The Effects of Cannabis
(This is a paper that I had to write for my composition class, and, much to my surprise, I got an A on it! Curious how I got an A on it? Read on.)
Marijuana is harmless! Weed gives children a third eye in the middle of their forehead! Cannabis cures your headaches! Pot is a gateway drug! Hashish helps those who have AIDS! Dope turns respectable people into psycho killers! The claims for the little plant are far and wide. Like most children growing up in the second half of the twentieth century, I have too been warned about the dangers and pitfalls of Mary Jane, how she is a convincing temptress, how she can bend you to her will, make you a slacker, and will introduce you to her friends. So, like the rest of the nation, when it was mentioned that cannabis could be used as medicine, I said, “WHA?! The Devil’s lettuce used as medication?!” To my surprise, it actually has been used as medicine long before the birth of Christ. The Chinese emperor (not to mention pharmacologist) Shen Neng prescribed hashish for gout, malaria, beriberi, rheumatism, and memory problems. Even at the turn of the previous century, marijuana was still being prescribed for common ailments and even pharmaceutical companies were marketing cannabis extracts. So why would something like that be illegal just to have in your pocket? That’s what this paper will attempt to explain over the next few pages.
To be fair, it isn’t all Harry J. Anslinger’s fault (more about him in a few paragraphs). Anti-marijuana attitudes have their roots in 1840, when a fellow by the name of William Baring, a member of parliament for North Staffordshire, said that if the current day crusade against opium were to continue and it were to inevitably be outlawed, then people would just turn to cannabis to get their drug fix, which he proclaimed “more injurious than the use of the poppy.” Thirty years later, the issue of the effect of ganja came up again, but in South Africa. Some suggest that the use of recreational weed was brought over by immigrant workers from India, and the locals took to it quickly. It was here that the first law for possession of cannabis was passed to curb the use of cannabis and to get the workers back on their feet. The use of marijuana was so bad that some workers took sick days just to light one up, so the belief was that if this law was passed, the workers would be more productive. Ah, if only. The landmark law all in all was largely ignored. And as far as trying to enforce the no pot law, it was downright impossible, mainly because the offenders were usually in hard to patrol bush country.
However, South Africa was not alone in its problem with pot. In British-ruled India, concern of the effects of hashish arose when it looked like the local work force and soldiers were becoming insane due to ganja. Due to these alarming claims, the Indian government under the direction of Secretary of State (of India) Lord Kimberley launched the most comprehensive report on cannabis in the history of the world. Seriously, in 115 years since the findings have been published, no research on hashish has come close to the 3,500 page report. And what was in those thirty-five-hundred pages? Well, the conclusion reached was that it wasn’t as dangerous as claimed and that if it were to be outlawed, the consequences would cause civil unrest due to its use in religious ceremonies. So it remained legal, much to the dismay of South Africa. And so the pattern continued throughout the rest of the 19th century. Laws were passed in hopes to curb cannabis use, thought they were largely ignored, and enforcement of such laws was difficult because said abusers of cannabis were in remote locations hard to police. In my opinion, it seemed that the areas where the laws were passed, outlawing weed was just considered silly. It was like making drinking water illegal. It wasn’t seen as something to be taken seriously and there was no real fear associated with cannabis. However, when Mary Jane came over to the States, its fate was essentially sealed.
Immigrants and fear of said immigrants is nothing new in this country. But when they came over, many brought over their dirty habits, much like when workers from India introduced ganja to South Africa. However, the fear of immigrants was still high in the late 19th century America and their strange customs were under scrutiny from the American public, including their drug habits. Soon, it was considered that all matter of drugs associated with those coming in from other countries could fall into the hands of innocent children. Not only that, but nervous Americans were looking for ways to get rid of those darn foreigners, and marijuana seemed like a good way to get them out. This was especially the case with Mexicans, who were generally disliked due to the fact that they generally didn’t learn English, they worked for low wages (thus putting out of work the hard working small town American), and their use of marijuana. So when the Mexicans were unfairly being harassed and bullied by citizens and lawmen alike and they fought back, immediately the cause of their resistance was pinned on pot. It soon became common knowledge by the beginning of the 20th century that hashish was smoked by Mexicans, African-Americans, and those of ill reputation.
