Murder.' Insanity.' Death.'" The nation's papers loved it. By 1937, forty-six of the forty-eight states had banned marijuana.

Anslinger abandoned his earlier hopes for federal prohibition,because even he had come to doubt the constitutionality of such a law. Someone suggested that the U.S. might impose a "transfer tax" to be collected by the U.S. Treasury. Nonpayment of the tax would constitute a felony. In the ensuing congressional hearings, the Narcotics Bureau took a firm line; Anslinger even told legislators, "You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother.'

In all of the testimony, only one person raised any substantial objection to the Anslinger proposal. Dr. William Woodward, a legislative counsel for the American Medical Association, argued that Cannabis in medical preparations had not been abused and that the new provisions would cause hardship for doctors. He was quickly hooted down. House hearings concluded with no significant changes in the proposed bill, which then sailed through

The Campaign against Marihuana ;£/

the Senate. In August 1937, FDR, who had come into off ice on a platform of repealing Prohibition, signed the Marihuana Tax Act. In addition to imposing me tax requirement, the law also declared Cannabis a narcotic. The new penalties for its use or distribution were five to twenty years for a first offense ten to forty for a second.

768 Marijuana and Hashish

The tax was to be assessed at $1 per ounce for those who registered and were considered legitimate users; for "illegitimate transfers," the tax was $100 per ounce. "At that time," comments Larry Sloman in his Reefer Madness, "cannabis was going for thirty-eight cents a pound on the licit market."

The year before, some twenty firms using hempseed oil in products such as soap, paint and linoleum had imported more than 30,000 tons of seeds, which became contraband under the new law because they could be used to grow plants. The only exception allowed was for sterilized seed for the birdseed industry, then producing four million pounds annually. Industry lobbyists maintained that birds deprived of Cannabis seeds would not sing The Narcotics Bureau hinted originally that special provisions would be made for medical usage but did not follow through. At the time, twenty-eight medicinal Cannabis preparations were for sale by companies such as Parke-Davis, Squibb and Lilly. Packages of marijuana cigarettes were even being sold as a cure for asthma. The new law put all of these products out of existence, and in 1941 the drug was dropped from the American Pharmacopoeia—after about a century of widespread use.

Much of Anslinger's efforts then went into eradicating this weed wherever it was growing. In 1937, more than 10,000 acres in the U5. were under hemp cultivation. The plant was hardy and prone to escape into neighboring fields, making it all the more difficult for Anslinger to check the natural spread of hemp.

Anslinger had to give way after the Japanese took over Manila and the government became concerned about its supply of rope. In a crash program in 1943, 146,000 acres in the U.S. were seeded in half a dozen midwestern states. The Department of Agriculture produced a film about cultivation entitled Hemp for Victory. Despite great efforts to eradicate Cannabis traces later, patches remained in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kentucky and elsewhere. The strains, grown for rope, produced only small amounts of resin. Marijuana was not produced for its resin in any quantity in the U.S. until the 1960s.

In 1943, Anslinger turned his attention instead to a campaign against marijuana-smoking jazz musicians, and his instinct for the sensational got him all the funding from Congress that he ever requested. Anslinger may have used personal favors to gain congressional support: in 1978, Capitol Hill journalist Maxine Cheshire revealed that Senator Joseph McCarthy was addicted to morphine and regularly obtained it "through a druggist near the White House, authorized by Anslinger to fill the prescriptions."

After retiring from the Narcotics Bureau, the indefatigable Anslinger went on to head the American delegation to the U.N. concerned with drug use. By 1961, he managed in this capacity to get sixty nations to sign a "Uniform Drug Convention," which pledged to end Cannabis use within twenty-five years. Signing nations can, however, drop out by request. Shortly after, serious efforts to legalize marijuana usage got underway in the West.

; 70 Marijuana and Hashish

Governmental Investigations and Other Reports

Tales about this mysterious herb from the East aroused the apprehensions of the English Parliament toward the end of the nineteenth century, which established a Commission in 1893 to look into the use of Cannabis in India. The resulting Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission will probably stand as the most extensive, systematic examination of the subject ever, comprising testimony from just under 1,200 "doctors, coolies, yogis, fakirs, heads of lunatic asylums, bhang peasants, tax gatherers, smugglers, army officers, hemp dealers, ganja palace operators and the clergy" (Norman Taylor). The final report ran to seven volumes (5,281 pages); an additional secret volume was made for the military. Here are some conclusions:

On the whole, if moderation and excess in the use of drugs are distinguished, which is a thing that the witnesses examined have, as just remarked, found it very hard to do, [he weight of evidence is that the moderate use of hemp drugs is not injurious . .

The question of the mental effects produced by hemp drugs has been examined by the Commission with great care. The popular impression that hemp drugs area fruitful source of insanity is very strong, but nothing can be more remarkable than the complete break-down of the evidence on which it is based. Popular prejudice has over and over again caused cases of insanity to be ascribed to ganja which have had no connection whatever with it; and then statistics based on this premise are quoted as confirming or establishing the prejudice itself ....

Cannabis' Low Muse-Potential 111

Absolute prohibition is, in the opinion of the Commission, entirely out of the question ....

There is no evidence of any weight regarding mental and moral injuries from the moderate use of these drugs ....

Large numbers of practitioners of long experience have seen no evidence of any connection between the moderate use of hemp drugs and disease ....

Moderation does not lead to excess in hemp any more than it does in alcohol. Regular, moderate use of ganja or bhang produces the same effects as moderate and regular doses of whiskey. Excess is confined to the idle ....

Many other governmental examinations of Cannabis use have been undertaken since 1894, In every case, the conclusions have been similar to those reached by this nineteeth century commission: that the use of this drug in moderation is essentially innocuous; that existing penalties should not be increased; that its use does not lead to addiction, lunacy, violence or crime; and that virtually all reports causing public outrage have been either exaggerations or total fabrications.

Early in this century, much concern about use of marijuana was aroused in the Panama Canal area. The Army's investigative body came to the same conclusions as the 1894 Indian Hemp Commission: that Cannabis is comparatively innocuous, that it's not addictive, etc. Another commission established soon after in New Orleans produced the same findings. The most famous of all these investigative bodies, the LaGuardia Commission, reported in 1943 on the use of marijuana in New York City with the same results.

More recent findings that Cannabis is not harmful appear in the English Wootton Report of 1968, the Canadian Le Dam Report of 1970 and the much-publicized report of the U.S. President's Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, the Shafer Report of 1972. Similar findings have come from South Africa, Australia and from a New York Academy of Sciences Conference on Chronic Cannabis Use in Manhattan in 1976. The latest such commission, a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, in 1982 urged removal of penalties for Cannabis use, after finding "no conclusive evidence that marijuana causes permanent, long-term health damage in humans, is addictive, leads to use of 'harder drugs,' affects the brain structure or causes birth defects."

In 1951, the U.N.'s Bulletin of Narcotic Drugs released results of a survey indicating that there were then approximately 200 million Cannabis users in the world. It also produced a bibliography of 1,100 titles that related to Cannabis, only some 350 dating from before the twentieth century. A more substantial bibliography was prepared in 1965 that included 1,860 titles. O.J. Kalant revised the list at the end of the decade; he cited 1,073 titles in English, 309 in French, 232 in German, 116 in Portuguese, 85 in Spanish, 38 in Italian and 111 in other languages. Ernest L Abel toward the end of the 1970s produced a bibliography for NIMH of 3,045 titles. A U.N. report in 1982 increased the worldwide estimate of Cannabis users to more than 500 million.

Marijuana Use becomes Commonplace 173

Moves toward Decriminalization

In 1961, Americans generally showed little interest in marijuana's mental effects, although the casual use of "tea" was widespread in jazz, beatnik and artistic circles. Later in the 1960s, fascination with LSD and "magic mushrooms" changed the image of Cannabis; many people started to regard it as a similar but considerably milder substance. Folk and rock musicians greatly encouraged this new image as they made oblique and enticing references in their lyrics to marijuana. Many of these songs made it to radio and were played nationwide. Writers such as John Rosevear, author of Pot, also spread the word.

In 1964, the Thelin brothers opened the first "headshop," Soon.every major city in the U.S. was bristling with headshops purveying books, records, posters and paraphernalia related to pot. Reprints of marijuana posters from the Anslinger era, such as one headlined "Reefer Madness," were snapped up for laughs, and many bought a new one showing the poet Allen Ginsberg with a sign that declared, "POT IS FUN."

By the mid-1960s, a flood of articles, books and records had dramatically changed the lurid image of "Marihuana, the Killer Drug," and experimentation with marijuana became commonplace among Americans of all classes. Cannabis, although still illegal, moved a long way toward being accepted socially and morally, attaining a status similar to that of whiskey during Prohibition.

At about this time, a group called LeMar was organized in Manhattan and at the University of Buffalo for the purpose of lobbying for marijuana's legalization. Before long, a similar group formed in England, going by die name SOMA. A Marijuana Review began making periodic appearances. Before the 1960s were over, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) was lobbying for marijuana law reform.

In 1970, Anslinger's "transfer tax" on marijuana was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1973, following the lead of such university cities as Ann Arbor, Eugene and Berkeley, Oregon became the first state to take steps toward legalization by minimizing the penalty for possession of small amounts. In 1975, the Supreme Court of Alaska ruled that the constitutional "right of privacy" protected marijuana possession for personal use in the home by adults. Alaska legalized possession of any amount of marijuana for private use, with a one-ounce limit for public possession. Personal cultivation was also legitimatized.

During our bicentennial year, California, Colorado, Ohio, South Dakota, Minnesota and Maine made possession of small quantities (generally an ounce) a misdemeanor to be settled with a small fine. Massachusetts and Texas, which had enforced some of the harshest anti-marijuana laws in the world, lowered their penalties drastically. Texas released just under 300 prisoners convicted under its previous marijuana laws. In New York, in spite of the unreasonably harsh "Rockefeller laws," only cases of excess have been tried and many of these have been reversed since.

