Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: How Marijuana Works

Episode Date: April 20, 2019

For millennia people used marijuana for fun and medicine. Not until the 20th century that was it vilified, unfairly say many. Weed has done lots of good things, from alleviating cancer symptoms to unl...ocking secrets of the brain. Learn all about pot here. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.
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Starting point is 00:00:57 Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, happy Saturday. This is Chuck here to introduce you to this week's Saturday Select, and we are going with a classic from the archives, How Marijuana Works. Why are we releasing this today on April 20th?
Starting point is 00:01:19 Oh, because we're juveniles, that's why everybody. Hope you enjoy it, it's a very insightful episode. And here we go with How Marijuana Works. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant getting his demons out. Man, how about this music? Yeah, this is thanks to our guest producer, Noel,
Starting point is 00:02:10 who Jerry's actually producing, but he's got the musical touch. He's our dub producer. Yeah, if you want to regaify your podcast, Noel is the man. Yes, big thanks to Noel. Yeah, and great idea by you. I and I?
Starting point is 00:02:26 Yeah, I and I, I love that. How you doing, man? I'm great. You got some good feelings going on? Yeah, I mean, we've covered grow houses, and we did medical marijuana, right? I don't think so. No?
Starting point is 00:02:40 No, because a lot of it didn't seem familiar when I was looking into it in this article. So we've definitely done grow houses, which is kind of backwards. Well, not really. Got to grow up first. So, Chuck, here we are. We're talking about pot, and as is our thing,
Starting point is 00:02:59 we're going to talk about pot in a very, like, above the board's mature way. Are we? I think we can. Sure. We've talked about some other stuff before. Poop, we've talked about poop plenty of times. Yeah, well, I think.
Starting point is 00:03:10 We've talked about booze. Every time we cover drugs, we like to cover the scientific aspects, the social ramifications. Right, how it's impacted culture. Why would this one be any different? Well, and this is probably the biggest. It's the most ubiquitous, I would say.
Starting point is 00:03:24 Yeah. Yeah, maybe the gateway to all the other episodes. Very funny. So I guess we should start at the beginning. How about that? OK. Let's talk about pot and its history. It's very long, long, long history.
Starting point is 00:03:42 And actually, for most of that history, it has been widely beloved and appreciated that, apparently, pot's been cultivated, or marijuana. We're going to use all that interchangeably. Weed, pot, marijuana, cannabis. That's probably where it will stop. Like, if either one of us has ganja or sticky icky. Like, it's in this article.
Starting point is 00:04:08 We should just shut it down right then. All right, all right, we'll do the, hey, take that back. One of us will say that, OK? Yeah, but like you said, I mean, this is going to be an overview, because we could do, honestly, four shows on the history of pot. There's quite a rabbit hole we could go down here. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:27 We've got to avoid it. Yeah, but we'll give you a historical overview. How about that? Sure. So like I said, pot's been cultivated for 8,500 years. And I also said that it's mostly been appreciated most of that time for two reasons. One, it is an industrial, or it was until the rise
Starting point is 00:04:47 of the synthetics, a major industrial fiber, hemp. Sure. And then secondly, it was a, or it still is, a medicinal herb that kind of spills over into recreational use as well. So in the 28th century in China, it looks like it was probably used medicinally. Yeah. And not recreationally, but there are definitely
Starting point is 00:05:11 records, written records, of the cultivation of cannabis. Well, yeah, a guy named Shen Neng, who was an emperor, but was also China's first physician, wrote about how Ma, that's what they called pot back then in China, was good for the yin and the yang. Both of them. Right, which is actually, as we'll see, that's a pretty astute observation early on,
Starting point is 00:05:35 because what he's talking about is balance, or homeostasis, which pot definitely affects. Yeah, for sure. They have found a mummy, a 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummy, and looked into this. And it contained quite a few drugs, but it definitely contained THC. So the Egyptians were getting down, maybe medicinally,
Starting point is 00:05:56 who knows. In 1,001 Arabian nights, it makes an appearance called Bang, B-H-A-N-G, Sinbad apparently loves this stuff. But supposedly, his was hash mixed with opium, which is way more hardcore than what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, probably so. They think it originated, perhaps, in India, and north of the Himalayas is their best guess.
Starting point is 00:06:22 Yeah, they really have no idea. And actually, there's a lot of debate still over whether there's more than one type of plant. What do you mean? So there's cannabis indica, cannabis sativa. Yeah, they're different. There's another one called cannabis root or alice, supposedly.
Starting point is 00:06:42 And there's an ongoing debate among botanists over whether they're all actually just different varieties of the same plant, or if they really are different species of plants in the same family. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But I think the current common wisdom
Starting point is 00:07:03 is that there's at least two, cannabis sativa and cannabis indica. Yeah, we may as well get into that a little bit. The indica is the plant itself is shorter and fatter and better suited for indoor growing. And the sativa is taller. It can get really tall, like 25 feet. Yeah, and it's spinlier.
Starting point is 00:07:23 Yeah, and thinner. Although, I think for cultivation, I don't think even though it's grown outdoors, I don't think they're growing the 25 foot plants. No, I would imagine the helicopters can see them a lot more easily. Yeah, and the indica is known for more of a body high, quote unquote, couch locked mellow.
Starting point is 00:07:43 And the sativa is more known for more energetic and cerebral and creative, more of a brain high. Right, and then conversely, one can make you more paranoid, one can make you more drooly. Yeah, and typically these days, if you are a recreational or medicinal user, you're probably getting some sort of a hybrid strain. Good point, and actually some of the strains,
Starting point is 00:08:07 those hybrid strains, have some of the best names. Like Green Crack, that's a pretty good name. AK-47, White Widow. White Widow is actually a pure strain, isn't it, of indica? I'm not sure. I think it is. Yeah, Maui-Waui. The pot names are pretty funny.
Starting point is 00:08:25 They've definitely gotten better from the 70s. Like Maui-Waui. Yeah, that sounds very old school. Face slapping. Yeah. So should we talk a little bit about its history in this country, in the United States? Yeah, so I think we should get to that.
Starting point is 00:08:42 Because as I said, Chuck, when you look back on pot all of these years, and it's how it was used, it was generally appreciated, used medicinally, used recreationally, not vilified. It wasn't until it hit North America that it really started to become vilified. Yeah, well, it had a good run here, too, in the States for a couple of hundred years.
Starting point is 00:09:07 Hemp was grown and cultivated and widely used. Some people say it's the most versatile plant on Earth, as far as the different uses you can get out of it. And it was in the 1619 Virginia Assembly. They even said, you have to grow hemp if you're a farmer in Virginia. So not only was it encouraged, it was actually law in Virginia, at least.