It wasn’t just the States that had a problem with illegal drugs and too many strange immigrants. Canada was on its own crusade against the far more lethal drugs of opium and cocaine. Marijuana? Well, that would have been ignored altogether, had it not been for Emily F. Murphy, who wrote about the evils of marijuana in 1920, though she herself had never been exposed to the wacky baccy. In fact, most of what she wrote was a lie. Basically, if you weren’t white or Christian, you probably took drugs and were trying to take over the world. To give you an idea what this crazy lady wrote, behold! “Some of the Negroes coming into Canada - and they are no fiddle-faddle fellows either - have similar ideas, and one of their greatest writers has boasted how ultimately they will control the white man.” Apparently the way they would take over is by getting us addicted to weed. Okay, so how did she describe the sensation of becoming high without ever touching a blunt or talking to someone who actually got high? Easy: she made it up. “Persons using marijuana smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict looses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under the influence, are immune to pain, become raving maniacs, and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons.” Needless to say, after that xenophobic lie-fest of a rant about pot, the Canadian government quickly added it to the list of drugs to be regulated.
Back in the United States, with the 1920s came the 18th amendment, also known widely as the age of Prohibition. An age where the Mob came into their own supplying illegal booze, the speakeasies in which said illegal booze was served, and jazz was played at said speakeasies. With jazz came the use of cannabis. Yep, jazz players used marijuana not to mellow out, but rather to help them perform. It slowed down time to them, thus helping them hit the notes more accurately and it helped them hear their instruments far better than they could when sober. Some might go as far as to argue that marijuana helped with the evolution of jazz. So of course marijuana had a presence in the speakeasy, which made it all too easy to label the speakeasy as a place of ultimate sin. Not only did you have mobsters selling alcoholic beverages that were clearly illegal, but even the entertainment was partaking in a psychotropic only the dirty Mexicans partook in. This was one of the many factors that helped out Harry’s case against marijuana. It could quite convincingly be argued Mr. Anslinger changed the course of cannabis in North America. Remember, up to this point, it was seen as something of an annoyance in many societies, like a mosquito buzzing around your head. What Anslinger did was give that mosquito West Nile virus.
In 1930, Anslinger was appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), a division created solely to enforce the laws set forth by the Harrison Act, which was to stop the use of drugs. There was just one problem with the FBN (probably also the reason why you have never heard of it) that had three letters: FBI. Quite frankly, J. Edgar Hoover and company were far more romantic and had more money than the humble FBN. Romantic? Let me put it this way. Which sounds cooler: taking down spies or pot-heads? The FBI got all the glory in the public eye for stopping the notorious gangsters, rooting out communism, and capturing Nazi spies. And the FBN? Well, the best they could hope for is taking some annoying druggies off the street. So of course when it came time to give the Federal Bureaus money, the government too was swept up in the romantic image of the Investigation, while Narcotics got the short end of the financial stick. They had to do something that would catapult them into the public eye and get them some much needed money. So Harry did what the public cried out for: go after marijuana.
Wait, didn’t the public generally ignore cannabis? Yes, but this was during the Great Depression, when jobs were scarce and what few jobs were available were being taken by Mexicans for little money. William Randolph Hearst added fuel to the fire with his “yellow journalism,” publishing legends without confirming that there was any truth to them (much like what Emily F. Murphy did in Canada). One story he had his newspaper print was that Mexicans were giving out samples of marijuana to school kids. Cheap shot there Hearst, but it was effective in getting American’s minds off of the fact that they couldn’t have a nice cold beer. And for those who really wanted to drink, they had to go to great lengths for said cold beer. A stop at a local speakeasy was the only way of getting it. As mention before, all sorts of criminals, thieves, mobsters, and generally not nice people congregated at a speakeasy. At speakeasies across the country, more than likely jazz would be played there, for which the musicians would bring in their supply of hash. The connection was made. Only criminals smoked marijuana. Anslinger went one step further than that. He spread the rumor that it could make you insane.
