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.

In Episode 24 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the historic strides toward liberation of the cannabis plant in 2018, from the fabled four corners of the Earth. Yet under capitalism, every advance also opens new contradictions.

With passage of the Farm Bill and removal of hemp-derived CBD from controlled substance status, big market growth is expected for the very chic and purportedly salubrious non-psychoactive cannabinoid. The law is a win for a nascent CBD industry that has been struggling to shake off the lingering stigma surrounding (psychoactive) cannabis. The effort to segment cannabidiol from "marijuana" is exemplified in the several states that now have "CBD-only" laws.

2018 saw historic strides toward the liberation of the cannabis plant, from the proverbial four corners of the Earth—North America to the Antipodes. Canadian legalization garnered big headlines, but there were significant breaks with the global prohibition regime in several other countries—including some seemingly unlikely candidates, in regions where the anti-cannabis stigma is deeply entrenched.

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.

There's been much controversy in recent years about the growing popularity of butane hash oil products such as dabs and shatter. But experts in the production of these high-potency concentrates all agree on the importance of vacuum purging to assure a safe, pure and flavorful BHO experience. 

Amid the seemingly endless hype about CBD, its once better-known sibling cannabinoid THC seems to increasingly languish in the shadows—both in terms of media attention and industry investment.