Starting point is 00:09:33 So it had a good run until the early 1900s and 1920s. Well, what's interesting is, back in this time, you remember that part in Days to Confuse, where the biggest stoner of the whole group is talking about George Washington like planting hemp all day and then comes home and smokes a big bowl of it? Yeah, Martha had it ready. It's not clear whether or not any of them were smoking pot.
Starting point is 00:09:58 And it's entirely possible that they weren't, because the idea of smoking pot was lost to the ages for a very long time. And the Greeks actually grew marijuana, but they didn't smoke it. They just used it for its fibers. And it almost appears like they had no idea you could smoke it, and it was psychoactive.
Starting point is 00:10:15 So it's possible that our forefathers didn't smoke pot. And they were just growing it for industrial uses. And meanwhile, Native Americans were like, you guys are crazy. Rope is nice, but you know. Yeah, it can be both. That's right. In the early 1900s, the Mexican Revolution of 1910, this is one of the big turning points,
Starting point is 00:10:39 because a lot of Mexican immigrants came to the US, and they were like, hey, you know, you can smoke this stuff. It's pretty nice. And because Mexican immigrants were sort of looked down upon, all of a sudden, pot was looked down upon. Really, Mexican immigrants were looked down upon somewhere in the US history? Yeah, the whole thing about pot being vilified,
Starting point is 00:11:04 or I guess there was a moral panic, basically, is what they call it, that erupted around it. And a lot of it was based in racism toward Mexican Americans or Mexican immigrants. Yeah, in the 1930s, especially in the Depression, they sort of had a bad name, because they're immigrants in this country, and we're Americans, and we're in a depression, and we want the work,
Starting point is 00:11:27 and kind of a lot of the same arguments here these days. But the association with pot was definitely part of it. It definitely was. But also, I read this NPR blog on Code Switch about this very topic, and they were saying, yes, there was a lot of racism that led to the criminalization of pot. But Mexico was 20 years ahead of the US
Starting point is 00:11:51 in criminalizing pot as well, so you can't just say, well, it was just Americans disdain or dislike or distrust of Mexicans. It's more complex than that. And this guy was saying that, really, you can conclude, there was a fear of what this drug did. And the reason why there was a fear of what the drug did was because the newspaper reports at the time
Starting point is 00:12:13 had people killing entire families, and wandering around the streets with somebody's head covered in blood, because they just smoked a joint. And they were really trying to unpack this. Like, why would that happen? Did it happen? Were all of them just overblown reports? The fact was, when you picked up the Los Angeles Times,
Starting point is 00:12:33 the New York Times, there were front page stories about this, and they were like, Brownskin Mexican kills white family of eight on marijuana cigarette. And that's why. And actually, the word marijuana was kind of used as a derogatory term to kind of Mexicanify cannabis, which is what had been called prior to that. This is where it came from.
Starting point is 00:12:54 Yeah. Did not know that. I'm off my soapbox. Look at you teaching me. Well, movies like Reef or Madness definitely didn't help. In 1936, the famous propaganda movie from French director Louis Gasnier, it's required viewing for any college student at some point.
Starting point is 00:13:12 It really is. Yeah, it's not very good, and it's not very enjoyable. But it is kind of funny showing the reforettics driven to insanity by the marijuana cigarettes. And somebody gets murdered, right? I don't even remember. I think someone murdered somebody else because they smoked pot.
Starting point is 00:13:29 And then in 1937, a year after Reef or Madness, Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. And this is basically where the tide turned, and it was essentially criminalized because it called for restricting possession just to individuals who paid a tax. Which is like $1,000. For medical or industrial use.
Starting point is 00:13:51 So in other words, if you're just Sammy Pothead, you can't live that way anymore in this country. No, you would basically have to set up a shell organization, pay the $1,000 tax, and then you'd be able to import marijuana. But if you were caught with it smoking it, you'd still get busted. It was a big deal when that happened.
Starting point is 00:14:09 And you can kind of lay all of this at the feet of one guy, a moral crusader who ran the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the 30s, well, the 30s until the 60s. His name was Harry Anslinger. And he was the one who really kind of started this crusade against Pot and got the government to turn against it, got the press to turn against it,
Starting point is 00:14:29 and got the Marijuana Tax Act passed. But even while this guy's sitting there shouting, like, marijuana's going to kill us all. It's a horrible drug, and it's as bad as it gets. There were studies, independent studies, that were funded by the government that were showing, like, you guys are kind of overstating this a little bit.
Starting point is 00:14:49 Yeah, in 1944, Mayor LaGuardia of New York issued a report that basically said that it doesn't induce violence, insanity, or sex crimes. Yeah, and he was a moral reformer himself. Remember, he went after the Minsky Brothers from the Burlesque episode. So it's not like he was just some big pothead. Like, he was a moral reformer himself,
Starting point is 00:15:10 and he still found this report. Yeah, that's a good point. That led to the sentencing laws over time have kind of waffled back and forth. In the 50s, they were pretty strict because of the Boggs Act and the Narcotics Control Act. And that's when they started setting mandatory minimums for basically any drug, but including marijuana, of course.
Starting point is 00:15:33 Yeah, like, you would go to prison for a long time if you got caught with pot. Yeah, two to 10 years for a first-time offender in the 1950s. Getting caught with pot, that's it. Any amount, right? And in the 60s, things relaxed a little bit. In every way you can imagine in this country.
Starting point is 00:15:53 And President Kennedy and LBJ issued reports that found kind of the same thing as they found out in the 40s. It doesn't induce violence. And in these reports, it said it wasn't a gateway drug either. Yeah. In the 1960s. Which is still up for debate, really.
Starting point is 00:16:13 Yeah. I don't think it's ever been definitively so. No, because you read, every other report you read is gonna say something a little different about what the gateway drug is. And plus, I think defining what makes a gateway drug too has never been fully established. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:28 How can you test something scientifically if you don't have it defined, you know? Yeah. And that led, the 1960s led to a repeal of a lot of the mandatory minimums in the 70s. But then, of course, Ronald Reagan in the 1980s brought a lot of that stuff back. And Nixon too, he fought that tooth and nail.
Starting point is 00:16:47 Like even though the tide in the country was turning one way, Nixon was like, nope. We are going to keep pot as illegal as possible. And as a matter of fact, we're gonna put it on the same level as heroin and cocaine. Yeah. And during the Nixon administration, the Schaefer Commission was a bipartisan commission
Starting point is 00:17:05 found, again, that it should be decriminalized. And Nixon was just like, well, I don't want to hear that. Sorry. I'm gonna make up my own mind about this. I'm the president. Exactly. Yeah. So like you said, the Reagan era brought it back.