“The sprawled body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk the other day after a plunge from the fifth story of a Chicago apartment house. Everyone called it suicide, but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known in America as marihuana, and to history as hashish. It is a narcotic used in the form of cigarettes, comparatively new to the United States and as dangerous as a coiled rattlesnake…” That was a piece of work that Anslinger himself wrote called “Marijuana: Assassin of Youth.” Another one of Anslinger’s favorite stories to tell was that of Victor Licata, a young man who murdered his entire family with an ax. When captured, it was determined that Licata was criminally insane. So what caused this young man to go and butcher his family? I’ll give you one guess. In Licata’s own words, he killed his family while in a marijuana dream. That was the final nail in the coffin for legal cannabis in the States. President Roosevelt signed into action the Marihuana Tax Act on August 2, 1937, and it went into effect on the first of October of that year. As the bill implies, it wasn’t made illegal, you just had to pay a ridiculous amount of money to carry it, suggest it as medicine, or grow it. It wasn’t until 1952 when the Boggs Act was passed that possession of cannabis carried with it jail time and a hefty fine.
However, as my research has turned up, Anslinger was wrong on many counts. First, let’s get the basic stuff out of the way, as in what smoking cannabis actually does to you. Now for those of you who have actually used marijuana, I’m sure that you were laughing when you read the part on how hemp puts people in a murderous rage. What it does to you is at the far end of that scale. It relaxes you, your sense of time is altered to the point where you think it has slowed down, your emotions are far stronger, and sleep actually improves (with low doses). The main cause for these reactions is due to a chemical that makes up most of marijuana called tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. It’s not the only active component, though it is the most well know. It is one of sixty-six different chemicals in cannabis, called cannabinoids. All cannabinoids dissolve in any type of fat (tissues, fluids, and plain old fat), yet when they come in contact with water, cannabinoids remain unaffected. Right, but how does one get these cannabinoids into their system? The most common way of doing it is by smoking cannabis, and with good reason. Breathing it in is the fastest way to get the cannabinoids into your bloodstream and to the brain. Though once it gets to the brain, there isn’t a shortage of places for cannabinoids to settle in. Discovered in 1990 by scientists Bidaut-Russell, Devane, and Howlett, there are far more receptors for cannabis for other substances (say, opium). This type of evidence gives scientists that perhaps we humans are designed to take in cannabis. Others argue with that claim, saying that those receptors take it in just because it’s there.
Regardless whether God designed us to get stoned is beside the point. What specifically happens once you do take at hit? Those observing you who are checking your pulse will have noticed that your heart rate will have gone up. Remember how I said previously that cannabis affects people differently? Well, one thing that is consistent with everyone is that their heart rate goes up. Lineke Zuurman, Annelise Ippel, Eduard Moin, and Joop van Gerven all combed through 165 different studies on marijuana (God bless them for it), and they found that more than likely your heart rate will go up no matter how much cannabis you have smoked. Okay, so there are a few freaks out there that don’t react to marijuana (2 out of 100 who actually have their heart rate decrease with a dose over eighteen milligrams), but all in all the results speak for themselves. But that’s the only constant that Zuurman and company were able to pull out of the one-hundred and sixty-five studies. Everything else is too scattered to pick a pattern out. Twenty-five out of a hundred had their judgment impaired, while sixty-two percent could still learn new tasks (though it didn’t enhance their memory). Okay, but what about your “trip?” I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: it all depends on the person. The person, and the environment. If you decided to smoke cannabis in a friendly, cozy place, you’ll probably end up being relaxed. (A researcher by the name of Zinberg in 1984 confirms this.) Light one up in an unfamiliar place that’s not too inviting…you can see where that is going. (Paranoia and disorientation for those of you who couldn’t take the hint.) As far as the person goes, again, it all depends. One person’s trip could make them contemplate the meaning of life, while another is contempt to just sit and listen to Grateful Dead albums all day, yet another person could find humor in someone sitting down.
In my research of the affects of cannabis, not once did it mention the sudden urge to go and kill someone as one of the sensations (much to the dismay of Emily F. Murphy and Harry J. Anslinger). Still, it has been mentioned that some felons do have some cannabinoids floating around in their system when they do get arrested. Could Emily and Harry’s fears be justified? No. Think of it this way: if you planned on committing a crime like killing someone or stealing from someone else, what’s a little dope to you anyway? This is entirely mean and judgmental, but criminals and anti-social people are more likely to do drugs than the nice kid who gets straight As in school. So, to a certain extent, yes, marijuana can drive people crazy, but that means that you are crazy in the first place.
