The Straight Toke - THE Marijuana Blog

Hey Julius: Sometimes I read about someone being "treated for marijuana ingestion" or "treated for marijuana intoxication". What does that mean?

I've read this before, often in news articles discussing someone who's... well... smoked a lot of pot. I tried to find references in various medical textbooks as to the recommended treatment for "marijuana intoxication". Unfortunately, my search came up with very little. As it turns out, there's not really much "treatment" per se -- the usual course of action is something like this:

1. Calm the patient down if they are anxious/panicking.

Since "Dave" found The Straight Toke with the intent of finding out "if smoking out of aluminum foil bowls is bad for you", I intend to help him answer that question.

Short answer: pure aluminium? Probably not. (But read on.)

Long answer: "aluminium foil"? I wouldn't...

Julius does not endorse the use of any substance. The rules below are not an endorsement of drug use, but rather guidelines shared with the intent of helping those who choose to use do so safely.

Yesterday a friend of mine had a pretty poor trip on some mushrooms. He looked at them before (and afterwards) and they weren't spiked -- they were just a bit stronger than he expected. While everyone's fine and nothing bad came out of it, the experience has prompted me to share the rules of safe drug use:

What other ways can cannabis be used, other than smoking it?

First, if you're interested in the different ways to smoke pot, you can read our "how to guide" on the subject. That said, there are a variety of ways to ingest cannabis that do not involve the inhalation of smoke. Here are some of the more effective ways to consume the herb:

• Vaporize it. A good vaporizer costs between £50 and £250, but it's a worthwhile investment. Vaporizers provide a fast and effective way to use the THC from Marijuana. By heating the plant material to the boiling point of THC (200 C or so), the THC boils away from the plant material with no combustion. Since there is no smoke, vaporization is often a popular choice amongst medical marijuana users.

One of our readers alerted us to this account from a chemotherapy patient about their use of marijuana (from the LA Times.)

While it's absolutely heart-wrenching to hear about the pain and suffering caused by cancer (and its subsequent treatment), we think that Mrs. Wagman's account of her medicinal use of marijuana provides an excellent example of the value of cannabis. The article also contains several items of interest:

Marijuana use is more frequent than many people expect:

No, what really shocked me was how many of my old, dear, married, parenting, job-holding friends smoke pot. [...] Across the ideological spectrum, a lot of my buddies are stoners. Who knew?

does sinthetic (sic) pot really work?

There are a lot of misconceptions about "synthetic marijuana", namely that it exists! When people refer to synthetic marijuana, they're almost always referring to synthetic THC, an "alternative" to medical marijuana that's gained quite a bit of popularity amongst the medical community. Synthetic THC is THC -- it's just that instead of being created as part of the natural growth cycle of marijuana, it's man-made. Since the active ingredient is the same, synthetic THC is often given in situations where a doctor might otherwise prescribe medical cannabis. The most common form of synthetic THC is Dronabinol (sold under the brand name of Marinol,) and is a Schedule III drug.

Is Dutch weed really that much stronger than what's available elsewhere? If so, why?

Marijuana's strength is measured in terms of the available concentration of THC. The strongest commonly-available strain of Cannabis contains 22.1% THC -- quite a lot, considering that naturally occurring Marijuana only contains somewhere between two and five percent THC.

Dutch Cannabis typically contains more than 15% THC, but that figure fluctuates from year to year as demonstrated in a report by the Trimbos Institute:

The average level tested in 2007 is 16% compared to 17.5% in 2006.

Dear Julius:
I've read a couple articles recently about the DEA seizing/harassing medical users/growers in California. What's up with that? Isn't grass legal there if its [sic] used as medicine?

That's exactly what I thought when I started seeing those sort of articles -- what is up with that? After all, California passed Proposition 215

To ensure that seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes where that medical use is deemed appropriate and has been recommended by a physician who has determined that the person's health would benefit from the use of marijuana in the treatment of cancer, anorexia, AIDS, chronic pain, spasticity, glaucoma, arthritis, migraine, or any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.

Please note: unless explicitly requested, we do not post names/handles of anyone who asks us a question. We take your privacy very seriously, and will only post identifying information if you ask us to do so. Our default policy is to let contributers remain totally anonymous.

Dear Julius:

Will smoking make me stupid?

Thanks,
tokejoker

Hey tokejoker (nice screenname) -- you'll be pleased to know that the answer is a resounding no.

As we've talked about before, responsible marijuana use will not make you any less intelligent. Even if you smoke regularly, there will be no long term effects on your overall intelligence level. "That's all well and good", one might say, "but what about in the short term?"

Well -- it looks as though we may be one step closer to the legalization of our favourite herb. The ACLU has gotten a judge to submit an official recommendation to the DEA to end the prohibition on marijuana's production for medical purposes. From the article:

On May 15, DEA Administrative Law Judge Mary Ellen Bittner submitted her recommendation to the DEA's Deputy Administrator in which she found that it is "in the public interest" to end the federal monopoly on the supply of marijuana that can be used in FDA-approved research, held by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).