Starting point is 00:17:19 Not brought pot back. No, brought back any kind of anti-government sentiment toward pot itself was redoubled in the 80s under the Reagan administration. Just say no. Mandatory minimums or mandatory sentences were reenacted. In 1986, thanks to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, if you got caught with 100 marijuana plants,
Starting point is 00:17:42 you got the same jail time as if you were caught with 100 grams of heroin. Yeah, that's interesting. Plants versus grams. That's sort of an apples to oranges comparison. Yeah. Plants versus heroin. It's like plants versus zombies.
Starting point is 00:17:59 I know at one point, this is sort of off topic, but I don't know if they've changed it, but at one point they were sentencing LSD users by the weight. Right. And wasn't that the deal is like they would, like if you were an LSD dealer and you had 20 sheets of acid, they would weigh it. And they were like, well, wait a minute,
Starting point is 00:18:20 you can't weigh the paper. That's like weighing the suitcase that the cocaine comes in. Right, yeah. And I think that's still the same though, isn't it? I don't know, but I do know what you're talking about. And apparently like if they would, if you had it mixed in with liquid or something, like diluted into liquid form,
Starting point is 00:18:34 they'd take the weight of all the liquid rather than the proportion of it. I don't know, it could be, we could be like showing our gullibility for urban legend or not, but I don't know if that's the case. I don't know if it still is, but I know it definitely was at one point. Yeah, cause I saw like an HBO special on these LSD dealers
Starting point is 00:18:51 that were basically serving like life sentences for dealing acid right alongside murders and rapists. Yeah. Yeah, we'll have to check into that. And people who are caught with pot in the 30s. That's right. So pot these days cost-wise varies a lot depending on quality, obviously it ranges.
Starting point is 00:19:12 I love that in this article it says $1.77 to $17.66 per gram. At like one gram of marijuana please. Yeah, that's interesting. But these days you can expect to pay for what people consider good marijuana, about $120 for a quarter bag, which is a quarter of an ounce. Right, which is seven grams, right?
Starting point is 00:19:36 Cause there's 28 grams in an ounce. Yeah, I think between seven and eight grams. But it depends on if the dealer likes you. Exactly. Yeah, but that's generally how it breaks down is you have it by the pound, which is the pot dealer I guess, and then they break it down into ounces
Starting point is 00:19:55 and then to quarter bags and dime bags and whatever people can afford I guess. Well, it's funny because in the state of the country right now, you can take dealer and dispensary and basically flip them and interchange them and no matter what you're talking about, virtually the sentence is going to remain unchanged basically because the marijuana dispensaries
Starting point is 00:20:17 are following basically the same format that marijuana dealers in this country have for decades. What do you mean like pricing? Yeah, the pricing, the way it's sold by weight. Oh, sure, sure. Like I think you still buy like quarters and half ounces and ounces and stuff, which makes sense, but they're also getting a lot of the stuff
Starting point is 00:20:36 from people who are growing it indoors in their basement. And it's like, now they have licenses for all this, but it's basically like all the people who were doing it illegally before or some of the people who were doing it illegally before went and applied for licenses and now they're doing the same thing, but they just have like a license to do it
Starting point is 00:20:53 in a frame on their wall. Yeah, and dispensaries, you're going to find a lot of other things like edibles and they even have now cannabis strips, like the little Listerine breath strips. Oh yeah. They have little cannabis strips. It's just a little edible strip of concentrated cannabis.
Starting point is 00:21:15 And I guess you put it under your tongue and that's better for your lungs, I would imagine, if you're a cancer patient or something. Yeah, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. Let's talk about the plant itself, Chuck. Okay. Maybe the most recognizable plant, that leaf, you know? Yeah, which is, here's a little fact for you.
Starting point is 00:21:35 The botanical description of the way that marijuana leaves are arranged. Is groovy. It's called palmately, like the palm of a hand with five fingers outstretched. That's the pot leaf that you can find on lighters and baseball caps at gas stations, you know? Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:21:57 And like you said, the plant itself, depending on which variety it is, it's either very tall or kind of tall, depending on whether it's trimmed or not. Right. And the buds or whatever that are smoked are actually the flowers of the plants. Yeah, the flowers of the female.
Starting point is 00:22:16 Which apparently are, that's sensimia. So the definition of the word sensimia are female flowers that have reached maturity without being pollinated. I can't hear that word without thinking of caddyshack. What, I don't remember that part. Bill Murray, the little California sensimia. Oh yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:33 Yeah, yeah. So that's what that means? Yes, that's the term sensimia means. So basically, unless you're like 14, if you're smoking pot, you're smoking sensimia. Okay. So yes, the term sensimia means pot. Okay.
Starting point is 00:22:48 The pot that's smoked. Although the male flowers do have some THC. It's just far, far less of female than female. Yeah, as a cultivator, males are not what you want. In fact, males can disturb the cycle of the female plants. So the goal of the cultivator is to get the male out of there as quickly as it can be identified, basically. Yeah, and weed's actually a good moniker for pot
Starting point is 00:23:11 because it spreads very easily. Pollen is like 24 microns, which apparently is very easily wind-borne and goes very great distances. There's very few obstacles to pollinization. So if you have female plants and you have what you suspect to be a male plant anywhere nearby, you want to get rid of the male plant.
Starting point is 00:23:34 Right. And then tell the officer, they must have just blown over here and taken root. Yeah, these hundred plants in my backyard came from my neighbor. Right, their pollin is 24 microns. Come on. Yeah, he says, tell your story to the judge, my friend.
Starting point is 00:23:52 Right. There are about... Oh, we should also say there are hermaphroditic plants, hermaphroditic plants. Oh, yeah. That feature both male and female flowers. Those are probably a mess. Yeah, I think that...
Starting point is 00:24:05 Or maybe that's a good thing, I don't know. I think that's like a lot of hybrid ones are hermaphroditic, yeah. Well, there are hundreds of chemicals in the marijuana plant, 109 of which are cannabinoids, about 33 are cancer causing, and we'll get to that stuff later too.
Starting point is 00:24:25 But ironically, they also are cancer killing some of them. It is an odd plant. Yeah. But we're gonna get to all that stuff too, right? Okay. And your THC is really the main psychoactive ingredient. What's the long name for it? Delta 9 tetrahydrocanabinol.