174 Marijuana and Hashish

In 1976, the board of governors of the California State Bar voted 11-2 against sanctions on personal cultivation of marijuana: "unless one hopes to promote marijuana traffic, it is irrational to punish people more for producing their own marijuana than for buying it."

Later that year, the outgoing Ford Administration eased the previous federal stand against decriminalization, encouraging discussion of this issue for the first time in a policy statement from the Strategy Council on Drug Abuse. Ford's chief advisor on drugs, Robert DuPont, stated that marijuana was less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and urged decriminalization of limited home production.

The media, once Anslinger's chief allies in whipping up anti-marijuana hysteria, adopted a calmer tone, as evidenced by the following excerpt from the New York Times, January 5, 1976;

Scientists Find Nothing Really Harmful About Pot

Several recent studies of chronic marijuana users, conducted independently in half a dozen countries, indicate that the drug has no apparent significant adverse effect on the human body or brain or on their functions.

The research essentially corroborates and expands on the results of an earlier study of marijuana use in Jamaica that found no significant correlation between heavy use of the drug and impaired physical, intellectual, social and cultural activities.

The findings were reported Tuesday in research papers delivered at a New York Academy of Sciences Conference on Chronic Cannabis Use that attracted more than 100 researchers from ten countries.

Lenny Bruce used to say that pot would be legalized in America after two conditions were fulfilled: (1) when the sons and daughters of politicians got busted, and (2) when law students began smoking weed and then graduated to practice law. Both conditions were met during the 1970s. Among those busted were Kim Agnew, two Kennedys, a McGovern, a Colson, a Cahill, a Ford and two Carters. In November 1975, Marion Hugh Scott Con-cannon, the daughter of then Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott, was convicted of having sold an ounce of hashish to a narcotics agent and sentenced to two days of "socially useful" work each week for six months, a $100 fine and two years probation. Earlier, this same charge could have resulted in life imprisonment. After Jack Ford publicly admitted that he smoked pot, his father praised him for his honesty!

The Carter administration, taking office in 1977, indicated that the removal of heavy penalties for marijuana use was on its agenda, but a succession of drug-related embarrassments removed it before long. One of Carter's sons was thrown out of the Navy after "a marijuana incident." ("That's not a punishment," proclaimed a Yippie, "that's a reward!") The Secret Service quietly withdrew its watch on another Carter son and his wife whenever they visited a particular set of dose friends and allegedly smoked pot. Then came a highly publicized incident involving Carter's chief expert on drugs,

Decriminalization Falters, as Use Increases 175

Dr, Peter Bourne. Bourne prescribed Quaaludes for an associate and to protect her identity used a phony name for her. Bourne was forced to resign. No sooner had the dust settled than Hamilton Jordan, Carter's chief of staff, was charged with having snorted cocaine at a NORML party during the presidential campaign. This case dragged on and on. The Carter administration's early intention to decriminalize marijuana faded.

Efforts toward decriminalization and legalization continue. Millions of lives are still being affected by the kg in reform of marijuana laws. Figures from NORML indicate that over the last six years, half a million Americans annually have been arrested on marijuana-related charges. Some 90% of these cases involved possession of less than an ounce.

Smuggling and Cash Crops

In 1969, U.S. Customs officials confiscated 57,164 pounds of marijuana— somewhat under 30 tons. During 1975, six years later, the figure for confiscated pot had risen to 253.3 tons—and the next month alone brought in 86 tons, almost three times what was intercepted during all of 1969. In another six years, the announced 1981 confiscation amounted to 74,000 pounds of hashish and about 1,500 tons of marijuana.

Until the 1960s, nearly all of the strongly resinous marijuana smoked in the U.S. had been imported, generally in small batches. By the mid- and late-I960s, pilots—many trained in Vietnam—were flying loads from Central or South America in greatly increased numbers, enough to attract notice.

In 1974, Customs agents began using NORAD (North American Air Defense system) radar equipment. More than 150 planes a day crossed the Mexican border into the U.S. without radioing ahead and landing for inspection. For rwo months in 1975, the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) conducted "Operation Star Trek" to track planes that crossed into the southwest U.S., estimating the number of suspect aircraft at more than 250 a day. Very large amounts of capital were moving into the Cannabis market.

In the early 1970s, much of the powerful grass arriving on the East Coast of this country originated in Jamaica. During 1974, the DEA began "Operation Buccaneer"—its first overseas paramilitary effort, said to be "at the request of the Jamaican government." "American aircraft, helicopters, flamethrowers and herbicides," according to former High Times editor Pamela Lloyd, soon "scorched one-fifth of the island's surface." U.S. Customs and the Coast Guard made their first massive busts at sea, intercepting vessels headed for the southeast U.S. coast. A year later, vast stands of Mexican marijuana were sprayed with the deadly herbicide paraquat.

Marijuana from Jamaica and Mexico soon became a rarity in the U.S. Massive amounts arrived from Colombia—selling wholesale in New York for about $300 a pound and to users for $25-$35 per ounce, and sometimes more. This trade carried on surprisingly well; one Colombian official even

776 Marijuana and Hashish

expressed outrage in 1977 at "the DEA's attempt to convince us to destroy a crop with such great economic potential." Colombian marijuana dominated the import market during the late 1970s, although its potency began to decline, perhaps because the demand was too much. In this as in all areas of economic enterprise, quality tends to go down as the pressure for production increases.

Meanwhile, the potency of home-grown Cannabis products quickly increased. Word spread rapidly that some of the marijuana from Hawaii and California was superb. By 1977, many people were paying up to $250 an ounce for "Hawaiian," which was about as expensive as Cannabis ever got.

The $250 price tag on an ounce of a "weed" was an economic development with economic consequences. Clear instructions became available soon after for producing the potent "sinsemilla" (seedless female) version of marijuana. Regions of the country blessed with favorable growing conditions began experiencing a considerable economic revival.

Several agriculture officials in California, a particularly good growing region, stated in 1982 that the economic value of Cannabis exceeded that of ordinary crops—even all of them taken together. Nationally, revenue generated by Cannabis production was said to rank with the revenues of Exxon and General Motors. An assistant D.A. in Santa Cruz County, California, Ralph Boroff, put the new valuation squarely before the state's legislature when he declared, "I don't understand why everybody isn't growing at least five plants, because it is just so lucrative. You are looking at a thousand dollars a plant. It is something that is very easy to do."

If one plant alone can be worth $1,000, the grower becomes very interested in obtaining the best seeds available. So reasoned a few people who were selling single seeds for up to $5. (The seed business also fills a need brought about primarily by growing sinsemilla. Normally seeds would be available to start the next year's crop from the old crop.)

Other Developments

Marijuana's future as part of American life was further enhanced by the rediscovery of its medical potential. In 1974, Dr. Frederick Blanton from Fort Lauderdale reported on the successful treatment of glaucoma using Jamaican ganja. In 1976, government-grown pot from the University of Mississippi was prescribed for a glaucoma victim, and three years later, Florida, New Mexico, Hawaii, Indiana and Illinois legalized marijuana for medical research. Far from being the "killer drug," marijuana has been shown to be more effective than any other means in relieving the nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy.

Over the last decade, perhaps as much has been learned about Cannabis as was discovered over its entire previous history. The chemistry required equipment not available until just before this, and serious genetic

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work on hybridization is a recent development. This is changing the traditional image of pot greatly, with many strains now being as much as a dozen times as strong as most pot known in the 1960s. A recent idea that is sure to occur to many growers in the future is the making of sinsemilla hashish. This chapter can only touch the surface of the profound change in American attitudes toward marijuana and its impact on American life. The myths promulgated by Anslinger have been almost entirely discredited because of massive personal experimentation. By the 1980s, the domestic pot industry had grown to at least $8 billion in volume annually, with total daily U.S. consumption conservatively estimated at about thirty tons. There are several interesting and important stories yet untold. One concerns the efforts of Rastafarians to use it legally in their religion. Another concerns renewed efforts by U.S., Florida and California officials to poison pot users with the pesticide and plant killer known as paraquat. Yet another is the Supreme Court's refusal in January 1982 to hear the appeal of a Georgia man sentenced to forty years in prison for the sale of nine ounces of marijuana (for $200); even at this late date, that sentence isn't considered "cruel and unusual punishment."

Already an $8 Billion Domestic Industry 179

BOTANY Uniqueness

Cannabis species are exceptional, unique from many viewpoints in biology, chemistry and pharmacology. They are among the oddest manifestations in the plant kingdom, something perhaps tossed off by the Creator as a wild afterthought on the seventh day.

Cannabis was originally classified as a member of the nettle family (Urticaceae) and then of the mulberry family (Moraceae). It is now considered most closely related to the bop plant and is thus a cousin to the fig tree! Classification is difficult because structurally it belongs in one place, while its sexual characteristics suggest it should be elsewhere. Over the last century or so, there has arisen a plethora of technical names for its variants: kif, vulgaris, fedemontana, chinemis, erratica, fastens, lupulus, mexicana, macroioerma, americana, gigantea, excelsa, comprefsa, sinensis, etc., and there are those yet arguing for a single species. The law is beginning to accommodate to modem findings of three: saliva, indica and raderalis. "In spite of its great age as one of man's principal narcotics and its utilization by millions of people

in many cultures," remark Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann, "and notwithstanding the great economic value of the plant for uses other than as an intoxicant, Cannabis is still characterized more by what we do not know botanically about it than what we know."

Life Cycle

These amazing plants tend to put off most pests—and thus don't rely on insects for pollination. Instead, Cannabis as a genus has gone its own way with individual plants being male or female but sometimes hermaphroditic. In the wild, Cannabis grows about half male, half female. Environmental conditions can change this ratio by as much as nine to one—the more light available, for instance, usually the more females. Generally speaking, adverse conditions result in more males. If conditions become extreme, the plant often becomes hermaphroditic with separate male and female branches, fertilizing itself for reproduction.

Its favorite conditions include light, dry, sandy, slightly alkaline soil. Still, it grows just about anywhere thistles or dandelions will sprout, except

Sexual Differences 181

in clay or undrained soil. Distributed by hand, the seeds attain as much as a 60 to 80 percent germination rate. Because germination vigor is increased considerably with even slight care, seeds are often poked into the soil (1/2" to 3/4" deep) with the pointed end up, rounded end down. Cannabis can also be reproduced by means of cuttings.

