Saturday 7 April 2012

Marijuana - The Intoxicant

Pollan, M.  2001.  Chapter 3 – Desire: Intoxication/Plant: Marijuana (pg. 113-179) in The Botany of Desire:  A Plant’s-Eye View of the World.  Random House Trade Paperbacks, New York. 
 

Plants can offer a cornucopia of benefits, however you must be wary because not all plants (or parts of a plant) are beneficial – some are even the complete opposite...deadly.  Not all plants fall into these two categories, there are still other plants that fall between these two extremes, mainly those that are intoxicants – plants that are the “most remarkable of all” as they “manufacture molecules with the power to change the subjective experience of reality we call consciousness” (p. 114).  One of the most popular – indicated through the more than 400 different common names that it possesses – is marijuana (i.e.  Cannabis sativa and C. indica).  This plant has an astoundingly large number of common names including:  pot, ganja, dope, Mary Jane, Aunt Mary, Jane, grass, weed, bud, jay, reefer, blunt, boom, hemp, GOM (good old marijuana), and hash.  Interestingly, not only is this plant an intoxicant, but it has also been used for medicinal/healing purposes and as a fibre. 

Pollen noted that if the laws hadn’t have been passed that made marijuana illegal, it is completely possible that this drug would never have become so “cool” and popular, and thus would not have become such a huge drug addiction and legality issue.  Unfortunately we cannot just look at an alternate universe where marijuana was not illegalized and see the true results of such a choice, but it still makes me wonder if our present situation would truly be better now if marijuana had been legalized with restrictions.  I also found it fascinating to learn that “’the great revolution’ in cannabis genetics” (p. 132) – the crossing of the “homegrown” tropical C. sativa with the hardier and more potent C. Indica to produce a hybrid – may also have not occurred.  This hybrid is an exceptional plant as it combined “the smoother taste and ‘clear, bell-like high’” of the sativa with the “superior potency and hardiness” of the indica (p.132).  Without this major transformation and the transportation of the plant indoors (where their water, nutrients, light, CO2, and heat levels were controlled), marijuana probably would not have gone from being “homegrown” (containing only 2-3% THC (the active intoxicating chemical)) to becoming “what is today the most prized and expensive flower in the world” (containing as high as 20% THC) (p. 130). 

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