Starting point is 00:24:44 That is THC. That is what the high that you're seeking, it lies within that chemical. Yeah, and actually you can point to the part of the plant where it is. If you've ever seen a marijuana plant and it has kind of this hazy appearance from far away and you get up close and you realize
Starting point is 00:25:02 that haze is actually made up of a bunch of little clearish sticky protrusions coming off of the leaves, those are called trichomes, and that is where the THC is stored. That's right, and depending on the plant and the variety and how it's grown and when it's harvested and the genetics
Starting point is 00:25:19 and how you process it, that's all gonna affect the THC level. And as a cultivator, your goal is to have the THC level as high as you can get it. Yeah, that is up for debate as well from what I've seen. There are, apparently, they're just going higher and higher and higher as far as THC content goes. And there's a lot of recreational pot users
Starting point is 00:25:41 and medicinal pot users who are saying like, too much, dude, like Louis C.K. has a bit about how when he was in the 70s, he could smoke like a whole joint and be like totally mellow or cool. Now he's saying it takes like one hit and you go totally insane. And apparently there is like a point
Starting point is 00:26:00 where it's just like, that's too much. Well, Louis C.K. can afford better pot these days too. No, but you're right. It all depends on the end user and what they're into. But generally speaking, the cultivator wants to deliver the most bang for the buck. You would think so, sure.
Starting point is 00:26:16 So Chuck, let's figuratively smoke some pot and follow it through the body. Okay, okay. You know what? We probably shouldn't do this ourselves. No, we like our jobs. Exactly, and we might be fired for even figuratively smoking pot.
Starting point is 00:26:33 Well, yeah, and who wants to? Let's get, how about that scruffy looking guy? Farmer Ted. Yeah, look at him, he's game. So a lot of people don't know this, but we have a friend named Farmer Ted who has the very strange characteristic of having entirely translucent skin. He's kind of like the invisible man or something like that.
Starting point is 00:26:51 Yeah, and what better person than to follow the trail of THC in the human body than when you can actually see? Yeah, because the rest of his organs or anything aren't translucent, it's just a skin. And thank you for coming in Ted. So Ted is going to smoke a joint. A marijuana cigarette.
Starting point is 00:27:08 Yes, and he's going to smoke what is a typical marijuana cigarette, approximately 500 milligrams of marijuana, which translates to roughly, I don't know, maybe 10 milligrams of THC. So he's going to take a lighter and take it to the end of this joint. I'm making air quotes here because that's vernacular.
Starting point is 00:27:35 And the THC is going to be burned and carried into his lungs. So Farmer Ted is kind of high already. The THC in the smoke is carried to the avioli in the lungs. And the avioli is where gas exchange occurs. It's where your oxygen deprived blood comes to get a refill of oxygen to be replenished. And since there's THC smoke present in that oxygen
Starting point is 00:27:58 in the lungs, the THC is going to hitch a ride into the bloodstream and travel through the body. Yeah, this takes seconds. Yeah, one of the places it's going to go is the brain. And when it hits the brain, it starts doing some pretty funky stuff. That's right. We could ask Farmer Ted how he's feeling right now
Starting point is 00:28:16 and he'll probably say... Yeah, he can't talk right now. He might say that my eyes are dilating and the colors are a lot more vivid. Yeah, I'll be hungry soon. I'll be hungry soon. My other senses are enhanced as well. But hold on, I'm starting to feel a little paranoid.
Starting point is 00:28:33 Yes. Let's get into this. Listen, let's get into how POT affects the brain because it is pretty gosh darn interesting if you ask me. Yeah, and this is how the physiological affects. The end user might have different reactions depending on it. It doesn't make everyone paranoid necessarily. No, and I've really looked into it hard
Starting point is 00:28:55 to find out why some people are paranoid and some people don't. Part of it is, well, there's two things. One, and I didn't find anything definitive, which I'm sad about, but the two things I came up with is one, it depends on the POT. Sure.
Starting point is 00:29:09 If there is a difference between indica and sativa, the prevailing wisdom is that if you smoke indica, you're going to be less likely to be paranoid. Okay. The other reason is it would depend probably on the existing brain chemistry of the user. My brain chemistry is not the same as yours. Right.
Starting point is 00:29:28 And neither one of ours is the same as Jerry's. So of course, when we introduce a psychoactive chemical into that chemistry, it's going to affect it differently. Yeah. So that's what I came up with basically. I wonder if one of the reasons indica is less likely is because that's the couch bound one and you're less likely to be paranoid sitting on your couch
Starting point is 00:29:46 rather than the more active one like smoking and going to the Renaissance festival. Where you'd be freaked out, stone sober. Where you'd meet John Strickland and he would mess with you if he found out you were stoned. Anyway, I'm curious. Yeah, it makes sense. I've also found there's recent research
Starting point is 00:30:04 that shows the cannabinols. Yeah. There's a precursor chemical to them that's called cannabidiolic acid, CBD. Right. And CBD has been found that to actually counteract the schizoid effects of pot, like the stuff that makes you paranoid,
Starting point is 00:30:25 that symptom, if you smoke a pot that has a higher CBD to THC ratio, maybe it's even or something like that, the CBD is going to cut down on the schizophrenic symptoms while leaving like the rest of the stuff intact. Oh, interesting. Isn't that weird? So I wonder if indica just by nature
Starting point is 00:30:45 has a higher CBD content. Yeah, maybe so. Yeah. There are people that know this. Okay, so back in the 60s, there was a researcher, his name escapes me, who started looking into what the heck made pot make you loco.
Starting point is 00:31:03 Right. And he found THC. So THC was isolated in the 60s. And from that, they reverse engineered how THC affected the brain and effectively discovered an entire system that we didn't know existed thanks to pot research. It's called the endocannabinoid system.
Starting point is 00:31:22 And it's a very ancient system that's found in everything from sea squirts to every vertebrate on the planet, including us. Did you say sea squirt? Sea squirts, very primitive animals, all the way up to us. Well, I know that I didn't quite get
Starting point is 00:31:38 the endocannabinoid part, so take it away. Okay, so. I know it works backwards. Yes, that's a very important point. So you know, when we do anything from our brain says, grab coffee mug to us thinking about how we're feeling at any given point, all of that is based on the transmission among neurons,
Starting point is 00:32:00 right? Yeah, we've covered that a lot. The neurotransmitters kind of cover that gap between the neurons and deliver the message. Right. And then depending on where the neurotransmitter is and what chemical has come across, then different things happen, right?