If it is to be transplanted, both the plant and the soil should be watered the night before. The new soil should be as similar as possible to the old. Transplanting should take place on a cloudy or drizzling day or in late afternoon, because bright and sunny conditions can provide a shock that may stunt further development.

When planted closely, Cannabis tends to develop fibrous qualities and to stretch taller. (Cannabis produces about four times as much useful fiber per acre as saplings.) To promote resin development, it is best to keep seedlings at least six feet apart. Nourished by humus or other sources of nitrates and by a fair amount of light and water, the yield can be close to eight or nine tons of resinous flowers and leaves per acre—about a kilogram per square meter—or enough for about fifteen million joints.

In the northern hemisphere, seeds are usually planted in April or May. Depending upon conditions—more than ten hours of light a day, for example, greatly hastens growth—maturation of the male plants takes ten to twelve weeks. For about the first month, the two sexes are indistinguishable; then the males tend to get taller and the females become bushy and squat. Eventually, the young female plant has at least twice the weight of the male.

The male reaches the day of flowering after about three months, toward the end of the summer when days get shorter. About two hours before sunrise, the developing flowers swell; about an hour later, the first flower opens, usually two-thirds of the way up and near the stem. Gradually the rest of the flowers open, spreading out toward the extremities. The final unopened flower at the top often completes this phase some eight to ten hours later, but flowering can take up to a week for some strains. This daily cycle of flowers opening is repeated up to two weeks.

At the first breeze the entire load of pollen drops—apparently the supreme moment for the male. It begins to lose its color and waxy texture soon after, then gradually wrinkles and dries over the next few days, from the base of the plant up. Contrary to a rumor circulated for years, leaves and flowers of the male plant are psychoactive, though they diminish in potency rapidly after pollination. They should be harvested before shedding their pollen, unless the pollen is needed for seed production.

In the wild, the female reaches its mature stage at the same time as the male. It prepares for conception by lowering its leaves and thrusting forth its pistils. If the female is pollinated, seeds begin to grow and ripen some ten days to four weeks later. Then the seeds of most types drop off and the plant itself dies. If the seeds are kept dry and under 75° F., they remain viable for years.

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Under cultivation, pollination can be interrupted to prevent seed production; the female plant reacts by producing larger amounts of resin in the topmost flowering clusters. In certain areas of India, someone called the "ganja doctor" traditionally weeds out all the males when sexual characteristics are first noted in a crop—not because there's no psychoactive effect, but because removing the males will prevent pollination and greatly increase the females' resin production.

The stage of development at which pollination normally occurs is when the maximum amount of flowers appears. Resin accumulates quickly in the flowers, especially if the lower parts of the plant have been pruned or cutback. As time passes, the resin content diminishes once again. Researchers at the University of Mississippi pot farm have shown that resin content varies as well in terms of the time of day.

Seeding versus Not Seeding 185

The most potent crop is that made out of females that have not been allowed to seed when mature ("sinsemilla," from the Spanish for "without seeds"). Anyone interested in the cultivation of this connoisseur's grass should consult Jim Richardson's Sinsemilla Marijuana Flowers, Robert Connell Clarke's Marijuana Botany or Kayo's The Sinsemilla Technique. These books illustrate the great variety in appearances this single type takes, offering clear graphics to help farmers distinguish between the sexes. This crop is somewhat painstaking to grow, because all male plants have to be culled and the seedless buds should be picked by hand. It also results in less weight, because there are no seeds (which add substantial weight). Many think sinsemilla production is very much worth undertaking, and it is increasing over time. Domestic grass is becoming very potent as we see the improvements in selectively bred generations.

CHEMISTRY

Cracking the THC Molecule

For more than a century, numerous attempts to isolate and to synthesize the psychoactive components of marijuana resin were unsuccessful. Only in the last twenty years have researchers gained a chemical understanding of this complex and large family of molecules.

The first important discovery came in 1895, when three Cambridge chemists isolated the parent molecule of the group, cannabinol, and established the family's skeleton structure. One of the three Englishmen nearly

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lost his life in a lab fire while undertaking further experimentation. The other two did lose their lives—in separate lab explosions as they tried to probe deeper into the cannabinols. Unlike most of the compounds covered here, Cannabis is not an alkaloid and had to be extracted at that time with some highly flammable and explosive substances. Despite many subsequent efforts, cannabinol wasn't successfully isolated again until 1932.

By the beginning of the 1940s, Roger Adams and coworkers at the University of Illinois—commissioned by the LaGuardia Commission—were able to demonstrate a simpler method for synthesizing cannabinol and isolated the second important member of this family: cannabidiol. From their work, and that of A.R. Todd at about the same time, it became clear that these first two molecules are barely psychoactive and that the important components are produced by tetrahydrocannabinols (THCs).

Here are the structures of the three principal tetrahydrocannabinols and of the parent, which differ mainly in chemical bonding:

Analogues and Mixtures

The molecules at the top seem to be the main constituents that affect the mind and are particularly interesting because, unlike other Psychedelics, they don't contain nitrogen. More than sixty cannabinols—generally referred to as "cannabinoids" in scientific papers—are produced in a typical flower

Increasing Resin Production 187

(which contains yet another four hundred identified compounds). As a researcher into these areas has noted, "cannabinol and all reduction products of its toluene ring can be considered to embody cannabis activity." To put this another way, the quality of marijuana is much determined by the mix concocted in each plant: variation in effect is akin to the differences in wine that are due to winds, soil, sun and seasons.

Hemp growing wild generally appears as a diploid plant (meaning that it has two sets of chromosomes per cell). During World War II, a government researcher named H.E. Warmke was looking for a way to improve the fiber of hemp and cut down on resin content. He discovered that Colchicine, a highly toxic alkaloid frequently used nowadays to alter a plant's chromosomes, brought about nontoxic, polyploid (meaning multiples of chromosomes per cell) hemp plants in second and later generations ... which produced greater concentrations of THC in the resin. Unfortunately, the procedure is dangerous and generally kills the treated seeds. If you are interested, you can read the somewhat disputed details in W.D. Drake's Connoisseur's Handbook of Marijuana or in Robert Connell Clarke's Marijuana Botany.

Warmke showed that through some contriving the THC yield can be increased so as to give more psychic effects. Since then there have been a number of reports hinting that we're well on our way toward a Luther Burbank solution to the growing demand for more THCs in marijuana. In Canada, a government test station almost a decade ago produced Cannabis three times as strong as the average imported marijuana available on the streets, and the U.S. test station in Mississippi soon after reported a five-fold increase in strength. Domestic Cannabis sinsemilla) from California has been analyzed at over 12 percent THC.

A stimulating and light grass is distinguished from grass that is heavy or pots one to sleep by the distribution and quality of cannabidiol and various THC components. The differences are reflected to a considerable extent in the color and smell of the leaf. Although few people have tried anything more psychoactive than the delta-1 and delta-6 THC molecules, chemists have now produced more than eighty cannabinols synthetically—including some that contain nitrogen, and acetylated ones that are very potent. More than 3,000 papers have been published on various THC analogues, the most prominent being "Nabilone" (from Eli Lilly) and "levantradol" (from Pfizer). These and many others exhibit no psychoactivity but have some of the medically beneficial effects of THC. These patentable compounds have been of special interest to chemical companies looking for something more reliable and with less problems for some patients than THC.

It may well be that as researchers continue to explore different molecular bondings and arrangements, they may find a way to remove some sleepy components or otherwise spice up the effects. Just as the cigarette called 'Merit" is said to emphasize certain fractions of more than 2,000 available in tobacco, similar techniques of analytical fractometry may help bring about similar consequences as production of marijuana becomes more sophisticated.

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A means of chemically altering and improving low quality marijuana is already available. "Isomerization" changes "lower-rotating" forms of can-nabinols into those that are "higher-rotating." Simple processes use sulfuric acid and long, low-temperature boiling in alcohol, changing cannabidiol and THC-acid—which are prevalent in weak grass but are not psychoactive— into THCs. In pamphlets such as Cannabis Alchemy (Level Press/High Times) and The Marijuana Consumer's and Dealer's Guide (Chthon Press), this inexpensive technique is detailed.

With the "Isomerizer," the process is much easier. More than 200,000 Isomerizers are said to have been sold with the expectation that the device will increase potency of weak marijuana up to six times. After five or six years on the market, however, the isomerizing process hasn't really become popular. The main reasons appear to be because it's still too much trouble and most people don't enjoy the taste of the "Iso-hash" or oil which result since there is generally a lingering odor from bicarbonate of soda that is used to neutralize the sulfuric acid. Some complain that Iso-hash doesn't get them all that high. Robert Connell Clarke's Marijuana Botany provides a fuller discussion.

PHYSICAL EFFECTS

According to the fifth annual report prepared for Congress by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, appearing in February 1976, more than half of all Americans between eighteen and twenty-five had at least tried marijuana by 1975- Dr. Robert DuPont, then the government's top official on drug abuse, announced that alcohol and cigarettes were far more dangerous to health than marijuana, which, he said, lacks the lethal effects of either alcohol or tobacco. He added that young people are more likely to start with alcohol and tobacco, moving on to marijuana, than the other way around.

Charges against Marijuana 189

It has been well established that marijuana has almost no dangerous physical effects. Unlike most euphoriant drugs, it has few drawbacks: (1) there's no addiction, not even, as one writer has put it, "at the remotest cell," (2) while it may impair immediate memory, it doesn't obliterate recall later as alcohol can; (3) it produces some tolerance, but one can smoke it regularly and still get high; (4) it causes no alcohol-type hangover. (Some users may feel a bit slow the following morning, but this sense is mild compared with the after-effects of an alcohol binge.)

