Global Ganja Report

In what is starting to smell like an anti-cannabis media campaign, headlines erupt this week on the possible deleterious effects of cannabis on the developing brains of young teens. Again, the accounts are one-sided—and the political assumptions behind them flawed.

Recent days have seen successive stories in the media on the supposed mental health hazards of cannabis—seeming to signal a backlash to recent gains in normalizing the plant and overcoming the stigma.

The claim that cannabis causes "mental illness" rears its dubious head like clockwork every few years, and this latest round has occasioned a virtual media frenzy—a seeming backlash to the recent advances in normalization of the herb and its aficionados. Scratching the claims, however, reveals more hype than rigor.

The headlines are all too familiar ones, but this time they got very prominent play.

It has long been established that cannabis can effectively treat glaucoma, a condition that damages the optic nerve and can lead to blindness. However, new research indicates that while THC helps fight glaucoma, its cousin cannabinoid CBD has the opposite effect—and could actually counteract the efficacy of THC.

The newly enacted Farm Bill contains language implicitly removing hemp-derived CBD from the controlled substances list, along with industrial hemp. A CBD industry that has been growing fast in a legal grey zone stands to grow faster in the light of legal clarity. Conflicting state laws and even federal regulations, however, could prove an obstacle to unfettered expansion.

Terpenes, the chemical compounds that give your herb its distinctive smell and flavor, are increasingly recognized as a vital part of the overall cannabis experience. But with the growing popularity of vape pens and concentrates, industry is now adding terpenes to products in an effort to recreate that whole-flower feel. These may come from plants other than cannabis—and some may even be synthetic.

The name most associated with cannabis science in the minds of aficionados is that of Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam—who is credited with first isolating and identifying THC. But given the current craze for CBD, there is another figure who should receive his due. The American chemist Roger Adams is the man who first isolated cannabidiol. And, by some accounts, he even has a claim to being the one who first identified its pyschoactive cousin THC.

In addition to this, he played a little-recognized role in the great world political upheavals of his time, as he grappled with the role of science—and its misuses—in war and totalitarianism.

The Green Wolverine conference at the University of Michigan this month will bring speakers from across the country for a symposium on cannabis science. With Michigan facing a legalization initiative this November, the student-organized event is intended, among other things, to help voters make an informed choice.

Having just undertaken a "critical study" of CBD, the non-psychoactive cannabinoid held to have multifarious medicinal applications, the World Health Organization is now opening such a study on THC. Stigmatized due to its psychoactive properties and currently in the shadow of the suddenly sexy CBD, tetrahydrocannabinol shows its own potential for application by the medical industry.