Kindle Notes & Highlights
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May 13 - July 14, 2019
The male grows taller, topped by flowers covered with pollen. The shorter female plant, with its larger, pollen-catching flowers, produces seeds and protects them with a sticky resin. The stalks help produce fiber; the seeds provide food and oil.
The flowers, leaves, and resin appear in medical and intoxicating preparations.
hemp provides dozens of products. None of these items contains meaningful amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC),
the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.
In contrast to psychoactive cannabis plants, which contain 2% THC or more, industrial hemp often contains as ...
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Although no one has ever died from an overdose of smoked marijuana (Petro, 1997a), the plant may have killed many by helping sling sharp arrows into tender flesh.
Modern hemp farmers report that cotton yields less fiber per acre, requires more water and pesticides, and may cause more harm to the environment. In addition, hemp may also have less negative impact on water and land than synthetic fibers made from petrochemicals.
Hemp seeds have also served as a food for nutritional reasons.
Once they are
cleaned they possess little THC, but they do contain 20 to 25% protein, including all the amino acid...
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Cannabis’s use as a treatment for a variety of illnesses helped it spread from ancient Asia throughout the world. The plant consistently appeared in pharmacopoeia and folk medicine as a treatment for pain, seizure, muscle spasm, poor appetite, nausea, insomnia, asthma, and depression.
Hemp received its scientific name in the latter half of the eighteenth century.
In 1753, Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist who classified nearly every living thing, dubbed the plant Cannabis sativa. He placed the species in the small family known as Cannabinaceae, which includes only cannabis and the hop plant, Humulus lupulus.
He suggested a separate species native to India, Cannabis Indica, known for its shorter stature and greater quantity of resin. Much later, in 1924, a team of Russian botanists identified Cannabis ruderalis, a third species shorter than the other two.
He first administered marijuana to people with rheumatism. The treatment eased their pain, just as Shen Neng had suggested a few millennia earlier.
O’Shaughnessy’s attempts at alleviating the discomfort associated with rabies, cholera, tetanus, and epilepsy also met with some limited success. Although medical marijuana did not cure these diseases, it eased the pain, nausea, and spasticity that often accompanies them.
Finally, in the 1970s, data suggested a new medical application unlike any previously proposed—the treatment of glaucoma.
Dronabinol, a synthetic version of THC
Patients could spend from $600 to over $1,000 per month on dronabinol; comparable doses of marijuana cost considerably less
The consumption of cannabis solely for psychoactive, mind-altering effects differs from other forms of use.
Cannabis was not the earliest known intoxicant. People had been drinking alcohol since at least 6400 B.C., and perhaps since 8000 B.C. (Mellaart, 1967; Roueche, 1963).
They purportedly used cannabis to induce hallucinations (Abel, 1980). This effect actually occurs only rarely and only at extremely high doses (Tart, 1971).
the seeds contain little THC.
Natives of India developed distinctions among cannabis products. People there use ganja, charas, and bhang. Ganja, the flowering tops, and charas, the plant’s resin, are smoked in clay pipes.
Natives eat bhang or use it to make a cold, liquid refreshment.
Hashish probably developed later. This concentration of the cannabis plant’s resin apparently reached Arab countries by the year 1000.
Hashish’s concentration of resin contains a higher percentage of psychoactive THC than other cannabis preparations.
Although the belief that cannabis causes violence remains (Schwartz, 1984), laboratory research reveals that marijuana actually decreases aggression (Myerscough & Taylor, 1985).
By the end of the 1960s, a commission appointed by President Lyndon Johnson found little evidence for the drug leading to heroin addiction or violence.
In 1997 and again in 1999, approximately one-third of all Americans admitted to use of cannabis at least once in their lifetime (Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS], 1998;
Studies performed in the 1970s revealed a new potential application of the drug in the treatment of glaucoma. Research on smoked marijuana, THC, and other cannabinoids, though often hindered by bureaucratic difficulties, continues to reveal potential pharmaceutical applications.
2001: Canada adopts federal laws in support of medical marijuana.
The Drug Enforcement Agency reports seizing 2,035 metric tons of marijuana, which they estimated as 10 to 15% of the total traffic. A metric ton is roughly 2,200 pounds, so marijuana consumption in a year would be roughly 4,477,000 pounds.
Generally, the definitions all focus on negative consequences rather than the amount consumed or the frequency of smoking.
Popular definitions of misuse include addiction, dependence, abuse, and problems.
Some researchers claim that marijuana is not particularly addictive. Experts assert that cannabis’s addictive power parallels caffeine’s (Franklin, 1990; Hilts, 1994).
Hilts asked two prominent drug researchers to rank features of six common drugs: nicotine, caffeine, heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana. Both experts ranked marijuana last in its ability to produce withdrawal, tolerance, and dependence. Another study had experts rank 18 drugs on how easily they “hook” people and how difficult they are to quit. Marijuana ranked 14th, behind the legal drugs nicotine (ranked first), alcohol (ranked 8th), and caffeine (ranked 12th). Only hallucinogens (MDMA, mushrooms, LSD, and mescaline) ranked lower than marijuana (Franklin, 1990).
The term “addiction” developed to describe the repetition of a habit.
The word connotes surrender and implies that an activity or substance has bound the person (Lenson, 1995).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, at least in the United States, the term changed from a description of actions to a medical condition.
Repeated use despite attempts to stop also typifies this definition of addiction.
THE DISEASE MODEL OF ADDICTION The disease model generates considerable emotion in many who investigate, treat, or experience drug problems.
The disease model provided advantages over the moral model by asserting that drug problems served as symptoms of an illness.
Critics of the disease model certainly support respectful treatment. Nevertheless, they also suggest that viewing drug problems as a disease can have drawbacks. In an effort to minimize blaming people for addictive behavior, proponents of the disease model may have created another set of problems.
The definition of disease has grown slippery. Addiction may not qualify because it does not parallel other illnesses.
Despite these facts, some advocates of the disease model treat addiction as a purely biological phenomenon. This emphasis on biology can exclude important economic, societal, and psychological contributors (Peele, 1998).
No one has performed a study like this one with cannabis users. Nevertheless, the way abstinent people think about using a little marijuana determines if they will go on to use a lot.
ALTERNATIVES TO THE CONCEPT OF ADDICTION Because many define addiction quite broadly and disparately, some mental health professionals prefer the terms “dependence” and “abuse.”
The DSM-IV defines drug dependence as a collection of any three of seven symptoms. All must create meaningful distress and occur within the same year.
current diagnoses of drug dependence focus on negative consequences. They include tolerance and withdrawal, which were once considered the hallmarks of dependence.