Coursing through the Body

The cannabinols are carried to most organs; a tiny amount then accumulates and resides for an extended period in the liver's fatty tissues, while the rest is soon excreted. Cannabinols appear only briefly in the brain, going mainly to the frontal and parietal regions, where it used to be thought that they stimulated increased alpha-wave production. (Now, it is thought there's no uniform significant change in brainwaves—see Marihuana Reconsidered, pp. 56-57.) Some increases occur in the pulse rate, as the heart compensates for a slight lowering in blood pressure. Marijuana dries both the mouth and ' the eyes. If you peel an onion right after smoking pot, you probably won't cry. Contrary to popular opinion, pupil size is not enlarged, so the two most noticeable physical consequences are: (1) dryness in the mouth and (2) redness in the eyes.

Medical Safety

Beginning in the late 1960s, a handful of doctors managed to produce a few isolated reports suggesting there might be adverse health effects from prolonged use of Cannabis. They revived the charge that it's an "assassin of youth." Such reports have been instantly and sensationally reported by much of the media.

All claims about health drawbacks associated with the use of pot—aside from the effects of its being smoked—have been either refuted by other investigators or compromised when their results couldn't be replicated. Some of these reports have been received by their authors' colleagues as irrelevant, highly suspect or worse. Since professional embarrassment has not deterred marijuana's critics, their alarming and widely-promulgated allegations should be confronted head-on.

What are these charges against marijuana? Deleterious health effects attributed to marijuana include:

disruption of basic

cellular functions hormonal imbalance (resulting

in large breasts in males)

interference with the body's defenses against infection

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impairment of sperm and egg production chromosomal damage birth defects weakening of the heart eye damage THC concentrations in the brain and testes brain damage impotence and frigidity cancer addiction and escalation to other drugs

It might be best to respond to such charges by citing the conclusions from the most recent marijuana study, undertaken by the National Academy of Sciences and sponsored by the National Institute of Health. The report took over fifteen months to compile. Dr. Arnold Relman, chairman of the study committee and editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, has called it "the broadest, most comprehensive, least biased assessment" yet made of marijuana's effects on human health.

It was issued February 26, 1982, well after the listed charges against marijuana had been thoroughly aired. This report found "no conclusive evidence that marijuana causes permanent, long-term health damage in humans, is addictive, leads to use of 'harder' drugs, affects the brain structure or causes birth defects." The study called attention to positive effects, noting evidence that marijuana may be useful in easing the side effects of cancer chemotherapy and in treating glaucoma, asthma and certain seizure conditions such as epilepsy.

The panel did find short-term effects: on "immediate memory," "oral communication" and "learning," and said that it sometimes "may trigger temporary confusion and delirium," Noting that "about a quarter of the entire [U.S.] population has tried it at least once," Relman reported the study group's recommendations; (1) more work to produce marijuana derivatives with increased therapeutic action and less side effects, (2) a high-priority national effort to find out more about this drug, and (3) the decriminalization of penalties for personal marijuana use.

In 1975, a "first, intensive, multidisciplinary study of marijuana use and users," entitled Ganja In Jamaica, was sponsored by the Center for Studies of Narcotic and Drug Abuse, a division of the National Institute of Mental Health. This study focused on people who had smoked marijuana in huge quantities for between twelve and thirty years; conclusions drawn then were:

No Evidence of Damage or Impairment 19}

there is little correlation between use of ganja and crime, except insofar as the possession and cultivation of ganja are technically crimes. There were no indications of organic brain damage or chromosome damage among the subjects and no significant clinical (psychiatric, psychological or medical) differences between the smokers and controls.

The "single medical finding of interest," wrote Raymond Philip Shafer, Chairman of the U.S. National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, was "indication of functional hypoxia [oxygen deprivation] among heavy, long-term chronic smokers." This finding probably relates to ingestion of very large quantities via smoking (up to a pound of grass a week among Rastafarians, usually mixed with tobacco).

The preface to the report's 1976 edition gave even more reassuring information:

. . . the relatively benign findings of the Jamaica project have generally been quite favorably received. Nevertheless, some have questioned the relevance of the psychological and neurological results and dismissed the findings as being pertinent only to Jamaica. In the year since the original publication of this research, the results of a number of rigorous multidimensional studies of cannabis use in other countries, undertaken by other scientific teams, have helped to lay these allegations to rest and have strongly bolstered the major findings of the Jamaica project and the cross-cultural applicability of these conclusions'....

Under the auspices of the University of Florida, a medical anthropological study of urban, working-class, chronic cannabis smokers has been carried out in Costa Rica .... No evidence of pathology could be found after extensive medical examination. The results of psychological and brain function tests indicated that "chronic marihuana use is not associated with permanent or irreversible impairment in higher brain functions or intelligence." The Costa Rica project also included the examination of testosterone levels and immunology as related to cannabis use, areas of research not undertaken in the Jamaica study. No relationship between marihuana use and testosterone levels was found nor were there indications of impaired immunological response. Significantly, the study established that the use of cannabis did not impair the subject's ability to function well at home or at work and no evidence was found to support the hypothesis that heavy cannabis use precipitates an "amotiva-tional syndrome." As in Jamaica, marihuana is utilized in Costa Rica to cope with the exigencies of daily life, not to withdraw from society. Another intensive study, clinical in orientation, was conducted by a multidisciplinary team at the University of Athens. The results of this research on Athenian workers confirms both the Costa Rican and Jamaican findings on all comparable variables.

A major study of the behavior and biological concomitants of chronic marihuana use has been undertaken at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. This team also found no evidence that chronic marihuana use impaired cognitive or neurological function nor that motivation to work for money was decreased even after heavy consumption. Another significant finding was that high

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marihuana dosages did not suppress testosterone levels .... Finally, a longitudinal study of the grades of 1,380 UC1A undergraduates revealed no evidence of brain damage or lack of motivation due to marihuana use. As the researchers reported, "the dire consequences that were predicted have not materialized

Such cross-cultural findings that marijuana presents no threat to health should have ended concern about the alleged hazards. Since then, additional investigations of marijuana users in Greece, Guatemala and Egypt (the last, called "The Egyptian Study of Chronic Cannabis Consumption,' was issued in 1980 by the Cairo-based National Center for Social and Chrim-inology Research) have replicated the Jamaican findings. However, opponents to marijuana continue to press their claims unsupported. Norman Zinberg in 1978 commented:

It is important to remember that the Jamaica study is one of the finest pieces of research ever done. Subjects who had smoked very strong marijuana for between 12 and 30 years were studied physiologically, psychologically, socially and anthropologically. They were compared to a control group. They were studied in both hospital and natural settings. While at work they had devices strapped to their backs that could measure their lung input and output. This study found that there was no way to differentiate marijuana smokers from the control group. There was no evidence of greater lung pathology m the group that smoked marijuana than in the control group. To illustrate the persistence of the critics, there were then alarming charges of chromosome damage: these people jumped on the research observation that THC, like many vitamins, is absorbed by fatty tissues in the body and released slowly—unlike alcohol, which is metabolized quickly and excreted within a few hours. Since the brain, ovaries and testicles are corn-posed of much fat, they leapt immediately to the conclusion that THC must accumulate steadily in these vital organs as a result of regular pot smoking (The original researcher objected strongly to any such interpretations of his

findings.)

After extensive study of the charge that excessive chromosome damage is caused by marijuana, the National Academy of Sciences and relevant researchers have concluded that it is not supported by the evidence and dismissed the charge. Concern about THC possibly lodging in the brain or reproductive organs has lingered because finding conclusive evidence one way or the other on such a matter is difficult. Recently, reassuring conclusions have been reached on the basis of high dose THC animal experimentation: "Kinetics of Cannabinoid Distribution and Storage with Special Reference to Brain and Testis," in the August-September 1981 Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, reports on the "oil solubility" charge. This research was sponsored largely by me National Council on Marijuana, an anti-drug organization. .

It has long been known that the body seems capable of metabolizing and disposing of "lipophilic" vitamins by trapping them in fatty acids in the digestive system, somehow prohibiting their access to the gonadal and brain

Other Adverse Charges Dismissed 193

systems, where they might exert toxic effects. Dr. Gabriel Nahas, associated with the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University and an anti-marijuana advocate for more than a score of years, argued that THC escaped this natural defense because it wasn't a vitamin. The study mentioned above tested this hypothesis.

Nahas and Dr. Colette Leger of the Hospital Fernand Widel in Paris injected rats intramuscularly on a regular basis with large doses of radio-actively labeled THC They then killed these animals to examine the testes and ovaries at various intervals after administration. Examinations determined that THC concentrations in testes and ovaries were extremely low, barely rising to a single billionth of a gram per gram of body tissue, and that these "concentrations" were almost entirely eliminated within twenty-four hours of a single dose. THC concentrations in the brain were found to be slightly higher but were eliminated faster. Most THC turned out to be trapped and neutralized in the digestive system—exactly the same pattern as with vitamins.

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Similar results appeared when the rats were regularly given massive dosages. Nahas and Leger concluded, "Concentrations of cannabinoids in brain and testis remained lower than in the blood and did not reflect any significant accumulation of the drug in those tissues."

In December 1976, Psychology Today published "The War Over Marijuana," a review by Dr. Norman Zinberg of the preceding seven years of marijuana research. At a conference in San Francisco in late 1978, Zinberg, associated with the earliest "scientific" investigation of marijuana and from the Harvard Medical School, described further developments regarding "Cannabis and Health" (a transcript of his remarks appears in the Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, January-June 1979):

In that article I covered a number of salient theories—stepping stone to heroin, amotivational syndrome, brain damage, chromosome damage (i.e., birth defects), immune responses, psychosis, incitement to crime, general health hazard and sex impairment. None of this research proved that use of marijuana caused problems.

I showed that the idea of marijuana use as a stepping stone to use of harder drugs like heroin has been disproved by any number of learned commissions, yet the idea persists. Incidentally, there is now a study which indicates that most heroin users do not even like mari|uana. The notion of the amotivational syndrome, a term created by Dr. Louis J. West in 1972, shows up again and again although there have been a number of studies, including a very large one at UCLA (Dr. West's school), which show that users of marijuana maintain their motivation as well as or sometimes better than nonusers. The Jamaica study (Ganja in Jamaica by Lomitas and Rubin) which was funded by the President's Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse notes that in Jamaica marijuana is used as a motivator. It is of particular importance to remember that marijuana users in any study have performed better in school than non-users I think that has more to do with the personality characteristics of users, who a re more likely to be more adventuresome than otherwise, but ii is:still an important finding.

