Marijuana refers to parts or products of the Cannabis sativa plant that contain large amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Pot and weed are two different names for the same substance, marijuana.
Marijuana, the most widely used illegal drug in the United States, is becoming more popular. Marijuana is now legal for recreational use in eight states and the District of Columbia: Alaska, California, Colorado, Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Washington. Pot also appears to be on the rise in popularity. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, twenty one states now allow the possession and use of marijuana for therapeutic purposes.
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The Odd Facts about Marijuana include:
1. Origins in mythology
Pot was not discovered by the hippie generation. However, the drug’s true origins are unknown. According to one source, the Drug Enforcement Administration Museum in Arlington, Virginia, the earliest written references to cannabis date back to 2727 B.C., when Chinese Emperor Shen Nung allegedly discovered and utilized the substance medicinally. But there’s a flaw with this theory. Shen Nung, if he ever existed, was not China’s ruler. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a united China, was born approximately 260 B.C., far later than the mythical Shen Nung. It is also unclear where or how Shen Nung kept track of his medical marijuana research.
The first traces of written Chinese characters are from the Shang period, when oracles carved symbols on bones and turtle shells between 1200 and 1050 B.C. Despite the fact that Shen Nung’s narrative is widely circulated on the internet, his presence appears to be more marijuana legend than fact.
Nonetheless, the Chinese deserve credit. Around 10,000 years ago, the ancient Taiwanese used hemp fibers to embellish pottery according to “The Archaeology of Ancient China“.
However, the first person to discover the intoxicating effects of marijuana is lost to history.
2. Hemp can be used in unusual ways.
Marijuana fibers can be used to make rope or cloth, in addition to smoking. The strangest application of hemp rope on record is for hauling massive stone statues. Archaeologists tried to find out how ancient people lifted the iconic 9,600-lb. (4.35 metric tons) heads from their quarry in 2012, so they made replicas of the statues.
Theorists have proposed everything from log rollers to extraterrestrial assistance, but archaeologist Carl Lipo of California State University Long Beach established in 2012 that all that was required was hemp rope.
Lipo and his colleagues stated in the Journal of Archaeological Science that by attaching three hemp ropes to the statue and having a team of 18 people rock it back and forth until it “walked,” they were able to move the lump of stone 328 feet (100 meters) in less than an hour. According to the experts, Easter Islanders would have possessed woody shrubs similar to marijuana plants to use for rope manufacturing.
3. Hemp vs. marijuana
What exactly is the difference between hemp and marijuana? It only takes one genetic switch. Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan claimed in 2011 that they’d uncovered the genetic change that allows psychoactive cannabis plants (Cannabis sativa) to give consumers a high (as opposed to industrial hemp plants, which aren’t nearly as enjoyable).
Industrial hemp plants are related to marijuana plants, however they do not generate tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA) . This is the precursor of the psychoactive element in marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). According to University of Saskatchewan biologist Jon Page, hemp plants are unable to manufacture this chemical because they lack a gene that produces the THCA enzyme.
Marijuana plants, on the other hand, produce THCA but not nearly as much cannabidiolic acid (CBDA), which is abundant in hemp but competes with THCA for raw materials. As a result, hemp is high in nonpsychoactive CBDA, whereas marijuana is high in mind-altering THC.
4. Gender-bender
According to a 2014 study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, smoking up might be a totally different experience for men and women. Females were more responsive to cannabis’ painkilling properties in rats, but they were also more likely to build a tolerance for the substance, which could contribute to undesirable side effects and reliance on marijuana.
The greater levels of estrogen in female rats appear to play a role in these sex-specific effects. Female rats are more vulnerable to the effects of cannabis during ovulation, when estrogen levels are at their maximum.
5. Pot for your Pets?
Medical marijuana has been used to treat everything from glaucoma to chemotherapy side effects. So why shouldn’t man’s best buddy experiment with therapeutic marijuana?
According to a 2013 study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, pet owners are already utilizing marijuana medicinally to heal their sick cats and dogs. Animals that use marijuana usually recover within a few hours, according to experts. Pot, on the other hand, can be fatal to animals in big doses.
6. Does your heart hate pot?
The majority of the argument about marijuana’s health impacts focuses on the brain alterations that may occur as a result of its use, such as the drug’s link to an increased chance of developing schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. But, could smoking a bowl harm your heart as well?
Researchers looked nearly 2,000 cases of medical issues from marijuana in France in April 2014 and discovered that 2% of them involved heart problems, including nine fatal heart attacks. The study didn’t set out to figure out why marijuana use can sometimes cause heart problems, but prior research has showed that it can raise heart rate and blood pressure, which could push a vulnerable person into heart attack area.
7. It is in the air.
There are some places where a haze of marijuana smoke is expected, such as Grateful Dead concerts or marijuana legalization demonstrations. But what about on Rome’s streets?
Yes, according to a 2012 Italian research, trace levels of marijuana can be found in the air around the Colosseum and Pantheon, as well as in seven other Italian towns. Researchers looked for psychoactive drugs like cocaine, marijuana, nicotine, and caffeine in the air of Rome, Bologna, Florence, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, and Verona. All of these compounds were discovered in all eight cities, with the greatest total concentrations in Turin and the highest pot concentrations in Florence and Bologna.
Tourists in Florence and Bologna, on the other hand, do not need to be concerned about getting a contact high while taking in the sites. The quantities of marijuana and other chemicals were far too low to have any effect on human health, but researchers said they believe the data would help them better understand drug policy by allowing them to estimate drug consumption in each location.
