A recent interest of mine has been to research ingestion methods of cannabis.  In reviewing a few articles regarding the various means we all use at times to medicate, the following list results: to smoke in one form or another, vaporize, eat edibles or tinctures.

Since edibles and tinctures are generally not inhaled and have no tar issues, I will place them aside for this blog’s discussion.

What I found most interesting, however, is that BONGS actually absorb substantial amounts of THC – up to 30%, (!), while allowing tar products through.  In other words, water is NOT a good filtration system for smoking Cannabis.

Joints, surprisingly, were better than any other smoking methods – other than vaporizing. Even placing a true “filter” on a joint, has similar effects to water. So, other than vaporizing, a loose joint without any filter, is next best.

Perhaps it is time to “sell short” on bongs??

More to come on Tinctures next week.

My Director of Education, Michele Nelson, answers this question:

Prior to 1937, cannabis and hemp in America was used as medicine and material for various industrial needs. One of the plant’s greatest industrial benefits to early American’s was that it did not rot in seawater, therefore enabling sails and rigging. This made hemp essential to the new American country – without it; America could not have a navy.  John Adams felt hemp was so vital to the creation of the new country that it was one of the first items on his to do list when riding to the Continental Congress.  He wrote, “Encourage the cultivation of hemp.” Every farmer was required to dedicate a portion of his or her farm to hemp production. As a medicine, cannabis was used from children’s pain remedies to relieving adult’s depression, anxiety, and pain. During the mid-1800’s, there were over 600 tinctures of cannabis available on the market from pharmaceutical companies well known today – Pfizer and Merck for example.

However, in the 1930’s two things happened that made hemp/cannabis illegal. One, a machine was invented that processed the hemp/cannabis without using the heavy manual labor needed in the past. Some called it a “hemp gin” like the cotton gin. Suddenly, hemp was not such an expensive fiber. At the time, Popular Mechanics magazine ran an article calling hemp “America’s billion dollar crop”. Industrialists began experimenting with hemp and discovered that it could be used to create plastics, was an excellent bio-fuel and was a strong fiber for paper.

At the same time hemp was being touted as a new raw material, the petrol chemical industry was emerging. The Dupont’s were at the center of this industry, discovering other uses for petroleum such as plastics and nylon. Also during this time, William Randolph Hearst the newspaper tycoon, needed to secure paper for his news empire, so he invested in forests for paper. Because hemp could replace both petrol chemicals and trees to make products cheaper, easier, (and it’s a renewable resource that many could profit from producing) these two families joined forces with former Alcohol Prohibitionist, Harry Anslinger to create and pass the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act in Congress.

Many consider the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act as “industrial espionage”.   At the time, marijuana was not a recognized name for hemp or cannabis and so the act was passed without the medical or farm community’s awareness. The tax stamp act gave the US government control over what farmers could plant and destroyed the cannabis pharmaceutical business. If farmers didn’t apply and receive a tax stamp, they were subject to fines and possible imprisonment for growing the plant. Cannabis/hemp production plummeted. Doctors begged Congress to allow cannabis to be used as a medicine, but they failed to overturn or even modify the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act.

Marijuana prohibition started because two families needed to have a monopoly on business. However, in today’s economic and environmental climate the prohibition that resulted from that decision might not be viable any longer.  Cannabis and hemp might be needed soon.

Michele Nelson, GreenBridge Director of Education

There has been some international uproar of late regarding the closure of some “coffee shops” in Amsterdam as well as the closure by local authorities of dispensaries allowing communal “medicating”.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the idea and freedom of being able to smoke in private clubs with a group of like-minded individuals. Perhaps in the future this will be the direction to head; however, it would have to be at a time when the political climate accepts the use of Cannabis for purely recreational reasons. Under today’s laws, using Cannabis for recreational reasons is clearly illegal, if only a misdemeanor in some states.

My problem with cafes, at least in the US, is that we are struggling to simply get Medical Cannabis accepted legally at regional levels as well as hopefully ultimately nationally. As a physician, I just can’t see the medical benefit of medicating as a group in a public setting. Until a lot more education and enlightenment occurs, It is just too hard to justify in the current setting and as far as I can see, for some time to come.

Alcohol is very different, and as far as I know, it is the only drug we use socially in public groups that are legal. At the same time, I just don’t know many – if any – physicians, including myself, who would be drawn into “prescribing” alcohol for a patient. Even in the waning years of alcohol prohibition nobody was pushing for Medical Alcohol!

So, I would prefer to keep Cannabis in the medical arena and out of the café world. Many of us need this medication for help with serious issues. Let’s all please be careful not to become insensitive to the big picture.

Open Source, the concept of sharing information, not for one individual’s benefit, but for the benefit of all should be applied to Medical Cannabis.  There is one critical piece of information patients and physicians are entirely missing with the current state of Medical Cannabis; we don’t know what we are medicating with.  Cannabis doesn’t come with a chemical breakdown – “a list of ingredients”.

When we purchase cannabis from a knowledgeable source such as a reputable dispensary, we are able to feel comfortable that we know if we are using a Sativa or Indica strain (my prior blogs explain why).

We know, however, that all Sativa strains are not the same. The same is true for Indica strains. What are the differences? There are differences in THC content, CBD content as well as dozens of other Cannabinoids. We are all unique as human beings, and so our needs are unique. It stands to reason that certain strains will work better than others for different people. This is common in medicating with all treatment modalities in medicine – from the current Western model of medicine to the Alternative and Eastern type models of medicine.

How about if we had a listing of the most important Cannabinoids on the bottle of Cannabis? That would allow each of us to evaluate over time which of the various Cannabinoids work best for us. At that point, we could be much more certain to obtain the correct strain as well as potentially the “perfect” tincture or “concentrate”. The Cannabis plants are extremely complex botanicals with over 400 ingredients including over 50 Cannabinoids.

I envision a genetic research center that would breed cannabis to genetically alter the strains IN THE GARDEN. The goal would be to obtain varied but known and reproducible strains of Cannabis.  We could all then share this strain information in centralized databases, much as we have learned how to share information in the world of Open Source Code; hence Open Source Cannabis.