The only article on the subject, printed in the lancet, claimed that mati|uana use caused brain damage. It was a terrible piece of work which did not even indicate all the different drugs and conditions of the population studied. Since publication of that work, there have been a number of studies, particularly in the last few years, with soft tissue X-rays that indicate definitely that marijuana use does not cause brain damage, but the original Campbell study survives.

The same problems occur for theories about chromosome damage, reduction in testosterone production and so on. These areas have been studied thoroughly. It has been found that numerous substances affect testosterone production, but as changes are within a reasonable range it is a matter of no concern. In fact, we don't even know what it means that testosterone levels go up and go down day by day or hour by hour.

One of the most widely publicized studies was of the effect of marijuana use on immune bodies. This work turned out to be fallacious but that has not prevented its being cited again and again. At different times people have claimed

The "War" over Marijuana 195

marijuana use causes aggression, anxiety and is responsible for serious mental illness. Now, after more than 15 years and over 51 million users, we know that these studies have not been significant.

At the moment the new bugaboo is whether marijuana smoking may cause some of the same respiratory problems as cigarette smoking. One article by Dr. Tashkin has appeared which found a high tar content in smoked marijuana. I think it cannot be good for anyone to inhale any hot substance into the lungs, hold it and then exhale it. The current contention about marijuana, however, is that a single marijuana cigarette is infinitely more dangerous than an entire pack of cigarettes. As yet a specific refutation of the Tashkin study has not appeared, but several studies of lung cancer patients at the National Cancer Institute have expressed considerable doubt about that work, and it does not square with the results of the Jamaican, Greek and Costa Rican studies of long-term chronic marijuana use.

(The Dr. Tashkin referred to above is Donald Tashkin of UCLA. After a recent NBC television documentary claimed that each marijuana joint was equivalent to seventeen tobacco cigarettes in its potential for lung damage, Dr. Eugene Schoenfeld contacted him as the source of this alarming news "and found that NBC had totally distored his research findings. He meant to say no such thing.")

In his Marihuana Reconsidered, Dr. Lester Grinspoon notes the "striking observation that there has never in its long history been reported an adequately documented case of lethal overdosage. Nor is there any evidence of cellular damage to any organ." These observations are worth emphasizing because toxicity studies show this drug to be among the safest known. It has been estimated that a lethal dose would require ingestion of approximately seven pounds of flowering tops within a twenty-four hour period. Experiments have demonstrated that about 40,000 times the amount of THC ordinarily smoked in a joint is needed to kill a mouse. This is about equivalent to drowning the animal in hash oil.

These remarks about the campaign of misinformation are not meant to say that there aren't some people who oversmoke marijuana and afterwards feel "sluggish," temporarily "wiped out," or suffer related deleterious effects from it. Virtually every drug known seems to cause undesirable effects in some people who, for reasons largely unknown, are particularly "sensitive" to them. However, it's clear that marijuana is a lot harder to "abuse" than alcohol, downers or many over-the-counter drugs. As Dr. Zinberg suggests, even damage to the lungs by massive, long-term pot smoking hasn't yet been confirmed.

To sum up this discussion, it seems appropriate to quote again the panel from the National Academy of Sciences investigating marijuana users in the 1980s' there is as yet "no conclusive evidence that marijuana causes permanent, long-term health damage in humans, is addictive, leads to use of 'harder drugs,'affects the brain structure or causes birth defects." For a fully detailed

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account of the scientific evidence on alleged health risks from smoking pot, see Dean Latimet's "7 Marijuana Medical Myths" in the Match 1982 issue of High Times.

Medical Use

Throughout history, Cannabis has been appreciated as a healing herb. By the time of Christ it was used in India and China for the relief of pain, reduction of fever, surgery, stimulation of appetite and treatment of diarrhea, dysentery, bronchitis, migraine, insomnia and a variety of neurological diseases. Between 1840 and 1900, more than a hundred contributions were made to the Western medical literature that recommended Cannabis for one ailment or another.

In 1923, two French doctors grouped the diseases for which they considered it helpful:

1. Troubles of psychic origin: melancholia, delirium, hysteria, painful facial tics, chorea, delirium tremens, migraine headaches, neuralgia, sciatica, insomnia with delirium and nightmares, neurasthenia.

2. Certain genito-urinary troubles: gonorrhea, prostatitis, cystitis, dysmen-orrhea.

3. Troubles of the respiratory system: in the form of cigarettes, vapour, and inhalations against chronic catarrh, emphysema, asthma, whooping cough.

4. Painful troubles of the stomach and intestine: cancer, ulcer, anorexy.

5. Certain skin diseases: eruptions, herpes, chronic itching.

6. Infectious diseases: tetanus, cholera, pest, erysipelas, eruptive fevers.

Although some of these recommended treatments are yet of a questionable value, we are beginning to hear new, more specific claims of its medical benefits. Cannabis is now said to be most effective in quelling glaucoma— not only does it dry up the eyes, but it diminishes intraocular pressure as well.

What this means in human terms was dramatized during the summer of 1976. Robert Randall, who taught speech part-time in a community college near Washington , D.C., fought for and won the right to be the first person in the U.S. to be "exempted from Federal drug laws in order to use marijuana as medicine." His story was told by Daniel St. Albin Greene in The National Observer in July 1976:

Bob Randall does smoke pot—for a reason. He has glaucoma. He's going blind. And marijuana is the only drug that seems able to save his remaining sight.

Randall says . he needs four to six joints a day to control his intraocular pressure, which, unchecked, can cause irreparable damage to the optic nerves He wants the Government to let his ophthalmologist prescribe take-home marijuana so he can smoke when he needs to, without fear of being raided. But Randall can't wait much longer. He's already functionally blind in his right eye, and his left eye is getting worse all the time.

Washington ophthalmologist Ben S. Fine says: "It is clear that Mr. Randalls condition can no longer be adequately controlled on conventional medications.

Healing Abilities 797

This failure of medical treatment will result in Mr. Randall's blindness unless another medication is available or surgery is undertaken .... Surgical intervention for pressure control is not always successful, may aggravate the condition rather than stabilize it, and, in some cases, may damage remaining areas of active, healthy vision."

Randall tried every conventional IOP [Intra-Ocular Pressure] medication. Some worked for a time, then diminished in effectiveness. Meanwhile, his ophthalmologist was perplexed by the wide fluctuations in his IOP readings. Randall couldn't bring himself to clear up the mystery.

198 Marijuana and Hashish

"Since 1968," he explains, "I had noticed that marijuana smoking relieved the eye problems. But I thought this was just a side benefit of being relaxed. Whenever I would get the symptoms, I'd smoke a joint, and they would disappear within a half-hour. Whenever I'd run out or couldn't make a connection, I'd get intense symptoms again.

Last winter Randall underwent ID days of testing at UCLA His IOP was measured after doses of every conventional glaucoma medication and after he had smoked Government-grown marijuana.

In February [UCLA's Dr. Robert S.] Hepler said in an affidavit): "... We found his IOP rose soon after awakening, remained above normal for the greater part of each day, and became particularly elevated in late evening Marijuana's pressure-lowering effect, in combination with prescription medications, usually brought his IOP levels toward the normal range .. I' would seem that he has benefited from the use of marijuana in the past and could gain significant medical advantage from a program of regulated use in the future. Marijuana, in combination with conventional medications, provides him with control of intraocular pressure unobtainable utilizing other medications alone.'

Randall's request leaves the Government nettlesome alternatives. Stick 10 the law at the risk of his going blind for want of a drug that millions use illegally Or exempt him and, while perhaps saving his sight, risk setting a precedent that might evoke a torrent of similar applications by people suffering from other diseases ....

Advantages for Treating Glaucoma and Chemotherapy 199

Meanwhile, Randall waits, wonders about the irony of it all, and reads as much as he can, while he can. Sometimes, he says, he can feel the pressure inside his eyes.

"The big problem," he adds, "is getting people to understand without becoming either a pathetic figure or a hero. I'm neither. I'm simply a human being placed in this odd situation because of a convoluted law,"

Other recent reports indicate that THC "is far more effective than any other drug in relieving the vomiting and nausea that plague thousands of cancer patients undergoing chemical therapy."

About 75 percent of patients receiving chemotherapy for cancer suffer moderate to extreme nausea and vomiting, and about 90 percent find no relief in conventional anti-nausea drugs. According to findings reported in the New England Journal of Medicine for the first twenty-two experimental patients "Marijuana drug treatments resulted in at least a 50 percent reduction in vomiting and nausea after therapy." In five instances, the patients suffered no nausea at all. A controlled study based on work at the Sidney Farber Cancer Center showed that no decrease in nausea or vomiting occurred when placebo, or dummy, treatment was used. Moreover, terminal cancer patients given synthetic THC at the medical College of Virginia tended to become more relaxed, emotionally stable, less depressed and frustrated, and tended also to gain weight (whereas cancer patients become emaciated). Dr. Stephen E. Sallan, leader of a team researching THC at the Sidney Farber Center in Boston, summed up other differences noted:

Until THC was given to them, patients undergoing chemotherapy could only look forward to hours and even days of sickness and misery. THC changed all that.

It made it possible for patients to lead a normal life following treatment. It also relieved their dread of the chemotherapy that-—before they took THC— had made them so sick and miserable.

The only side effect from THC is that a patient gets a "high" similar to the kind that comes from smoking marijuana.

A booklet titled Using Marijuana in the Reduction of Nausea Associated with Chemotherapy discusses the timing of grass use with specific anti-cancer drugs and even supplies recipes and instructions (for advanced cases) for preparing suppositories. Priced at S2.50, it is shipped within twenty-four hours from Murray Publishing Co., 2312 Third Ave., Seattle, WA 98121, (206) 682-?560. The author, Dr. Roger A. Roffman, has just published the fullest account of recent uses of Marijuana as Medicine, and would like to hear from those who want to share their experience. He can be contacted at Box 5651, University Station, Seattle, WA 98105, (206) 543-5968.