Starting point is 00:32:16 Well, the endocannabinoid system is this kind of dimmer switch that is around all neurons that works backward to kind of say, whoa, whoa, let's not pump those neurochemicals out as frequently or in as much abundance. Right. And the whole point of the endocannabinoid system is to maintain homeostasis or good for your yin,
Starting point is 00:32:38 good for your yang, isn't that weird? Yeah. Okay, so when you smoke pot, your endocannabinoid system, which has receptors all throughout the body, there's CB2 receptors, which are mainly associated with your immune system, and then CB1 receptors are throughout the brain. And when you smoke pot, the cannabinoids,
Starting point is 00:32:58 the phytocannabinoids, which is THC in this case, go into these regions of your brain and stick to your brain, to your endocannabinoid receptors. Yeah, they basically just kind of hijack the system. So the systems that the endocannabinoid receptors are meant to regulate are no longer being regulated by our body's endocannabinoids. They're being hijacked by THC,
Starting point is 00:33:22 which is not subject to our body's whims and all that. We just basically have to ride that snake out until it's over. So you end up with all of these different weirdo symptoms that you normally wouldn't have, which is basically the result of your endocannabinoid system going haywire because it's been hijacked by THC.
Starting point is 00:33:37 Right. So like your hippocampus. Yes. We've talked about that. That's good for learning. Yeah, it is. And when the endocannabinoid receptors are full of THC, you're not learning
Starting point is 00:33:49 or making memories as well as normal. Yeah, we're talking short-term memory. It definitely impairs that. And that's why if you've ever hung out with a bunch of potheds, you'll hear the phrase, what were we just talking about? Quite a lot. Because it's gonna affect the hippocampus in that way.
Starting point is 00:34:04 Yeah, you're not forming memories. It's also gonna affect your coordination, which is the cerebellum. So you may be a little clumsier. And then you have the basal ganglia and that directs your unconscious muscle movements. Yeah. So the reason Farmer Ted is paranoid,
Starting point is 00:34:20 he doesn't like that plant looking at him the way it is. He's paranoid because his basomedial amygdala has been affected. It's endocannabinoid receptors have been hijacked by THC. And it's this region of the brain where we learn to fear dangerous situations. Farmer Ted is learning to fear things he normally wouldn't fear.
Starting point is 00:34:44 Because the endocannabinoids that the body normally makes are not operating the way that they're supposed to be. So he's now afraid of that plant. Now isn't that this, aren't the endocannabinoids the same system that they have finally pinpointed the munchies or activates the munchies? Yeah, and your hypothalamus. Your ghrelin production, remember ghrelin?
Starting point is 00:35:08 It's that chemical that makes you feel hungry. So you go eat. Your ghrelin production and absorption is mediated by endocannabinoids in the hypothalamus, which gets hijacked by THC, which suddenly all food looks irresistible. Yeah, and which is why it is prescribed for people going through chemotherapy
Starting point is 00:35:28 and other things because they lose their appetite and lose a lot of weight. And aside from helping to stem nausea, it also will stimulate the appetite. Yeah. So that's the endocannabinoid system and that is how POT affects it. I feel like a ta-da.
Starting point is 00:35:43 Yeah, we left out the biggest part. It also causes a release in dopamine, which is what makes you feel high. Sure. Any euphoric feeling comes from that release of dopamine, but it's also possible that any paranoia or those schizoid symptoms that come along with it are from too much dopamine.
Starting point is 00:36:00 Right. So too high a release of dopamine can lead to feelings of paranoia and anxiety. Yeah, and these feelings, the effect of THC period is gonna last a couple of hours, depending on obviously how good the pot is and how much you smoked. Right.
Starting point is 00:36:18 But the chemicals are gonna be in your body a lot longer than that with a terminal half-life of 20 hours to 10 days after you've smoked it. So if you get, you know, if you're one of the, how many percentage of companies drug tests? 57%? Yeah, 50 something, 53 maybe? Yeah, depending on your weight
Starting point is 00:36:38 and how much you smoked and how long you smoked. 57, you're right. You're gonna either pass that drug test or not. It can stay in your body for, you know, weeks though. Yeah, yeah, and there's no way to tell because it depends on you, your metabolism, and the pot, the potency of the pot too. But yeah, your body breaks it down into five metabolites
Starting point is 00:36:59 and they test for all five, just using a basic immunosay, where they introduce an antibody to your urine and it reacts or doesn't react and turns it a pretty color. A pretty bad color. All right. All right. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called
Starting point is 00:37:27 David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends
Starting point is 00:37:45 to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.
Starting point is 00:38:01 Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in
Starting point is 00:38:15 as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough
Starting point is 00:38:33 or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.
Starting point is 00:38:47 Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.
Starting point is 00:38:58 And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.
Starting point is 00:39:17 So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, Farmer Ted, stand back up, let's abuse you some more. Although he seems like he's enjoying it. He's a little, he's a little cooler now. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:39:37 He was petting that plant. I mean, any guy thinks they're made up. So they made up. Yeah. Good. So if you can see his liver right here, right there. Uh-huh. So Farmer Ted is going to eat some pot this time.
Starting point is 00:39:47 Yeah. So Farmer Ted is going to eat some pot this time. Yeah. So Farmer Ted is going to eat some pot this time. So Farmer Ted is going to eat some pot this time. Okay. So what's going to happen? He's ingested pot orally one way or another,
Starting point is 00:40:03 whether it cooked in a brownie or just eating the pot. Sure. And the body's going to take this and break it down, metabolize it, and send it to the liver. And when this happens, it's going to, the THC is going to hit the bloodstream in this stomach anyway. So it's going to get some sort of buzz or whatever.
Starting point is 00:40:22 But in the liver, he's going to metabolize it into another psychoactive chemical that isn't really present when you smoke it. So it doesn't, the effects aren't quite as pronounced, but they last longer, and there's an additional weirdo thing to it. Well, it's going to take longer, but last longer. And...
Starting point is 00:40:42 The effects of it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But there's also that extra psychoactive chemical that's produced in the liver that's not really produced when you smoke it. Yeah. It is weird.
Starting point is 00:40:53 And it's also the reason why new young travelers to Amsterdam, you know, want to try their first pot brownie, they don't think it's working. Then they try another one. And this is the ones you see, like sitting alongside the canal, like rocking themselves. Yes. Because it takes a little while.
Starting point is 00:41:11 It does. When you ingest it via smoke, it's almost instantaneous. When you ingest it by eating it, it's going to take a lot longer. That's right. So, I guess we should talk a little bit about whether or not it's addictive,
Starting point is 00:41:26 because that's another raging debate for years and years. How addictive is pot? There are all kinds of studies that contradict one another. And I think it's one of these things that probably comes down to the person somewhat, if you have that addictive personality. But they do see effects of pot cessation, irritability, anxiety, depression,
Starting point is 00:41:49 maybe sleeplessness and insomnia, restlessness. And that's if you quit the pot after having been a user. And it's psychologically addictive like any drug. You're going to crave it if you want it. Sure. Apparently, it can have an impact on your levels of anxiety. Like you might not feel anxious when you're stoned, but you could feel anxious when you're not stoned.