So, by all accounts cannabis is harmless, right? Not entirely. Like any other medication, it does carry consequences for misusing it or using it too much. One particular finding that has me worried is the cerebral brain flow (CBF) and while under the influence of hemp, the blood flow to your brain increases. Now that may be all good and well while using it for a short time (heck, it might even help out with the creative process), but when you use it over time, the body realizes that this is a regular occurrence. So, to compensate for all that extra blood flowing to the brain, it reduces the blood flow to the brain when you’re sober. It is only when you ingest cannabis that a normal amount of blood gets to your noggin. In other words, just to think like a normal person, you have to use cannabis. Not really an addiction, but it is worrying. A problem also arises when you use cannabis before your body fully matures. Remember the old saying that coffee stuns your growth? The same can be said for smoking weed before your body stops growing. It has been documented by Wilson in 2000 that those who smoke marijuana before age 17 on average end up being three inches shorter if you’re a guy. Women show no difference, but they end up on average being seven pounds lighter. Though that may not be as bad, considering that the men were on average 20 pounds lighter. Chronic users also have the difficulty of having no filters with their brains. Let me explain. When you are assaulted with several sounds/tasks/people speaking to you, your initial response is to filter it all out by taking it one at a time. Using cannabis for a long period of time (more than two years with the studies used), and you can’t filter out all this information coming at you. While this may not be as bad as growing another head, it may make day to day tasks a bit more difficult to focus on.
If there is one thing that kept on appearing in all of my research, it is this: more research on cannabis needs to be done. If anything, the research on cannabis itself has yet to fully mature. Remember, it took 40 years to gather enough dada on tobacco to realize that it kills you slowly. Does that mean that cannabis is turning us into easily distracted mellow people? Although that may seem like a reasonable conclusion, more research needs to be done to justify this claim. So does that mean that you can go and light one up now? Hardly. It isn’t the worst thing in the world, yet it still has its dangers. Like any medication, it can help you, but only if you use it wisely.
Marijuana is harmless! Weed gives children a third eye in the middle of their forehead! Cannabis cures your headaches! Pot is a gateway drug! Hashish helps those who have AIDS! Dope turns respectable people into psycho killers! The claims for the little plant are far and wide. Like most children growing up in the second half of the twentieth century, I have too been warned about the dangers and pitfalls of Mary Jane, how she is a convincing temptress, how she can bend you to her will, make you a slacker, and will introduce you to her friends. So, like the rest of the nation, when it was mentioned that cannabis could be used as medicine, I said, “WHA?! The Devil’s lettuce used as medication?!” To my surprise, it actually has been used as medicine long before the birth of Christ. The Chinese emperor (not to mention pharmacologist) Shen Neng prescribed hashish for gout, malaria, beriberi, rheumatism, and memory problems. Even at the turn of the previous century, marijuana was still being prescribed for common ailments and even pharmaceutical companies were marketing cannabis extracts. So why would something like that be illegal just to have in your pocket? That’s what this paper will attempt to explain over the next few pages.
To be fair, it isn’t all Harry J. Anslinger’s fault (more about him in a few paragraphs). Anti-marijuana attitudes have their roots in 1840, when a fellow by the name of William Baring, a member of parliament for North Staffordshire, said that if the current day crusade against opium were to continue and it were to inevitably be outlawed, then people would just turn to cannabis to get their drug fix, which he proclaimed “more injurious than the use of the poppy.” Thirty years later, the issue of the effect of ganja came up again, but in South Africa. Some suggest that the use of recreational weed was brought over by immigrant workers from India, and the locals took to it quickly. It was here that the first law for possession of cannabis was passed to curb the use of cannabis and to get the workers back on their feet. The use of marijuana was so bad that some workers took sick days just to light one up, so the belief was that if this law was passed, the workers would be more productive. Ah, if only. The landmark law all in all was largely ignored. And as far as trying to enforce the no pot law, it was downright impossible, mainly because the offenders were usually in hard to patrol bush country.