In some therapeutic applications, one might say the soothing effect comes about mentally. For instance, marijuana seems to change the perception of pain so that it becomes something off in a distance, rather uninteresting—"Just as the pain in a delicate ear would grow less and less," as a

200 Marijuana and Hashish

physician in the lace nineteenth century put it, "as a beaten drum was carried further and further out of the range of hearing," This effect is evident when marijuana is used during the contractions of childbirth, as is the tradition in many places, and when fretful babies are calmed by blowing pot smoke over them. Still, psychological anesthetic action is clearly only part of the story. (Cannabis preparations may also have anti-bacterial action. Check out both Marijuana Medical Papers and the report in Drake's Cultivator's Handbook on THC's ability to knock out Staphylococcus strains, including some that have become resistant to penicillin and other antibiotics.)

MENTAL EFFECTS

The subtlety of this drug is one of its important qualities. Of all the substances considered here, marijuana is the most subtle. Some question whether it is a psychedelic at all, and beginners frequently fail to notice much

effect.

The inability to experience the drug unprompted was a major finding in the first scientific study of marijuana (by Weil, Zinberg and Nelson in Boston, 1968). On identical amounts of the substance, regular users discovered they got quite high, while non-users noticed no changes. Researchers wonder whether this difference results from having learned to appreciate

Three Different Strengths 201

the effects or from physiological changes that occur after one or more experiences with the drug.

"You will hear people say that one never gets stoned the first time," wrote Bill Burroughs, Jr., describing what happened after he "dipped into a Mason jar of homemade majoun" and also tried some "tasty little hashish candies" when he first went to visit his father in Tangiers at age fourteen:

... but I was so far gone that I couldn't even remember the onset. Only visions of the entire course of human history, from the apeman all asteam on the hostile plains on through the blessed virgin and plunging into the abyss of technology. After two million years, Ian nudged me gently and said that he'd like to go to sleep ....

Strength of Cannabis Preparations

In India, three different strengths of Cannabis are usually distinguished

—bhang, ganja and charas. These correspond to leaves, flowering tops and leaves, and the best of the resin from flowers. Most marijuana smoked in America belongs to the first, bottom grade; all the rest costs a great deal. The thong-type Cannabis here is about a tenth as strong as charas, which also is known as hashish.

What happens at lower concentrations is interesting but shouldn't be confused with more full-blown "psychedelic" effects provoked by "hash" or "hash oil," which can be up to 40 percent THC The effect of cooked pot lends to be minimal up until consumption of about 2 grams (about 2 tablespoons) of commercial varieties—containing, say, 2 percent THC The experience is then stronger and longer lasting (usually for four to eight hours, compared to half an hour to one or two hours when smoking).

Because THC-acid and much of the delta-6-trans isomer are converted by heat or combustion into the delta-1 form, the effects of smoking and eating are quite different. (Absorption from the lungs is said to be about three times more effective than when marijuana passes through the stomach.) One unexplained characteristic—probably having to do with the

differences in cannabinols in a leaf—is that when people use different batches of marijuana, they develop less tolerance than if they use the same grass regularly.

Deterioration in the strength of THC over time results from exposure to light (mainly), heat and air.

The Tart Study

Probably the most relevant study to date about what might be considered "typical" pot experience was made by Dr. Charles Tart and reported in his book On Being Stoned. Tan conducted his research by leaving questionnaires at various locations near where he was working, requesting that they be filled out anonymously and returned. His book is an evaluation of the first 150 completed questionnaires that passed his test for validity (a consistency on

202 Marijuana and Hashish

14 key items among 220) and comprises, as he estimates, approximately 421 years of pot experience, representing some 37,000 joints.

Tart's study confirms that when the drug is relatively familiar to [tit-user, reactions are not nearly as bizarre and disoriented as the classic literature on Cannabis inebriation suggests. He concludes that there are definite effects of the drug and works out a kind of "phenomenology of marijuana." His findings can be presented in a chart grouping characteristic versus rare experiences:

Characteristic Experiences

Patterns, meaning in ambiguous material Visual imagery more vivid Greater spatial separation between sound sources Understand the words of songs better Hear more subtle changes in sound

New qualities to taste Enjoy eating and eat very much More in the here-and-now Time passes more slowly Distance in walking changed Sexual orgasm has new, pleasurable qualities New qualities to touch Movements exceptionally smooth Get physically relaxed, don't want to move

Touch more exciting

Forget start of conversation

Insights into others

More subtle humor

Ordinary social games hard to play

Less noisy than when drunk

Often forget to finish some task

Easily sidetracked

Spontaneous insights into self

Harder to read

Appreciate more subtle humor

Accept contradictions more readily

Almost invariably feel good

when stoned Less need to feel in control

of things More childlike, open to experience,

filled with wonder Easy to go to sleep at bedtime

Rare Experiences

Flat quality to world

Colors get duller

Sounds blurry

Precognition

Visual world looks flat

Feel possessed by a hostile force

Sense chakra centers

Perform magical operations

Feel possessed by good force

Feel energy in spine

Vomit

Feel nauseated, dizzy

Do antisocial things

People seem dead, like robots

Less need for sex

Deja vu

Prolonged blank periods

Almost invariably feel bad when stoned

Body parts move by themselves Worry about losing control Harm other people Tremble in hands Sleep poor, restless

Characteristic versus Rare Experiences 203

Old Myths Dispelled

Dr. Tart's data should lay to rest one of the nastiest myths the Anslinger brigade fostered about marijuana, i.e., that it leads to sexual and other violence. "Loss of control to the point of antisocial actions" is reported to be the rarest of all marijuana effects recorded in the Tart study (p. 192). This is consistent with what's been found elsewhere in several NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) studies. One of the most meticulous of these, The Blumer Report, determined that use of the plant's leaves reduced violence in juvenile delinquents in Oakland.

As to sexual effects, in her report on the intimate lives of marijuana

users (The Sexual Power of Marijuana), Barbara Lewis asks, "Is sexual

power a wild plant?" Her findings are prefaced with the following summary:

Whatever scientific research does exist on marijuana and sex supports what I

learned in my interviews. In a study of twenty-one men and eleven women who had used pot more than ten times and were asked why they continued to

do so, 73% said they smoked to "increase sexual satisfaction"----The study,

'The Marijuana Problem: An Overview," was published in The American

Journal of Psychiatry in 1968. It was coauthored by Dr. William H.McGlothlin,

a research psychologist at the University of California in Los Angeles, and Dr. Louis Jolyon West, now chairman of the department of psychiatry at the same

institution.

20$ Marijuana and Hashish

Dr. West was among die thirty-five psychiatrists, psychologists, physicians, sociologists, and pharmacological researchers with whom I talked. He had had contact with hundreds of marijuana smokers over the years. He expressed concern over some effects of the drug on some of its users. But he conceded that the continuing controversy over the question of whether pot is, technically, an "aphrodisiac" was irrelevant to most users.

"In real life and among real people," he said, "the fact is, the word is, the belief is, the expectation is, and the result is, that marijuana enhances sexual activity."

I also received considerable assistance from Dr. Erich Goode, assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, Long Island, whose survey of 200 pot users was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health .... In 1967 he submitted a twelve-page questionnaire to 200 middle-class New York marijuana users. The questions dealt with every aspect of marijuana experience, including sexual response. The respondents' mean age was twenty-three.

A very substantial majority (68%) of these users reported that marijuana distinctly enhanced their sexuality. Even more interesting, 50% of the women and 39% of the men revealed that it actually excited their initial interest, sharpened their sexual desire—again, only when smoked with a desirable sexual partner. If smoked with someone deemed distasteful, they said, marijuana accentuates the feeling of distaste. Sex actually became repugnant. "It's not like alcohol, which often numbs a person to the unpleasant aspects of bus partner," Dr. Goode commented.

Dangers of Not Smoking 207

Other Aspects of Pot

Some time ago someone showed me a hand-set booklet on

"the clangers of not smoking marijuana."

On a social level these clangers included such things as war, while on the personal level, it was claimed, not smoking made you forget you're a freak, made you think the President knows what he's doing, made you decide that nobody will love you unless you're someone other than yourself ....

Ken Kesey, who feels reluctant to recommend any other mental drugs because they have so often been impure, provides die ultimate pot commercial:

But good old grass I can recommend. To be just without being mad ... to be peaceful without being stupid, to be interested without being compulsive, to be happy without being hysterical . , . smoke grass.

Inspiration

The core of the matter is that most users of Cannabis find it inspiring in many ways. They claim not only that it can heighten sexual feelings but that it inspires religious feelings, increases creativity, helps them solve problems, helps to get them in touch with themselves and expands the scope of their minds. Rats given a diet of THC have been shown to be capable of learning how to run mazes faster than when they're left unstoned (see E.A-Carlini and C Kramer, "Effects of Cannabis Saliva (Marihuana) on Maze Performance of the Rat," Psychopharmacologica, 1965, p. 175).

When people talk about marijuana adding a third dimension to pictures or new depths to colors or creating "synethesia" (when music can, say, become visual), they are discussing changes in normal external perception. Distortions in the sense of time and space are fascinating. The effects that come under headings of "insight" or "inspiration" are also common occurrences with marijuana use and these effects may prove beneficial to society at large. To drive this point home, read one more listing from the Tart materials, not characteristic or rare experiences this time but common experience:

Common Experience

Skip intermediate steps in

problem solving Insights into others Thoughts more intuitive Ideas more original Converse intelligently even

though things forgotten Learn a lot about what

makes people tick Say more profound,

appropriate things

Intuitive, empathic understanding of people Sexual love a union of souls as well as bodies Inhibitions lowered Mind feels more efficient in problem solving At one with the world Events, actions become archetypal

208 Marijuana and Hashish

Before leaving the topic of marijuana's mental effects, a word should be added about its ability to give access to long-buried memories, to facilitate rapport and to aid psychotherapeutic "transference." Let me cite the exper-ience of Dr. Harry Hermon, who first became interested in this herb as a means to help his patients expedite their psychotherapy. A patient he had been treating without much success for some time came in one day, and the information Dr. Hermon had been seeking in vain to elicit for so Song suddenly began to flow forth freely. Hermon was astonished. He asked what was different this time. His patient informed him that he had come in stoned, "Stoned?" said Dr. Hermon. "What is this 'stoned'?" And thus Dr. Hermon came to realize how effectively this weed could unblock a person's mind, an insight which launched him into an entirely new phase of his therapy and life.

