This is about two scientific things I didn’t know about cannibis. Actually, I know hardly anything about this plant except what I’ve read. Personally, I’ve been given two pieces of advice. In the Sixties when I was struggling with marriage, my brother thought I should smoke pot because it would cool me out. In the Seventies when I was in a course of counseling I meant to discourage me from the insane idea of seminary, my counselor thought I should never smoke pot because it would make me wildly paranoid. I never found out who was right because I had other things to do than smoking anything and I didn’t want to spend money on something to hold while it burned up, no matter what it was. Not even cigarettes.
Genome analysis of marijuana
But I like taking two separate scientific investigational modes at once because with something as emotional as pot, it’s easy to get stuck. I hope for contradiction. The first thing is the cannabis genome, which has been entirely decoded. Pot genes are like dog genes: plastic. Just simply by cross-pollinating and eliminating the ones you don’t want, you can easily alter the growth and chemistry of the plant. This why the stuff that’s on the street has brand names and why it’s possible to increase the strength of the active ingredient. The cannabis fiber, hemp, is valuable as a crop, so there is an equal and opposite effort to create a version that has no hallucinatory characteristics at all. The trouble is that from just looking at a plant standing there, much less doing a flyover with a spray plane or a drone, you can’t tell which is which. So you could make a law requiring THC genes be removed, but how would you enforce that without testing whole fields?
The genes that prompt the plant to make THC in two species of cannabis are identified and can be snipped to insert into the genomes of other plants, like maybe mint. Menthol cannabis. Remember experiments to grow tomatoes and potatoes on the same plant? They worked but how do you harvest? I haven’t heard whether anyone has tried to implant THC genes in potatoes, the true underground plant. Mary Jane french fries? Or stick to brownies? THC butter? They say cows are already zonked on their digestion ferment anyway. I don’t know whether THC genes could be produced by bacteria, the way crime scene DNA is amplified for analysis. Maybe it would be easier to just make the chemical, the way LSD and Exstacy are created.
More Analysis
http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i49/Chemists-Analyze-Cannabis-Safety-Potency.html “Randall Oliver [is] a chief scientist at Analytical 360, a marijuana testing lab in Seattle that started serving Washington’s medical marijuana community about two years ago. The lab tests for potency by using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to quantify the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD), and several other cannabinoids and terpenoids. It looks for these compounds in dried marijuana plants, which will be smoked, and other products, such as food and personal care products that have been infused with cannabis extracts . . .Testing edibles for potency can be surprisingly challenging, Oliver says. “You have to extract cannabinoids from many different kinds of products, including taffy, caramel, gum, butter, and soda. It’s not just a flower that we’re dealing with.” The experts say that the advantage of smoking weed is controlling the potency. In edibles there’s no control so the intake can go over the top into Crashland. A recent murder mystery featured steroid (‘roid rage) hand cream. THC Jergens?
I begin to think that an up and coming young chemist should forget about plastics and start an analysis lab. Substance analysis and human bodily fluid assays are where the steady action is and analysis isn't an illegal activity. The real scientists are not just worrying about THC levels, but also pesticides or bacterial contaminants on the original plants -- same as in food like spinach. You never know where those wild pigs will poop.
Cannabionoids have a crucial but mysterious function at neuron synapses.
The other scientific analysis approach to the study of cannabis is the molecular action of cannabinoids: why does it seem so effective in so many ways? Is it all just placebo stuff, the rigamarole and mythic tales? The first surprise is that cannabinoids are everywhere in the body, vital to its function. The second surprise is that they are a lipid, a fat, which acts in the context of cells very differently than sugars which are water soluble.
This is from “A brief history of cannabinoid and endocannabinoid pharmacology as inspired by the work of British Scientists,” by Vincenzo Di Marzo. http://www.cell.com/trends/pharmacological-sciences/abstract/S0165-6147(06)00031-9
Some people will not like me (or you) reading this because the only way they know to stay out of danger is to avoid even thinking about it. My way -- which that counselor called “counter-phobic” -- is to know as much as possible about the danger. Other people, like Elsevier, want to put such desirable info behind a pay wall. Anyway, this is a tiny bit of what I’m reading.