However, South Africa was not alone in its problem with pot. In British-ruled India, concern of the effects of hashish arose when it looked like the local work force and soldiers were becoming insane due to ganja. Due to these alarming claims, the Indian government under the direction of Secretary of State (of India) Lord Kimberley launched the most comprehensive report on cannabis in the history of the world. Seriously, in 115 years since the findings have been published, no research on hashish has come close to the 3,500 page report. And what was in those thirty-five-hundred pages? Well, the conclusion reached was that it wasn’t as dangerous as claimed and that if it were to be outlawed, the consequences would cause civil unrest due to its use in religious ceremonies. So it remained legal, much to the dismay of South Africa. And so the pattern continued throughout the rest of the 19th century. Laws were passed in hopes to curb cannabis use, thought they were largely ignored, and enforcement of such laws was difficult because said abusers of cannabis were in remote locations hard to police. In my opinion, it seemed that the areas where the laws were passed, outlawing weed was just considered silly. It was like making drinking water illegal. It wasn’t seen as something to be taken seriously and there was no real fear associated with cannabis. However, when Mary Jane came over to the States, its fate was essentially sealed.
Immigrants and fear of said immigrants is nothing new in this country. But when they came over, many brought over their dirty habits, much like when workers from India introduced ganja to South Africa. However, the fear of immigrants was still high in the late 19th century America and their strange customs were under scrutiny from the American public, including their drug habits. Soon, it was considered that all matter of drugs associated with those coming in from other countries could fall into the hands of innocent children. Not only that, but nervous Americans were looking for ways to get rid of those darn foreigners, and marijuana seemed like a good way to get them out. This was especially the case with Mexicans, who were generally disliked due to the fact that they generally didn’t learn English, they worked for low wages (thus putting out of work the hard working small town American), and their use of marijuana. So when the Mexicans were unfairly being harassed and bullied by citizens and lawmen alike and they fought back, immediately the cause of their resistance was pinned on pot. It soon became common knowledge by the beginning of the 20th century that hashish was smoked by Mexicans, African-Americans, and those of ill reputation.
It wasn’t just the States that had a problem with illegal drugs and too many strange immigrants. Canada was on its own crusade against the far more lethal drugs of opium and cocaine. Marijuana? Well, that would have been ignored altogether, had it not been for Emily F. Murphy, who wrote about the evils of marijuana in 1920, though she herself had never been exposed to the wacky baccy. In fact, most of what she wrote was a lie. Basically, if you weren’t white or Christian, you probably took drugs and were trying to take over the world. To give you an idea what this crazy lady wrote, behold! “Some of the Negroes coming into Canada - and they are no fiddle-faddle fellows either - have similar ideas, and one of their greatest writers has boasted how ultimately they will control the white man.” Apparently the way they would take over is by getting us addicted to weed. Okay, so how did she describe the sensation of becoming high without ever touching a blunt or talking to someone who actually got high? Easy: she made it up. “Persons using marijuana smoke the dried leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The addict looses all sense of moral responsibility. Addicts to this drug, while under the influence, are immune to pain, become raving maniacs, and are liable to kill or indulge in any form of violence to other persons.” Needless to say, after that xenophobic lie-fest of a rant about pot, the Canadian government quickly added it to the list of drugs to be regulated.
Back in the United States, with the 1920s came the 18th amendment, also known widely as the age of Prohibition. An age where the Mob came into their own supplying illegal booze, the speakeasies in which said illegal booze was served, and jazz was played at said speakeasies. With jazz came the use of cannabis. Yep, jazz players used marijuana not to mellow out, but rather to help them perform. It slowed down time to them, thus helping them hit the notes more accurately and it helped them hear their instruments far better than they could when sober. Some might go as far as to argue that marijuana helped with the evolution of jazz. So of course marijuana had a presence in the speakeasy, which made it all too easy to label the speakeasy as a place of ultimate sin. Not only did you have mobsters selling alcoholic beverages that were clearly illegal, but even the entertainment was partaking in a psychotropic only the dirty Mexicans partook in. This was one of the many factors that helped out Harry’s case against marijuana. It could quite convincingly be argued Mr. Anslinger changed the course of cannabis in North America. Remember, up to this point, it was seen as something of an annoyance in many societies, like a mosquito buzzing around your head. What Anslinger did was give that mosquito West Nile virus.