8. Baby soap mishaps
In an unusual situation, a North Carolina hospital noticed an increase in the number of babies testing positive for marijuana in their urine, a finding that might indicate that mom has been smoking and lead to social services involvement. However, it was discovered that these children had not been exposed to marijuana. They smelled like soap.
Researchers discovered that chemicals in numerous common infant soaps can trigger a false positive on marijuana urine tests, according to a 2012 study. The soaps, which include Johnson & Johnson, CVS, and Aveeno formulas, do not include marijuana and do not make babies stoned. Researchers revealed in the journal Clinical Biochemistry that a more sensitive test can reveal whether the original screening results were false positives.
9. Marijuana is not always green.
Here’s some bad news for the environmentally conscious. Pot isn’t really “green. According to a 2011 analysis by a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the energy required to create 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of marijuana indoors is similar to driving across the nation five times in a car that gets 44 miles per gallon. All of those grow lights consume a lot of power.
Growing marijuana plants outside could reduce the drug’s carbon footprint, but due to the drug’s year-round demand, industrial farmers maintain their plants in warehouses and greenhouses. Greenhouses equipped with low-energy LED lights could help make marijuana more environmentally friendly, but marijuana cultivation, like any large-scale agricultural, will necessitate large-scale energy.
10. The first cross-border marijuana commerce
According to a 2016 study, the world’s earliest known pot traffickers were nomads from the Eastern European Steppe.
The researchers discovered that the Yamnaya, traders from what is now Russia and Ukraine, may have sold cannabis throughout Europe and East Asia some 5,000 years ago. The plant was used in Europe and Asia at least 10,200 years ago, and it flourished natively on both continents.
However, the archaeological record indicates that cannabis use peaked in East Asia around 5,000 years ago, around the time the nomadic Yamnaya created a trading route over the steppes. Sites in Yamnaya contain indications of cannabis burning, implying that they brought their marijuana smoking habit with them.
11. Taking it to death
According to a new study, marijuana may be connected to heart problems.
A 45-year-old man died some 2,700 years ago, most likely in the Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, China. His remains were transported and burial in the Yanghai Cemetery in the Gobi Desert shortly after. According to experts who investigated the remains and published their findings in the Journal of Experimental Botany in 2008, someone placed a bag and a bowl of 28 ounces (789 grams) of Cannabis sativa alongside his body.
The plant matter was still coloured green, albeit it didn’t have the trademark cannabis fragrance due to the arid desert environment. (Neither did the researchers’ seeds develop into plants!) Based on the size and structure of its seeds, the strain appeared to be domesticated, and a molecular study identified substances such as cannabidiol, cannabichromene, and cannabicyclol. The researchers reported that the plant in the bowl had been gently powdered, implying that it was utilized for “medicinal or magical characteristics.
12. Psychedelic greens
Getting high may alter your perception of winning and losing. Participants in a 2016 study played a game in which they may win or lose a few cents based on how well they did. Researchers scanned their brains as they played, focusing on a small area called the nucleus accumbens, which is involved for reward processing.
People who had used marijuana more frequently had weaker nucleus accumbens responses to the promise of winning than those who had used it less frequently, according to the study. Of course, the study couldn’t establish that marijuana usage caused the brain alterations – there could be a third factor, or an underlying reason why someone with a reduced reward response would gravitate toward pot use, the researchers said.
13. Pot is becoming more powerful.
Marijuana’s high is becoming more intense. THC levels were evaluated in more than 38,600 samples of street marijuana collected by the Drug Enforcement Agency during a 20-year period by researchers in 2016. They discovered that THC levels increased by roughly 4 percent in 1995 to about 12 percent in 2014.
Meanwhile, the researchers revealed in the journal Biological Psychiatry that levels of the non-psychoactive chemical cannabidiol declined from 0.28 percent in 2001 to 0.15 percent in 2014. As a result, in 1995, THC levels were 14 times those of cannabidiol; by 2014, that ratio had increased to 80.
According to the researchers, THC enhances the benefits of marijuana, therefore higher THC versions of the substance may increase the chance of unpleasant side effects like fear or anxiety. Growers have been breeding higher octane strains since more THC implies more expensive cannabis.
14. Arguments about cardiac fatalities
You can’t overdose on marijuana the way you can on heroin or cocaine. However, in 2014, German researchers sparked a debate by linking the untimely deaths of two individuals to cardiovascular issues related by marijuana usage. These were uncommon cases. In one case, a seemingly healthy 23-year-old guy died while riding the bus with marijuana in his pocket.
A 28-year-old guy was discovered dead with rolling papers and a plastic bag of marijuana by his side in the other case. A postmortem examination revealed that both males had THC, the euphoric element in marijuana, in their tissues.
“After ruling out alternative possibilities, we believe the young men died of cardiovascular problems brought on by cannabis usage,” says the report.
Outside researchers reacted to the findings at the time, saying that the conclusions were acceptable given research on marijuana’s cardiovascular effects. The case reports, on the other hand, sparked widespread public outrage and elicited “some rather harsh reactions from individuals,” according to the study’s authors.
15. You could be Allergic to Marijuana.
According to a 2015 analysis published in the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, marijuana, like many other plants, can cause allergic reactions in people. According to the experts, the pollen and smoke from the plant can trigger allergies in some people. Marijuana allergies are rare, but they’re on the rise, and they’re likely underreported or undiscovered because the drug has been prohibited for so long.
The majority of reported symptoms of pot allergies are comparable to hay fever: itchy eyes, coughing, sneezing, and rare hives. However, anaphylactic reactions to hemp or marijuana have been observed in a few instances. Anaphylaxis is a potentially fatal allergic reaction in which the airways swell shut.