Negative psychological effects occasionally yet appear among some users, mainly having to do with panicking, objections on the part of some people to seeing the past or present in a "new light," or overdoing marijuana smoking. A decade and a half ago, users generally considered smoking pot or hashish something to be prepared for and used it ritualistically. Since then the strength of much marijuana has increased and some people—mainly dealers and others with lots of time to kill—have perhaps overindulged. "Marijuana is a drug of low abuse potential," comments Dr. David E. Smith, who has treated all kinds of drug complications for more than a decade and a half at the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. He and others treating people with drug problems point to the main symptom of pot "abuse" as a psychological compulsion to use it to the point of "loss of control" over other aspects of one's life, to where it seriously impairs one. "A little warms the heart," declares a Sacred Seeds package of high-potency skunk weed, "too much burns the soul."

FORMS AND PREPARATIONS

Distinguishing among Marijuana Samples

Marijuana appears as a mixture of leaves, twigs and possibly seeds, flowers and "buds" (clumps of leaves and flowers) of a Cannabis plant. The particular plant a batch of marijuana came from may have been an unseeded female, a female with seeds, a male or even hermaphroditic—an order which roughly indicates declining levels of THC content. It may have grown from C. saliva or indica seeds or have been a hybrid, reaching maturity or not in equitorial or temperate regions, or under lights of varying intensity and spectra, or hydroponically, with or without added nutrients, and close to other plants or apart from them. These factors, along with the time of year it was planted, whether it was transplanted, whether it was farmed with a knowledge of the effects of periods of light on it and the time of day it was picked, are some of the major variables affecting THC and CND levels in ^a marijuana sample.

Variations in Levels of THC and CND 209

Cannabis will grow almost anywhere given adequate drainage, but Psychoactivity can vary by a factor of about twenty in various manifestations of the fresh, natural product. This is then affected by how it is harvested, dried and its age before use. This basic material can also be transformed into many grades of hashish, hash oil, isomerized forms or Cannabis butters for adding to or using with food. Marijuana has also been used in the making of ????ers, wines and liqueurs.

In some places, such as Amsterdam and in parts of the Near and Far East, fairly standardized types of Cannabis can be bought over the counter ['enjoyed at "smoking clubs" without the complications that arise from its illegality here. Otherwise, the situation is more complicated and the novice or relatively inexperienced might appreciate a few pointers. Jack Margolis and Richard Clorfene opened the section on "Buying Grass" in their A Child's Garden of Grass (1969) with some sensible advice;

In buying grass, there are four things to remember: First, you don't want to

get caught; second, you don't want to get bad grass; third, you don't want to overpay; and we can't remember the fourth.

The first rule to remember in buying grass is "Know Your Connection." If you know and trust the person from whom you're buying the grass, you

shouldn't have any difficulties. He won't be a cop or informer and, if the grass

turns out to be a real burn {less than the correct quantity or bad quality), he'll

probably make good.

The Only Infallible Test: Smoking 211

The second rule to remember is, "Don't Trust Nobody." Thus applies even to people whom you know and trust. Undercover agents look and sound exactly like you do, and many informers are not actually agents; they're just people who have been put into the position of turning in other people because they themselves have been caught, and they've made a deal with the police.

Buying grass is usually relatively safe, because police usually bust people who sell it to them, rather than people who buy it from them ....

If you know your connection, there should be no problem, but if you don't then you should sample the grass first. Usually a seller will "puff" his wares— which means claiming that it's better than it is. Cases have held that puffing is legal, so if the grass turns out not to be as good as he said it was, you have no recourse in the courts. The smart thing is to bring some papers with you and sample it. (A seller of bad grass will usually say he is out of papers.)

In The Marijuana Catalogue (1978), Paul Dennis and Carolyn Barry described a test that applies for marijuana said to be "very good," "excellent," "bomber" or by other adjectives with implications of greatness:

Sitting loose and relaxed, inhale the smoke slowly to your lungs' full

capacity and hold it as long as you comfortably can___Take six of these total

lungfuls. If after ten minutes, fifteen at the most, you aren't feeling higher than the North Star on Christmas Eve, the grass in question is not superduper. If you feel fairly good, it's OK grass. If you feel just a little something, you think, you're going to have to burn your throat out to get high on it. After you try this test a few times, you'll learn your own reactions. You can become surprisingly sensitive to the various qualities of smoke in the only infallible test—your own subjective reaction.

If you are serious about testing the precise quality of a Cannabis sample, they also suggest that you

don't take any more than two-thirds of a full joint—at least until you've made up your mind about its quality and the price you're willing to pay. Quite commonly a dealer will share an entire pint with you. Since the dealer may be doing a lot of smoking in the course of a day, he or she may actually not coke that much of the joint. So, without noticing it, you've ended up smoking most of the thing ....

So the rule is, always sample some of the very bag you're buying; and if you don't know the dealer, watch that bag like the proverbial pea in the shell game. Also, even an honest dealer may offer a jay as soon as you come in— just to be friendly. Then later, when you try your stuff before buying, you realize you can't tell (he purchased high from the gift one. If offered some smoke when you come in, say, "No, thanks. I'm OK." When the dealer hands you the bag you're considering buying, just say, "Mind if I try a little of this?" If the dealer claims the joint in his hand is the same stuff, just say you'd like to try the bag you're buying. Any honest dealer will say, "Sure." It's basic practice in reliable dealing.

A Two-Tier Market. Before the 1970s, most marijuana available in the U.S. had relatively low concentrations of THC by today's standards, and more intense Cannabis experiences were mainly propelled by various forms of

212 Marijuana and Hashish

hashish. Over the last decade, the marijuana market has split into two types of grass that are widely available—the result of genetic work on seeds, greater knowledge of how to cultivate resinous plants and particularly the growth of interest in sinsemilla. Now what is offered is poor to fair grass, and connoisseur grass and hash. Potency is divided in this way because of the economics of farming. Michael Starks in his Marijuana Potency enunciates the general principle after describing cultivation patterns and their results: "The consequences of these observations for the marijuana farmer are clear. You have two basic choices: high potency and low yield or lower potency and high yield."

Kayo cites a DEA study in his The Sinsemilla Technique on the THC content in various forms of marijuana. It reflects this division:

THC levels in "normal" cannabis—that which grows wild or is imported from other countries—ranges from 0% to 2.5%, Domestic cannabis—that which is cultivated in the stressfilled environments of the United States-— ranges from 2.89? to 7.6%.

Many people prefer strains without too much THC content. Others prefer to smoke small tokes of stronger Cannabis or to share half a joint with a friend (which in the better crops is sufficient for both). While the first tier is sold to the consumer in ounces or maybe quarter or half pounds, the second tier most often goes by the gram or possibly an ounce.

The ultimate test of a marijuana sample is smoking it. But much can also be learned by paying attention to some of the qualities evident in the leaves, twigs and whatever else is being presented:

Seeds. Their presence indicates that this isn't the most potentially-resinous of plants, but rather a seeded female—which still can be very strong. There are various estimates indicating that about 40 to 50 percent of the "vita! energy" in the female will go into seed production rather than resin production if fertilized. The weight one gets to smoke, of course, doesn't include the weight of seeds.

An examination of the seeds also enables one to determine something of the maturity of the plant when it was harvested. If they are round and dark, then they were probably harvested when resin and THC were roughly at their peak. If there are a lot of seeds that are smaller and yellower, then it was probably cut down early. Seeds from different locales can vary in size by a factor of two, with C. sativa varieties generally larger. C. indica seeds are distinguished from those of C. sativa by Michael Starks like this:

C. indies tends to have small, almost spherical seeds .... C. sativa seeds are often highly compressed longitudinally so that when pressure is applied to the peripheral ridges, they easily fall apart, in contrast to those of C. indict C sativa seeds are the largest of the three species, often exceeding 5 mm in length.

Shake-to-Bud Ratio. If the marijuana is all loose leaves, or "shake," it can be male or female and of greatly varying THC and CBD content. The

Seeds, Shah, Buds, Smell 2/3

more flowers and leaf clusters, or buds, there are, the more likely that there are higher concentrations of THC. Many would consider sinsemilla shake stronger than much that is considered of commercial but not excellent quality. Young leaves can be fairly potent, as can male leaves. In his Marijuana Potency, Michael Starks discusses the complex nature of the cannabidiol (CBD) interaction with THC, gives values for specific varieties and writes that "it seems reasonable to assume that as CBD content approaches that of THC, the high will be diminished in intensity, but prolonged."

Leaf color can be predominantly brown, yellow, green, purple, black or various combinations of these and red streakings. Color becomes richer and more complex as the plant matures, but this is not much of a guide to the high that is experienced.

Resin itself, however, glints in the sun as tiny, brilliant points. Sometimes the resin becomes so thick that it actually crystalizes. The high doesn't actually accord with resin always, being a mix of the THC and CND interaction, but generally speaking this is so.

Smelt. Many novelists and other writers have described the smell of marijuana as that of burning rope, perhaps getting off on the fact that it comes from the hemp plant. The actual smell is unlike any other herb, but is fairly pronounced and pervasive when marijuana is burned As the plant matures the sharp, earthy smell of the leaves coming from chlorophyll dimin-ishes as the more honey- and flower-like odors produced by resin and flowers increasingly predominate. Most users like the "taste" of all marijuana smoke,

Harvesting, Crushing, Aging 215

but prefer the more "resonate" smells produced at the end of the plant's life. The difference is much like that exhibited in bouquet of a wine as it ages and loses the astringent flavor produced by tannins.