Starting point is 00:42:12 So, you get stoned more often, which, while not necessarily a classic addiction, because the addiction model follows strictly the limbic system. And pot, I think, activates it somewhat, but it's not really acting specifically on that. It's acting more on the endocannabinoid system. So, indirectly, it might be hitting the limbic system, but it's not following that classic addiction route.
Starting point is 00:42:35 But at the very least, that's habitual. If you need to smoke something to get back to normal, that's a habit and a bad one, because you have a crutch there. Yeah, unless you're Willie Nelson, and then you're just like, what's the problem? You just keep smoking it. I love my crutches.
Starting point is 00:42:51 Willie Nelson. Well, I guess we can talk about some of the medicinal uses. We did talk about cancer and AIDS patients to stimulate appetite. The old glaucoma card is a big one to play. Yeah. If you're applying for your medical marijuana card. It relieves eye pressure.
Starting point is 00:43:12 I couldn't find how it does that. Yeah, but it's been, that's one of the earliest uses of it. I remember. Oh, you remember? I remember when all this first started to hit. Yeah, glaucoma. California passed legal medicinal marijuana in 1996.
Starting point is 00:43:25 It was almost all glaucoma at the time, in which it seemed like everybody was like, you are so faking glaucoma. You need pop for glaucoma, and then it just became more and more established as fact. Became associated with helping more and more maladies. And of course, if you go to get your card and you go to the dispensary,
Starting point is 00:43:44 they have a long list of things that it can help. Right. Basically, anything you can think of. Yes. They will put on their list. As long as you have a prescription card, they think they're cool with it. Well, no, that's to get the card.
Starting point is 00:43:59 Oh, gotcha. Like the 420 doctor? Yeah. The 420 doctor. If your doctor wears Birkenstocks, you can probably get a medicinal marijuana card from him. But don't see him for anything else. It can help with epileptic seizures.
Starting point is 00:44:14 In fact, here in Georgia, that's been on the table due to a famous story of a boy here in Georgia who's seizures were massively cut down by taking a marijuana oil, which has no THC. Like the kid's not getting high, basically. It doesn't have psychoactive properties? No. And Georgia is, believe it or not,
Starting point is 00:44:37 trying to speed through. I know it didn't go through initially a few weeks ago, just because I think they didn't have time to get it through. But there seems to be support for it. But just for the marijuana oil, though, not like dispensaries or anything like that. Well, I mean, could be the beginning of it,
Starting point is 00:44:56 or it could be a sea change in how some states legalize marijuana. I'd be surprised. Well, but I'm wondering if it's a change like, okay, if this medicinal marijuana oil works, we can legalize that, and that's it. And that'll be like the model for other states. Oh, I see what you mean.
Starting point is 00:45:14 And then MS, multiple sclerosis, decreases muscle spasms. And I've seen this firsthand with a good friend. It really helps him out. And Montell Williams has famously come out as an MS sufferer who is a longtime advocate for using marijuana. Well, it makes sense again.
Starting point is 00:45:31 I mean, if you're having muscle spasms, perhaps your endocannabinoid system is not functioning correctly, and the THC goes in and actually supplements it, you know? And also, remember I said that it fights cancer? Yeah, yeah. If you're going to cancer.gov and type cannabis and medicinal cannabis, I think,
Starting point is 00:45:48 it brings up basically a laundry list of all of the ways that marijuana helps. And it's been found to fight to destroy cancer cells. Oh, wow. Like THC goes in and destroys cancer cells in the liver. Apparently it's been shown to destroy breast cancer cells. Like not helps you feel better when you have cancer, can actually cure cancer in some cases.
Starting point is 00:46:12 It was a carcinoma in the liver that it was shown to be able to cure. So it's definitely worth checking out too. That's awesome. And it also alleviates pain and inflammation associated with injury or disease. The way it does that is with the other cannabinoid receptors, the CB2 receptors in the body,
Starting point is 00:46:33 are related to the immune system. So it goes in and messes with those and says, hey, everybody, calm down. Let's stop being so inflamed. Well, that's, yeah, I guess that's why it's prescribed a lot for arthritic conditions these days. Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, rheumatoid arthritis, that one's called?
Starting point is 00:46:50 Yeah, I don't know what the difference is between rheumatoid and regular arthritis. We should do one on arthritis. All right, let's do it. How about that? It is still, despite all the medical research, it is still scheduled as a, or classified as a schedule one substance,
Starting point is 00:47:07 which is the most dangerous drugs that currently have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. And there have been many pushes over the years to get it reclassified and not in the same group as heroin and cocaine and ecstasy. Nuts. But that has not been successful as of yet.
Starting point is 00:47:26 But I think that will probably happen at some point soon. It seems like it's going that way, but supposedly around the time normal was founded, the national organization for the re-legalization of marijuana legislation. Is that right? I'm pretty sure. It's quite a mouthful.
Starting point is 00:47:42 That's why everybody's called it normal. Festivals, East Avenue and Piedmont Park. In the nineties, the normal rallies. Hash bash. Yeah, I saw the black crows there once. It was great. Right, so, but yeah, normal was founded in the seventies at a time when it looked like, I mean, Carter was president.
Starting point is 00:47:59 Willie Nelson had smoked a joint on the White House roof. Like it was the time for pot to be decriminalized and everybody thought like it's gonna happen. It's happening, it's happening. And apparently, nope, it didn't happen. They pulled back from the brink. So it's entirely possible that what looks right now to be the wind of change that is very much sweeping
Starting point is 00:48:19 through the country, it could be stopped baffled, I guess. So it's, the fat lady has not sung yet. Well, I think the first step toward a federal, and the difference here is, you know, federal laws versus state laws. It's still federally not accepted, but in states like, of course, Colorado and Washington. And then how many states have medical, like 11?
Starting point is 00:48:43 20. Or 20. Yeah. Okay. If anything's gonna happen federally, it's gotta be reclassified away from schedule one first. Right. So until that happens,
Starting point is 00:48:53 you're probably not gonna see any federal laws enacted. No. Or repealed. And we should say the mood of the country right now is about split a little bit in favor toward pro-pot. So like in Washington and Colorado, both votes were like 55, 44, 55, 43, something like that. And a CBS poll from 2014, I think in January,
Starting point is 00:49:19 found about the same 55% of Americans favor legalizing pot opposed to like I think 44, 43%. Yeah. So it's clearly moved out of, you know, just the hippy stoners at the normal rally and to people supporting that kind of legislation that don't even use marijuana because there is a groundswell of support that, hey,
Starting point is 00:49:47 it's not a schedule one drug. It's not a schedule one drug. Alcohol is more destructive to your life and your body and why are you gonna outlaw this plant and put people in prison with a war on pot that isn't working? Right. It's like wasting money,
Starting point is 00:50:05 whereas we could tax it and raise money. So there's been a big title shift in the past decade, really in the past 20 years, but in the past 10, like if you had asked me 10 years ago, if there would be recreational use allowed in any state, I would have said probably not. Right. But here we are with Washington and Colorado.
