- A few months ago I made a life-changing decision.
I got a medical marijuana card and a prescription for cannabis to help me sleep.
I've got anxiety, so poor quality sleep is my constant companion.
I have tried pretty much everything.
The only thing that's worked over the long term?
Cannabis.
And I'm not alone.
Almost 1/2 of all adults in the US have tried cannabis and nearly 2/3 support legalization.
Millions of people, including people like me who have zero experience with recreational marijuana, say that cannabis helps them with things like chronic pain and nausea.
But here's the thing with most of the marijuana out there.
It heavily focuses on the psychoactive agent in cannabis, THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol.
That is what gets you high.
Research shows us that most people don't actually associate elevated THC levels with enjoyment.
Here's the question.
Is it time to move past THC?
Will we ever understand cannabis' true potential, both for medical and recreational purposes?
I'm Swapna Krishna, let's explore the future of cannabis.
[upbeat music] Colorado was one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana.
Before the 1990s, the THC content in the most common strains in Colorado was around 2%.
Now, it's around 28%, which is a huge increase.
THC isn't bad in and of itself, but the emphasis on it makes it feel like cannabis is a very one-dimensional plant.
There's so much more here that we could explore.
What might the cannabis dispensary of the future look like?
Imagine seeing labels that might actually help you understand how a product will make you feel instead of strain names like Maui Wowie and Purple Magic.
Each product is tailored to deliver specific results, like alleviating nausea or lessening anxiety or even giving you that ideal high.
That is where the industry is headed according to experts.
But in order to get there we need two things.
First, to understand more about cannabis, and second, to dispel some myths about it.
- There is absolute truth that it is a miraculous plant and that it has helped millions of people and that it is unique and safe and a good option.
That's absolutely true.
It is also true that it can be something that people end up overusing, it can be something that people use as escape, it can be something that does lead to negative patterns and behavior.
And so I think it's important to talk about cannabis in this nuanced way, but of course that's not flashy and attractive.
- This is Miyabe Shields who studies cannabis at a molecular level.
Now that's important because there's a big myth around how cannabis is categorized.
Traditionally, the plant has two main strains, indica and sativa.
Hybrids just mean a mix of the two.
The thing is, a lot of users swear up and down that each strain produces different, even opposite effects.
But it turns out that these terms really only describe the plant's phenotype.
What it looks like and what it smells like.
And even though there are trends in how those strains affect users, you can't actually determine what effect a strain will have based on how it looks.
It's just not a completely accurate way to classify cannabis.
So then what's a more effective way to talk about cannabis?
The answer is looking specifically at its chemistry, which is what Miyabe and others in the industry have started to do.
They're looking at the compounds within cannabis to describe it.
What's called a chemovar.
- What the chemovar is describing is not just the THC but all of the other cannabinoids in it and the terpenes and the flavonoids and the anthocyanins and these other molecules in the plant that come together, it's called the entourage effect, right?
Like all of these molecules come together when you're using the flower to cause one overall effect in the body.
- Here is the thing.
Even sequencing the DNA of a cannabis plant will only tell you what compounds that plant is capable of producing.
Plants express different compounds, like THC or CBD, based on environmental factors, like humidity and temperature, as well as how they're harvested.
Even DNA can't tell you what effects a plant will actually produce.
And let's remember that the method you use to consume cannabis, like eating it or smoking it, will also change how it affects your body.
The bottom line is that it's very difficult to predict exactly how you'll feel after using a specific strain of weed because on top of everything I just mentioned cannabis produces different effects on each of us.
- It's neuro-diversity, right?
We just are different.
- Look, scientists have come a very long way in terms of studying cannabis, but there's still so far to go.
And if you're asking why we know so little about this plant, the answer is simple, prohibition.
Before we talk about prohibition, let's go over how cannabis works in our bodies.
We each have what's called an endocannabinoid system.
We actually don't know much about it.
Researchers only discovered it in the 1990s.
But what we do know is that it regulates and controls key parts of our body, including our central nervous system.
Cannabinoids are the active compounds found in cannabis.
