Community | January 28, 2010 | 14 comments

New Analysis Says Cannabis Breeders Should Grow for Safety As Well As Potency

source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/lack-balance-not-thc-makes-pot-health-risk

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There's a lot of misinformation blowing around out there concerning the medical benefits, and detriments, of smoking marijuana, but two UK researchers are making an argument for why you should perhaps pass on the puff-puff -- as well as why recreational use should not be outlawed in the future.
Cannabis has been shown through research to spur the brains of a susceptible minority toward long-term psychosis, particularly in young people who can significantly increase their risk of developing a disorder like schizophrenia. Findings like these often get a good deal of play in the media, not always accompanied by the key phrase "susceptible minority," fueling the Reefer Madness-like obsession with banning pot outright.
Amanda Feilding at Oxford's Beckley Foundation and Paul Morrison at London's Institute of Psychiatry argue that what's often overlooked is the kind of pot consumed, and that requires a more Mendelian approach to the problem. Your parents may have told you that the grass in their day wasn't as strong, while the old guy that hangs outside the grocery may hold the opinion that you just can't get the good stuff anymore. They could both be right. The problem is one of balance.
Street cannabis -- aka "skunk" -- has been selectively bred to increase the level of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). That's not news. But Feilding and Morrison point out that, in upping the potency through selective breeding, another important molecule, cannabidiol (CBD), has been selectively eliminated from skunk over time.

Research on CBD shows it to have an antipsychotic effect, the yang to THC's yin. So the selective breeding to make pot more potent has also made it more dangerous, throwing the psychotic/anti-psychotic balance strongly in favor of the psychotic. To boot, Feilding, Morrison, et al. have run some experiments administering THC and CBD to volunteers that bolster these claims, and they're setting up further research projects at dispensaries in California to further test their hypothesis, that pot bred to be high in THC but also in CBD would not have the harmful psychosis-aggravating effect of modern skunk.
The implications here, of course, are vast. First, Feilding and Morrison's work makes a strong case for the regulation of recreational pot market; as long as marijuana remains a black market good, growers will strive for a more potent product over a safe one, and if the psychosis issue is removed from the argument there's really little reason to keep pot illegal. But it also raises questions about the future of drugs, both legal and illegal. Can a Peruvian coca farmer selectively breed coca that is easier on the brain? Could opium farmers intelligently develop a pharmaceutical class of less-addictive opiates through unnatural selection? Can we employ Darwinian principles to bring illegal drugs safely back into the legal mainstream? It's enough to blow your mind.


http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/lack-balance-not-thc-makes-pot-hea...
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14 comments // New Analysis Says Cannabis Breeders Should Grow for Safety As Well As Potency

  • artemis6
  • FoosMaster
    • 0
      FoosMaster  

    • Venitreac asked the best question I have heard on this: "What is their definition of Psychosis?"
      I believe they are referring to the feeling of nervousness, anxiousness, and mild paranoia like most people get when they first start smoking. You know, like when you first started and you went out into a crowd and felt like people know you are high and are looking at you and you get nervous and maybe a little paranoid. I know when I was young I felt that way sometimes. Is this what they call Psychosis? If so, how harmful is that?
      All regular smokers know that the feeling goes away once you start to relax and just enjoy yourself. I still get that feeling sometimes though if I am stoned and a cop walks up, simply because it is still a criminal offense here. Is that Psychosis?

    • 2 years ago
  • Nephwrack
  • mr_tibbles
  • Nephwrack
  • Nephwrack
  • venitreac
    • 0
      venitreac  

    • Catch 22. If you legalize it then the growers will have an opportunity to create safer strains. On the other hand it may never be legal under the pretense that its uncontrollable. Q: If they can "research" and find out that there is a greater chance for psychosis with more THC then why can't they put the medical funding into engineering a safer strain themselves? A: Because there is more money in keeping it illegal. Also what is there definition of psychosis? Bottom line, if it makes you crazy don't use it. FInally whats up with this? Street cannabis -- aka "skunk"... for some reason that seems so 90's the only place i see skunk now is in the dispensary.

    • 2 years ago
  • theodor
    • 0
      theodor  

    • is there a way we can organise this grass roots effort im sick and tired of yup heads and foxtrough eaters discounting people for smoking pot its frustrating when you march against war and they go anyway and royally screw the pooch and they are still shovelling swill and misinformation unabashedly to a heartbreakingly significant amount of people almost a decade later and people are still lineing up for it... man i feel like im taking crazy pills sometimes... if only the pope would finally come out of the hot box for smoking to ease his arthritis...its good for gluacoma too

    • 2 years ago
  • metaloki
    • 0
      metaloki  

    • I guess when it becomes regulated it'll be judged on a fine balance of THC & CBD.
      I hope it happens soon before the original gets bred out.
      Maybe there's some old seeds in a junk-yard, V W bus somewhere.

      I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one out there doing the research.......pssssstp......ere.

    • 2 years ago
  • FoosMaster
    • 0
      FoosMaster  
    • metaloki:

      One of those Rare original strains was confiscated by the feds in a Colorado research facility. Read Jack Herer's post; "US medical marijuana lab says it was raided, ordered to turn over customer records"

    • 2 years ago
  • rosenthal
    • 0
      rosenthal  

    • i've been saying this for years. all cannibinoids which, like samantha said, are up to 80, contribute to the unique high of cannabis.

    • 2 years ago
  • hunzedog
    • 0
      hunzedog  

    • why not concentrate on fda approved drugs that kill 150 thousand people every year?
      how about tobacco that kills 500,000 every year.? why not go after booze that causes a myriad of physical and emotional problems and 100,000 deaths every year?
      america is overmedicated and undereducated..........

    • 2 years ago
  • hunzedog
    • 0
      hunzedog  

    • There's a lot of misinformation blowing around out there concerning the medical benefits, and detriments, of smoking marijuana, but two UK researchers are making an argument for why you should perhaps pass on the puff-puff

    • 2 years ago
  • hunzedog
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