In 1930, Anslinger was appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), a division created solely to enforce the laws set forth by the Harrison Act, which was to stop the use of drugs. There was just one problem with the FBN (probably also the reason why you have never heard of it) that had three letters: FBI. Quite frankly, J. Edgar Hoover and company were far more romantic and had more money than the humble FBN. Romantic? Let me put it this way. Which sounds cooler: taking down spies or pot-heads? The FBI got all the glory in the public eye for stopping the notorious gangsters, rooting out communism, and capturing Nazi spies. And the FBN? Well, the best they could hope for is taking some annoying druggies off the street. So of course when it came time to give the Federal Bureaus money, the government too was swept up in the romantic image of the Investigation, while Narcotics got the short end of the financial stick. They had to do something that would catapult them into the public eye and get them some much needed money. So Harry did what the public cried out for: go after marijuana.
Wait, didn’t the public generally ignore cannabis? Yes, but this was during the Great Depression, when jobs were scarce and what few jobs were available were being taken by Mexicans for little money. William Randolph Hearst added fuel to the fire with his “yellow journalism,” publishing legends without confirming that there was any truth to them (much like what Emily F. Murphy did in Canada). One story he had his newspaper print was that Mexicans were giving out samples of marijuana to school kids. Cheap shot there Hearst, but it was effective in getting American’s minds off of the fact that they couldn’t have a nice cold beer. And for those who really wanted to drink, they had to go to great lengths for said cold beer. A stop at a local speakeasy was the only way of getting it. As mention before, all sorts of criminals, thieves, mobsters, and generally not nice people congregated at a speakeasy. At speakeasies across the country, more than likely jazz would be played there, for which the musicians would bring in their supply of hash. The connection was made. Only criminals smoked marijuana. Anslinger went one step further than that. He spread the rumor that it could make you insane.
“The sprawled body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk the other day after a plunge from the fifth story of a Chicago apartment house. Everyone called it suicide, but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known in America as marihuana, and to history as hashish. It is a narcotic used in the form of cigarettes, comparatively new to the United States and as dangerous as a coiled rattlesnake…” That was a piece of work that Anslinger himself wrote called “Marijuana: Assassin of Youth.” Another one of Anslinger’s favorite stories to tell was that of Victor Licata, a young man who murdered his entire family with an ax. When captured, it was determined that Licata was criminally insane. So what caused this young man to go and butcher his family? I’ll give you one guess. In Licata’s own words, he killed his family while in a marijuana dream. That was the final nail in the coffin for legal cannabis in the States. President Roosevelt signed into action the Marihuana Tax Act on August 2, 1937, and it went into effect on the first of October of that year. As the bill implies, it wasn’t made illegal, you just had to pay a ridiculous amount of money to carry it, suggest it as medicine, or grow it. It wasn’t until 1952 when the Boggs Act was passed that possession of cannabis carried with it jail time and a hefty fine.
However, as my research has turned up, Anslinger was wrong on many counts. First, let’s get the basic stuff out of the way, as in what smoking cannabis actually does to you. Now for those of you who have actually used marijuana, I’m sure that you were laughing when you read the part on how hemp puts people in a murderous rage. What it does to you is at the far end of that scale. It relaxes you, your sense of time is altered to the point where you think it has slowed down, your emotions are far stronger, and sleep actually improves (with low doses). The main cause for these reactions is due to a chemical that makes up most of marijuana called tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. It’s not the only active component, though it is the most well know. It is one of sixty-six different chemicals in cannabis, called cannabinoids. All cannabinoids dissolve in any type of fat (tissues, fluids, and plain old fat), yet when they come in contact with water, cannabinoids remain unaffected. Right, but how does one get these cannabinoids into their system? The most common way of doing it is by smoking cannabis, and with good reason. Breathing it in is the fastest way to get the cannabinoids into your bloodstream and to the brain. Though once it gets to the brain, there isn’t a shortage of places for cannabinoids to settle in. Discovered in 1990 by scientists Bidaut-Russell, Devane, and Howlett, there are far more receptors for cannabis for other substances (say, opium). This type of evidence gives scientists that perhaps we humans are designed to take in cannabis. Others argue with that claim, saying that those receptors take it in just because it’s there.