Some people will not like me (or you) reading this because the only way they know to stay out of danger is to avoid even thinking about it. My way -- which that counselor called “counter-phobic” -- is to know as much as possible about the danger. Other people, like Elsevier, want to put such desirable info behind a pay wall. Anyway, this is a tiny bit of what I’m reading.
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Sir William B. O'Shaughnessy
It was by “Sir William B. O’Shaughnessy, an Irish physician working in Calcutta, that the therapeutic value of cannabis was assessed scientifically for the first time and publicized in the Western world in the early 19th century.” Here’s a bit of local history: James Willard Schultz, the popular writer of Blackfeet adventures, was an avid user of “grass” for his bad back. This is in variance to his friend, the reservation government agent, Major Steele, who was a morphine addict because of HIS bad back. (He’s the one who approved the building of Swift Dam -- on his Blackfeet wife’s allotment.)
It turns out that cannabinoids are a whole complex of molecules with the typical Latinate family names. There’s THC, the active ingredient for altering consciousness, then CBD. cannabidiol, the THC-binding site -- the cannabinoid CB1 receptor -- and then a second cannabinoid receptor subtype, CB2. This brings us to 1993. And a lot more medical vocabulary.
Capiscum Frutescens: Thai peppers
Nociception (also nocioception or nociperception) is the encoding and processing of harmful stimuli in the nervous system, and, therefore, the ability of a body to sense pain. "nociceptors" or "pain receptors" only respond to tissue damage caused by intense chemical (e.g., chilli powder in the eyes), mechanical (e.g., pinching, crushing) or thermal (heat and cold) stimulation. I expect SM people know that.
Enkephalins are endogenous (made within the body) agonists of opiate receptors. An agonist is a substance that acts like another substance and therefore stimulates an action. Agonist is the opposite of antagonist . . . The CB1 receptor, which is possibly the most abundant GPCR in the mammalian brain, is activated by endogenous agonists.”
Maybe this tiny snippet is enough to suggest that capsicum (bear spray), cannabis, opiates (morphine) and pain reception are all interwoven in the do-si-dos of cell interaction as well as in the culture itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciQ4ErmhO7g This vid is aimed at your heart -- little kids visibly suffering who are cured by cannibinoid molecules that are technically illegal. Look at the comments and you’ll see that people are inflamed by what is obviously a considered and controlled medical effort. People whose sense of their own virtue is based on knowing what is EVIL and going ballistic about it. Their politics probably look the same and they do get high on it. Endogenous rage.
Ganja (shudder)
What is simply and provably a matter of molecular interaction necessary to cell function and the management of subjective states like hunger, pain, and the straightforward management of perception has been turned into a metaphorical monster, forbidden. Why? Because criminalization creates a boundary and boundaries mean profit -- as soon as something is separated and access is restricted, both the people who provide the “something” and the people who punish those who get caught with it can make money.
Think what a bonanza the prison providers have struck by the incarceration of stigmatized people who were caught with marijuana. No big shots because if you jail important folks, they get angry and change the law. Think what a bonanza the drug lords of Central America have found by driving children over the borders to the US, making even more money for those who enforce the border laws. The coyotes and kidnappers and traffickers are creating fortunes from people who basically have nothing, by treating them like rabbits driven over to create a plague. News comes tonight of between 5 and 10 children who have been sent back who have been murdered in Honduras. Those are only the ones found -- so far.
Think what a bonanza the prison providers have struck by the incarceration of stigmatized people who were caught with marijuana. No big shots because if you jail important folks, they get angry and change the law. Think what a bonanza the drug lords of Central America have found by driving children over the borders to the US, making even more money for those who enforce the border laws. The coyotes and kidnappers and traffickers are creating fortunes from people who basically have nothing, by treating them like rabbits driven over to create a plague. News comes tonight of between 5 and 10 children who have been sent back who have been murdered in Honduras. Those are only the ones found -- so far.
At first I thought of quipping that we need a drug that will make people rational. But then I saw that we only need to get rid of one trait: greed. Rhymes with weed.
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