Starting point is 00:50:25 Here we are. Like where you can grow it, you can buy it and have, I don't know how much, but I think you're allowed to have a certain small amount, right? Yeah. Like you can't drive around with 10 pounds in your trunk or anything.
Starting point is 00:50:37 I don't know how much you can, but it's definitely more than just like a small amount, and you can just literally go to the store and buy pot. And there's actually an awesome New Yorker article called Buzzkill from late last year. And it's about this economist that Washington State hired to basically create the framework for their legal pot industry.
Starting point is 00:50:59 Like the economic model? Yeah. And like on a macroeconomic level, on a microeconomic level, he's like whether you like it or not, you're going to be competing with dealers still. You're sure. And so you want to make your tax money,
Starting point is 00:51:12 but you don't want to make so much that you price yourself out of the market and the black market stays open. You want to get rid of the black market by basically competing against them, competing them out of business. Right. And there's just all these different factors that this guy like was kind of laying out
Starting point is 00:51:27 and it was really interesting. Buzzkill. I have to check that out. Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.
Starting point is 00:51:55 We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?
Starting point is 00:52:15 Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.
Starting point is 00:52:29 Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.
Starting point is 00:52:49 The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place
Starting point is 00:53:04 because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.
Starting point is 00:53:16 Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast
Starting point is 00:53:36 and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, there's a debate that I don't quite understand about the potency of marijuana in like the 60s and 70s versus today. The debate is that, that pot is much more potent
Starting point is 00:54:07 than it was in the 60s and 70s. And first of all, they didn't, they didn't test a wide variety of marijuana strains in the 60s and 70s. Right, it was like stems and seeds, Mexican like rag, rag. Yeah, so that's the only way you can tell a true test of potency is to study a wide variety. They didn't, they never did that. They didn't test the Maui-Waui.
Starting point is 00:54:28 They never did that in the 1670s, and you can't go back in a time machine. So what's the point in debating it? The pot today is, is how it is. It is, and basically what the best you could hope to do is like have Dennis Hopper smoke some pot and be like, huh? And he can be like, oh yeah. He's dead.
Starting point is 00:54:44 Hopper's dead? Yeah, dude. Since when? Yeah, I just saw him on like an insurance commercial. He died a few years ago. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's sad.
Starting point is 00:54:56 It is sad. Sorry, a state of Dennis Hopper. Get Willie Nelson though. Peter Fonda. Yeah, he's alive. Okay, so you just have Peter Fonda tell you. He can tell you. There's plenty of people who could say.
Starting point is 00:55:06 The point is that is largely irrelevant because we're not dealing with creating pot policy based on the 1960s. We're dealing with pot policy today, and we know very clearly that pot is more potent today than it was even a couple decades ago. And we know that in part because of something called the University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project.
Starting point is 00:55:30 Basically they get their hands on seized pot that the cops get their hands on. They send some of it to Mississippi, and Mississippi tests it for potency. And they said that between 1993 and 2008, the average amount of THC across all samples rose from 3.4% to 8.8% from 93 to 2008. And it's going up, up, up apparently now
Starting point is 00:55:57 with the rise of dispensaries and the openly shared knowledge of how to cultivate hot and do what you want to genetically select for, it's up to like 25% supposedly. And I didn't see that figure disputed. 25% THC content, that's insane. That will drive you insane. I can't imagine that if the average is 8.8
Starting point is 00:56:26 or was 3.4 in 1993 and is now up to 25%, that's potent. And that's, I guess, for the top of the line, most expensive pot you can buy. Yeah, but I predict that there's going to be kind of a retro vintage pushback. A return to swag. Not necessarily that, but something that's way more toned down. Or it'll be marketed to people who don't want
Starting point is 00:56:51 that level of high, I guess. Yeah, like 70s weed. That's all they have to do to market it. Green leisure suit or something like that. Yeah, boom, success. Although I don't know if anybody would want to go back to the 70s because I think it really was very low potency, comparatively speaking.
Starting point is 00:57:12 Yeah, all right, should we cover some of the ways that it's smoked? Well, I already covered the joint, right? Yes. That's what Slim had. Slim had the joint. I do know that Slim happens to prefer the blunt. Oh yeah.
Starting point is 00:57:27 There's a cigar that is sliced open and tobacco's taken out and generally mixed back in with some of the pot. And it's... Oh, is that right? Yeah, it's called a blunt. I didn't know that the tobacco was ever mixed back in. It depends on, I mean, you don't have to.
Starting point is 00:57:43 Like a spliff is popular in Europe. That's with regular tobacco. Like drum? Yeah, whatever. Just any kind of loose leaf tobacco mixed in with the pot. Yeah, I think the blunt's usually, they take most of the cigar tobacco out. I think you're probably right.
Starting point is 00:57:57 And then you don't even need to buy a cigar now. They have blunt wrappers, like basically cigar rolling papers. Oh, really? Yeah, and flavored ones too. Yeah, I've heard of those. Interesting, man. You can have your just traditional pipe.
Starting point is 00:58:11 And if you go into any head shop, you're gonna find a big variety of all sorts of handmade glass pipes. Or remember the brass ones with the little kind of tie dye plastic thing in the middle for holding because the brass would get so hot apparently? No, I don't remember that. Do you remember that from the 90s?
Starting point is 00:58:29 Like did you go to Lollapalooza? Yeah, I went to Lollapalooza. Well, then you saw those things. Okay. I remember the first time I smelled pot, it was at a concert. Yeah. And it was like 13.
Starting point is 00:58:41 And it was such a foreign. I think I've talked about this on the show. I was just like, what in the world is that? It's like, I've never smelled anything like that in my life. It's like someone burning a spare tire or something. And then you've got the bong or water pipes. And that uses water to, I guess, cool down the smoke. Right.