The most well known are CBD and THC, but there are actually more than 100.
These cannabinoids interact and sometimes even hijack the endocannabinoid system to produce different effects.
That's why cannabis seems to be such a magical plant, because it affects the system in our body that regulates so many different things, like sleep, appetite, and memory.
It would be fantastic to know more about the endocannabinoid system and how cannabis works with it, but there's a problem.
Yep, you guessed it, prohibition.
Marijuana, which is the flower of the cannabis plant, has been classified as a Schedule 1 drug for decades by the US federal government.
Because of that, it's a real challenge for scientists to get licenses and funding to study it.
Even if you're lucky enough to clear those hurdles, you're stuck with government weed.
Until last year there was only one domestic source of marijuana for research.
One scientist oh so poetically described it as brown muddy garbage.
It doesn't have varied concentrations of CBD or THC and it doesn't come in edibles and oils.
- Right now, my laboratory is 300 feet from the closest dispensary and I study vape safety, and it's impossible, it is legally impossible for me to take any product, any vaporizable product from the real world and study it in my lab.
- Another thing we can thank prohibition for?
The high-potency cannabis that we talked about earlier.
- You get stronger drugs when they're illegal, and the reason for that is drug dealers know that they need to give off the perception of high quality, and the way they do that is by making a very prominent psychological effect.
- But stronger doesn't necessarily mean better.
Research shows that certain groups, like women, are more sensitive to THC.
Think about craft beer.
A few years ago, everyone was trying to brew the highest ABV they could.
Now, there's a movement towards lower alcohol beer because producers have realized that high alcohol doesn't necessarily make it more enjoyable or taste better for all users.
- If you can imagine going into a bar where there are 37 flavors of Bacardi 151 and one Diet Coke, that's what a dispensary looks like right now.
Where is the focus on products for people who have disabilities, for people who are not neuro-typical, for women, right?
- One day there will be more research on cannabis.
In 2021, the US government registered several new companies to produce a greater variety of cannabis for research.
But things are slow going and until there are real changes Adie says that it's up to us, the consumers, to demand what we want from the industry.
- Because left to its own devices, the industry is gonna keep doing what it's doing.
Oh let's freakishly look at what sold last quarter and make more of that, you know?
So yes, it absolutely requires individual patients and consumers to understand what is myth and what is fact and to go in empowered in their knowledge demanding the kinds of products that will be enjoyable, not necessarily the kinds of products that will get them the most high in the least amount of time.
- Lack of research and high THC aren't the only legacies of prohibition, though.
There are a lot.
But one we really need to address is the racist legacy and generational impact of the war on drugs.
If you look at the data, Black and white Americans use cannabis at similar rates, but Black people are arrested four times as often.
The numbers are pretty stark.
As states have begun to legalize cannabis, they've tried to make up for these injustices.
One example is granting marijuana business licenses to people with previous cannabis convictions.
It sounds great in theory, but it doesn't actually work.
- The first hurdle is the application process.
There are certain requirements that one must meet by having like liquid assets, for example, of a certain threshold.
[mumbles] depending on what kind of license that you're trying to obtain.
You may also have to have a building or some real estate that meets certain requirements and that also requires money.
And as it pertains to equity, oftentimes Black and Hispanic Americans don't have that network and it's difficult for them to make those connections.
- In other words, it is incredibly expensive to run a marijuana business and there's a host of systemic issues that create an uneven playing field.
It's complicated for sure, but there is good news on the horizon.
Most experts agree that we're well on the way to federal legalization.
That means access to better quality marijuana for scientists, more research and hopefully cannabis products with varying levels of potency.
There's also federal legislation in the works to make amends for the war on drugs.
But we don't quite know when or if these policies will become law, and until they do, we're dealing with a patchwork of state regulations that will shape the cannabis industry.
But researchers like Miyabe have high hopes.
- That's where I hope the future goes for cannabis as a medicine.
I hope it goes to empowering patients, I hope it goes towards having patients have more self-determination and self-advocacy.
- What do you want the future of cannabis to look like?
What's missing from the industry now?
Let us know in the comments.
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