Regardless whether God designed us to get stoned is beside the point. What specifically happens once you do take at hit? Those observing you who are checking your pulse will have noticed that your heart rate will have gone up. Remember how I said previously that cannabis affects people differently? Well, one thing that is consistent with everyone is that their heart rate goes up. Lineke Zuurman, Annelise Ippel, Eduard Moin, and Joop van Gerven all combed through 165 different studies on marijuana (God bless them for it), and they found that more than likely your heart rate will go up no matter how much cannabis you have smoked. Okay, so there are a few freaks out there that don’t react to marijuana (2 out of 100 who actually have their heart rate decrease with a dose over eighteen milligrams), but all in all the results speak for themselves. But that’s the only constant that Zuurman and company were able to pull out of the one-hundred and sixty-five studies. Everything else is too scattered to pick a pattern out. Twenty-five out of a hundred had their judgment impaired, while sixty-two percent could still learn new tasks (though it didn’t enhance their memory). Okay, but what about your “trip?” I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: it all depends on the person. The person, and the environment. If you decided to smoke cannabis in a friendly, cozy place, you’ll probably end up being relaxed. (A researcher by the name of Zinberg in 1984 confirms this.) Light one up in an unfamiliar place that’s not too inviting…you can see where that is going. (Paranoia and disorientation for those of you who couldn’t take the hint.) As far as the person goes, again, it all depends. One person’s trip could make them contemplate the meaning of life, while another is contempt to just sit and listen to Grateful Dead albums all day, yet another person could find humor in someone sitting down.
In my research of the affects of cannabis, not once did it mention the sudden urge to go and kill someone as one of the sensations (much to the dismay of Emily F. Murphy and Harry J. Anslinger). Still, it has been mentioned that some felons do have some cannabinoids floating around in their system when they do get arrested. Could Emily and Harry’s fears be justified? No. Think of it this way: if you planned on committing a crime like killing someone or stealing from someone else, what’s a little dope to you anyway? This is entirely mean and judgmental, but criminals and anti-social people are more likely to do drugs than the nice kid who gets straight As in school. So, to a certain extent, yes, marijuana can drive people crazy, but that means that you are crazy in the first place.
So, by all accounts cannabis is harmless, right? Not entirely. Like any other medication, it does carry consequences for misusing it or using it too much. One particular finding that has me worried is the cerebral brain flow (CBF) and while under the influence of hemp, the blood flow to your brain increases. Now that may be all good and well while using it for a short time (heck, it might even help out with the creative process), but when you use it over time, the body realizes that this is a regular occurrence. So, to compensate for all that extra blood flowing to the brain, it reduces the blood flow to the brain when you’re sober. It is only when you ingest cannabis that a normal amount of blood gets to your noggin. In other words, just to think like a normal person, you have to use cannabis. Not really an addiction, but it is worrying. A problem also arises when you use cannabis before your body fully matures. Remember the old saying that coffee stuns your growth? The same can be said for smoking weed before your body stops growing. It has been documented by Wilson in 2000 that those who smoke marijuana before age 17 on average end up being three inches shorter if you’re a guy. Women show no difference, but they end up on average being seven pounds lighter. Though that may not be as bad, considering that the men were on average 20 pounds lighter. Chronic users also have the difficulty of having no filters with their brains. Let me explain. When you are assaulted with several sounds/tasks/people speaking to you, your initial response is to filter it all out by taking it one at a time. Using cannabis for a long period of time (more than two years with the studies used), and you can’t filter out all this information coming at you. While this may not be as bad as growing another head, it may make day to day tasks a bit more difficult to focus on.
If there is one thing that kept on appearing in all of my research, it is this: more research on cannabis needs to be done. If anything, the research on cannabis itself has yet to fully mature. Remember, it took 40 years to gather enough dada on tobacco to realize that it kills you slowly. Does that mean that cannabis is turning us into easily distracted mellow people? Although that may seem like a reasonable conclusion, more research needs to be done to justify this claim. So does that mean that you can go and light one up now? Hardly. It isn’t the worst thing in the world, yet it still has its dangers. Like any medication, it can help you, but only if you use it wisely.