Starting point is 00:59:02 And I remember that from the Scott Bayow after-school special, Stoned. Did you ever see that one? No, I saw Zapped. That was a regular movie. But he was growing pot in that one. He and one of the names were growing it at school. Yeah, and Stoned was one of the classic
Starting point is 00:59:16 after-school specials where he was a pot head that like ended up accidentally killing his brother or something like he went swimming and knocked him on the head with the aura of a boat by accident. Oh gosh. He may not have died though. He may have rescued him. The after-school special that I remember most vividly
Starting point is 00:59:30 is that the one where Helen Hunt took PCP and jumped out the window like the second story of her school. I mean, they scared the pants off of us. Yeah. Which is the point. And Nancy Reagan was like off on the set, like muah. But I remember hearing the bong.
Starting point is 00:59:45 He smoked out of the bong Scott Bayow did and I heard that the bubbling sound and I was like, well, that's a weird sound. And then you heard it on the Cypress Hill album years later. And I was like, hey, that's Scott Bayow. And then of course we've talked about the edibles and vaporizing, which is like all the rage these days. Yeah. And I imagine it just hit me the other day.
Starting point is 01:00:05 I'll bet everyone who smokes pot uses E-cigarettes as like little vaporizer one-headers, don't they? Some do. I would imagine so. Yeah. In fact, you can buy like pre-made cartridges of like hash oil and things to stick in your little E-cigarette. I know they sell those in Colorado. Stick that in your E-cigarette and smoke.
Starting point is 01:00:26 But we should point out, we say kids these days and teenagers, although marijuana use in teenagers has escalated over the years, you can't pin it down to one demographic. I think you would be surprised if everybody who smoked pot on a semi-regular basis was outed about who you would see.
Starting point is 01:00:47 I've heard stories from friends whose fathers were like CEO executives and they had cannabis clubs where all the other CEOs that they were friends with like grew their own specialty pot and traded it among each other. So a wide range of people use it. Although the vast majority supposedly, I don't know if vast majority is right.
Starting point is 01:01:10 Although according to polls or surveys, the vast majority are teenagers followed by post-teens. But in between 1990, 1992 and 1999, marijuana use among teenagers doubled. And you know what? I lay that almost exclusively, at least at first, at the feet of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. You think so?
Starting point is 01:01:37 I put it out there, yes. With the chronic? Absolutely. Yeah, that was a great album. 1992. Yeah, I can, when I hear that album, I think of Street Fighter II. Did you play a lot of that then?
Starting point is 01:01:48 We would sit around in college, listen to the chronic and play Street Fighter II. Yeah. It was a good album. It was a great game. I never really played Street Fighter. Oh yeah, they were really good. So I found a study here.
Starting point is 01:02:02 I have to interject one other thing. Okay. Have you seen the YouTube of Mike Tyson Clips set to Street Fighter sound effects? No. That would be awesome. From his one-man show? No, no, from his boxing career.
Starting point is 01:02:14 Oh. And it fits perfectly. He's like, sure, you're getting that one point. I'll have to see that. So if you're smoking pot, it's obviously not gonna be great for your lungs and your body, because you're inhaling smoke. And like we said earlier, there are 33 cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana.
Starting point is 01:02:33 And it's gonna deposit tar into your lungs, just like cigarettes. And in fact, if you smoke equal amounts of marijuana in regular tobacco, it's gonna deposit about four times as much tar as regular tobacco. What's called the tar burden? Is it? However, there was a large-scale long-term study
Starting point is 01:02:54 released recently by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. And they collected data from 5,000 adults for more than 20 years, which these are always my favorite studies, you know. Because you can tell stuff long-term. And they found that low-to-moderate use of pot is less harmful to your lungs than exposure to tobacco.
Starting point is 01:03:14 And I think they measured airflow rate, which is the speed which you can blow out air, and then lung volume, which is the amount of air you can hold in your lungs. And they found that with tobacco, there's a one-to-one relationship. The more you lose, the more loss you have, long-wise. And with marijuana, up to a certain rate,
Starting point is 01:03:34 it actually increased the airflow rate. And their rationale was that a cigarette smoker, like a moderate-to-heavy smoker, smoking 20 cigarettes a day, whereas no one's going out there and smoking, you know, well, that's not true. 20 joints a day? Yeah, but it would be probably less than that, because it's more concentrated.
Starting point is 01:03:56 But you don't see people smoking five joints a day either, unless they have other than Willie Nelson or Snoop Dogg. I'm sorry, Snoop Lion. Is he still on Snoop Lion? I think so. I can see how pot would have an effect on your lungs, though, as well, especially compared to cigarettes, because no one uses a filter on their joints.
Starting point is 01:04:16 Well, yeah, and you inhale deeper with marijuana than you do with tobacco. So those are both factors. But if you're smoking a pack a day and you're smoking a lot of weed, you're not doing yourself any favors in the lung department. Even though it might help you fight that cancer, it may give you cancer to begin with.
Starting point is 01:04:33 Yeah, just use non-psychoactive marijuana oil like they give that little kid, or marinol, although that's psychoactive. It's a THC pill. Yeah, I remember right here. They use it for wasting disease and to increase appetite and that kind of stuff. Just to mess with the endocannabinoid system
Starting point is 01:04:55 of people who need it. That's right. You got anything else? No, I mean, this could have been a two-parter, but well, this is a good overview, I think. It is. I hope everybody enjoyed it. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:05:05 You learned a little something? Anything else? Nope. If you want to learn more about marijuana, aka cannabis, type either of those words into the search bar at howstuffworks.com. And let's see, since we said search bar, it means it's time for Listener Mail.
Starting point is 01:05:22 I'm going to call this Australian smoke jumper. Hey guys, just thought I'd write to let you know how you've influenced a major change in my life. A couple of years ago now, you did a podcast on wildfires. I already had a strong interest in firefighting, but never heard of the things like smoke jumpers or some of the science involved.
Starting point is 01:05:42 Since I joined the Rural Fire Service last year as a volunteer and last week, I completed my first full bushfire fighter accreditation. Wow. It's been a great change and it's inspired me to get fitter and more active with my community. I'm now working towards getting fit and fast enough to be a smoke jumper, which we call RAFT units
Starting point is 01:06:04 in Australia, Remote Area Fire Task Force. So thanks guys for giving me the inspiration and drive to get out there and challenge myself. Couldn't imagine doing anything else in my spare time now. As always, love the show. You keep me mildly distracted through my slow days at work. And that is Andrew from Australia.
Starting point is 01:06:21 Nice, thanks a lot. Andrew, congratulations. Yeah, keep it up buddy. It's pretty cool work. Agreed. Be safe out there. If you want to let us know about any life achievements or successes that you'd like to celebrate
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Starting point is 01:06:54 That is stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90's called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.
Starting point is 01:07:29 We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90's. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90's called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,
Starting point is 01:08:18 Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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