Veteran smokers can easily tell if a sample of marijuana is bunk, ordinary or special by crushing a bud in one's fingers, When it breaks open, there should be a pungent smell. If its quite good, the fingers should also be somewhat sticky. Some strains have a strong pine, mint or skunk odor.

Ordinary imports of Mexican, Colombian and Jamaican generally have only small buds about 1 -1W long, which may constitute possibly a fifth to a tenth of the total. These are sufficient in most instances to get people quite high, as are just leaves alone. Fortunately, it takes only ten or fifteen minutes at most to know from direct experience whether the sample offered has effects predominantly up, strong, stony, psychedelic or whatever.

How should one check out a preferred "Thai" stick? These have been the only example so far of a special kind of Cannabis associated with excep-tional packaging—small buds tied along a short skewer stick. (See back issues of High Times and Cannabis calendars for illustrative specimens.) Anyone interested in this question should roll fingers along a small pan of it the sample and see how sticky it is; smell it.checking out how "resonant" and complex the smells; and smoke a bit, giving it the ultimate test. Unroll about half an inch of the six inch skewer it is tied to and smoke that. If the results Bare not soon impressive, the sample is likely bogus.

I Harvesting, Pressing and Aging. The best grass comes as "colas" or

I long "buds" which have been individually picked and often are hung upside I down for at least three days to dry. They are hung upside down not to add THC to the leaves from other pans of the plant—as psychedelic myth long had held—because THC doesn't translocate. Hanging upside down gives the buds a tighter shape.

The bud is then manicured, or trimmed, of its loose leaves and sometimes vacuum-sealed in bottles or heat sealed into plastic containers. Kept cool, it will lose only about 5% of its content per year. Most foreign shipments are compressed before shipment into "bricks" that weigh about a kilogram. Sometimes there are foreign objects inside, but this is rare. More important is that the crushing breaks up some of the protective shielding that keeps THC from turning into an inactive form through oxidation. The normal state to which grass is dried is not brittle, but as it ages it becomes more powdery and less powerful. This is why most people using quality grass, or often any kind, break open only a small amount it a time. Crumbled and exposed for any length of time to air, the THC in marijuana is sure to lose a significant amount of psychoactivity.

Hashisb and Hash Oil

Grass is to hashish or charas as beer and wine are to hard liquor. As in the case of distilled spirits, some care is needed in the preparation of this Strengthened Cannabis product.

I

Collecting Resin 217

Traditionally, hash was collected by workers passing bareskinned through Cannabis fields, embracing the plants and then having the adhering resin scraped off their bodies. Nowadays, the practice generally is to clothe a worker in leather and then scrape the resin off the leather, or to simply rub the plant's buds with one's hands and then scrape the oily residue off one's hands. W.D, Drake's The International Cultivator's Handbook and Lawrence Cherniak's The Great Books of Hashish provide fairly full discussions of other methods of hash production, including one in which workers go into sealed beating or thrashing rooms clothed in loincloths and masks, seeking to extract the finest powder. Cherniak's book illustrates the processes and the products of Morocco, Lebanon, Afghanistan and the Himalayas in 168 superb color photographs.

Hash Oil and THC Pills 219

The resin that has been collected gets pressed with animal fat, honey or a similar amalgam. Generally speaking, the quality of hash often corresponds to color—the darker it is, the more potent it usually turns out to be. But there are important exceptions. Good-quality Morrocan, for instance is frequently very potent, even though it looks rather white. Hashish deteriorates faster than marijuana because it is broken up finely when manufacturing begins. When it is well pressed, however, the interior will maintain its potency for about two or three years.

In the early 1970s, we first began to see fairly large amounts of "hash oil," a product distilled from marijuana leaves. Processes are detailed in Starks' Marijuana Potency from DEA papers. Here the rules of color are reversed: the darker the color, usually the less refined, the more harsh and the less potent the oil is.

The usual methods for smoking hash oil are: in a special glass pipe {an example can be found on page 331), on the end of a cigarette or rolled with tobacco or grass. Perhaps the most efficient way is to smear a drop or two on a cigarette paper and then roll that into a joint. Really fine quality hash oil is powerful enough that only a trace is needed. Dipping a container in hot water thins it, so that just a bit can be picked up by inserting a needle or paperclip and then smearing this on paper.

THC and Analogues

Delta-9 THC, because it has been around so long, is not patentable. For

THC analogues, however, this is not the case. As a result, quite a few pharmaceutical houses have spent money trying to come up with something that would mimic THC's medical properties without THC's psychoactivity. Several candidates for this role were produced, with Lilly's "Nabilone" being considered for a while as the most promising. After a year of testing, however, dogs showed dramatic drops in blood pressure, and soon Lilly withdrew Nabilone from FDA consideration.

The U.S. government supplied marijuana until recently for a small amount of medical use. In August 1982, Surgeon General Julius Richmond announced that the government had decided to make THC pills available to cancer patients instead. Robert Randall and others concerned with medical use of marijuana attacked the decision. "I think it is unfortunate that the government decided to release what is known to be a medically inferior substance to marijuana and a substance which has a far higher potential for adverse side effects," Randall said. "In effect, the government is trying to flood the market with a phony synthetic and at the same time trying to retard research on the natural material." Roger Roffman's studies showed the natural substance to be more easily tolerated than the synthetic. Stephen Sallan of the Harvard Medical School said that smoking marijuana was more effective in reducing chemotherapy side-effects because it speeded up absorption of the active ingredient into the bloodstream.

222 Marijuana and Hashish

other vegetable matter. Squeeze cloth lightly to prevent waste. Discard residue in cheesecloth. Refrigerate mixture again until butter or margarine congeals on top of liquid. (Active ingredients of marijuana are now dissolved in oil.) Carefully skim off congealed butter or margarine and discard liquid.

This paste can be used in any recipe instead of butter or margarine. The active ingredients aren't weakened by being cooked again. It can also be packed into capsules or shaped into suppositories.

Quick Recipes 223

Two quick, efficient recipies: (1) To a brownie or corn bread mix weighing about I¹/; pounds, add 1 cup of cleaned commercial grass that's been broken up by a blender and saute'ed in butter or margarine for about fifteen minutes. Cut into nine or ten portions after baking as usual; take one or two at a time. (2) Melt half a cube (1/8 pound) butter in a pan and in this saute' a third to a half ounce of moderately potent grass for about five to ten minutes over low heat (not near any flames). Without allowing this to splatter, pour in eight ounces of vodka or rum rather swiftly and boil at a low temperature for another one to five minutes (depending upon how much alcohol you wish to evaporate). Strain the result, removing as much as possible of the juices into cups. Sweeten to taste with honey if desired; sufficient for two to four people.

220 Marijuana and Hashish

Smoking

The usual way to ingest marijuana is by smoking it. In this way THC acid is "decarboxylaced" into THC and together with already-present THC passes into the lungs where it enters the bloodstream and is carried across the blood-brain barrier. This occurs quite rapidly, so that most veterans have some idea of the quality of a sample within a minute or two, although others might need to take longer.

Our present-day pipe appears to have been developed by the Indians of the Ohio Valley sometime around the second century B.C., if we are to believe the evidence of excavations of burial mounds. The notion of creating a joint—rolling a smoking mixture into a cigarette—seems to have developed originally among the Indians of Mexico prior to the time of Moncezuma. By the time of The Thousand and One Nights, toward the end of the first millenium A.D., the hookah (or "bubbly bubbly") was well known.

Since then there have been some innovations in smoking: the bong, the carburetor, hash and opium pipes. High Times displays many refinements, including "The Tilt," which is said to heat marijuana only to the proper temperature for extraction of the THCs so that other oils are left in

Marijuana Butter Paste 221

the residue. For those with sensitive throats, use of hot water in a bong reduces the amount of water-soluble, non-psychoactive components in Cannabis smoke and thus increase the amount of THC ingested per toke, while reducing the harshness on the lungs. "Passing the smoke through cold water tends to condense some of the desirable components," comments High Times in one of its advice columns, adding that since the majority of cannabinols (including THC) dissolve in alcohol, "the use of alcoholic beverages in a water pipe will give a less potent smoke." Many users prefer the taste when it is passed through cold water.

Eating Marijuana

In India and other areas with long marijuana experience, Cannabis is often made into something like a milkshake (bhang) or a kind of candy (most commonly known as majoun). These methods give effects, but experience has shown that if marijuana is to be ingested, its potency can be increased considerably by cooking it first in oil at low temperatures for about fifteen minutes.

Because cannabinols are not soluble in water, the general practice is to cook them in fat or butter (which when strained, produces the famous Indian product called ghee) or alcohol (in which they are soluble, although in this case all heating should be done at low temperatures and in the absence of an open flame since alcohol is highly combustible). A number of pamphlets on Cannabis cookery have been published, but many simply contain rewritten, familiar recipes to which grass has been added Some, such as that by "Panama Rose," recommend that grass be boiled in water to make a tea—which is an effective way to lose most of the active principles if the grass itself is then simply thrown out like old coffee grounds. I recommend W.D. Drake.Jr.'s book Marijuana Fond (Simon & Schuster) or Adam Gottlieb's booklet Art 6 Science of Cannabis Cookery (Level Press), which discuss culinary factors that should be taken into account with marijuana and provide all the basic recipes one might need.

Another point that should be remembered is that if the stomach is relatively empty, marijuana products are digested much faster. Thus, there are good grounds for not simply adding grass to a dish like spaghetti.

The basic recipe for marijuana butter paste given by Roger Roffman for his patients requires 1 to 1 1/2 ounces cleaned marijuana, 1 quart of water and 1/4 pound butter or margarine:

In saucepan, combine marijuana, water, and butter or margarine. Simmer for approximately 45 minutes. Mixture will become green or mustard-colored as active ingredients of marijuana are dissolved in oil of butter or margarine. Refrigerate mixture to cool If, after cooling, butter or margarine has congealed, reheat mixture just enough to return it to liquid form. Stretch cheesecloth over bowl and pour mixture through it to remove leaves and