by Chris Conrad
The familiar, palmate hemp leaf is compound, with five to eleven leaflets. These leaflets are rich green on top and slightly lighter on the underside. Each fingerlike blade has serrated edges and is tapered at both ends. The central blade of each leaf grows to be five to fifteen centimeters long (two to six inches) by one to three centimeters wide (¼ to one inch).6 A wider blade is characteristic of indica seed lines; slender blades characterize sativa. Indica plants are also typified by shorter, densely branched stalks with thick, tropical foliage. Leaves grow in lateral opposite pairs arranged on alternating sides of the stem, except toward the ends of branches, where solitary leaves begin to switch sides preparatory to producing flowers. This change in pattern makes it possible to tell if a plant was grown from seed (which follows a regular leaf progression) or is a clone taken from upper stem cuttings (which have the irregular pattern). Most nutrients used by the growing plant are stored in its foliage and, if mulched, return to the soil at the close of the season.7
Cannabis sativa L.
1. Flowering male plant
2. Male flowers
3. Cannabis leaf
4. Female flower with stigmas extended
5. Fruit/hempseed
6. Female bud
7. Flowering female plant
8. Early growth
Each ovary develops a single seed in its own pod: a tiny, smooth, egg-shaped kernel, or achene.8 These oil-rich fruits grow together in thick clusters along the flowering stalk. Immature seeds are pale green. Mature seeds range in color from dark gray to light brown and mottled, with dark seeds generally being much heavier than pale ones. When grown for seed, about half the dry weight of the female plant will be fruit. The seed portion is a variable, but the relative proportions by weight of the other parts, thoroughly air-dried, are fairly stable at approximately 60 percent stem, 30 percent foliage, and 10 percent root.9
INDUSTRIAL HEMP IS NOT MEDICAL MARIJUANA
Whereas only recently the idea was popularized that the resinous subspecies of hemp should be referred to as Cannabis indica, today we have the opposite emerging concept that the non-psychoactive varieties comprise a de facto subspecies commonly referred to as industrial hemp.
Each part of the hemp plant has special characteristics and distinct uses. Its stalk wraps one of nature’s longest and strongest soft fibers around a woody core containing about one-third cellulose(C6H10O6)—the organic compound used to manufacture paper, plastic, film, rayon, etc. The seed of the hemp plant is a complete and highly digestible source of nutrition for humans and animals and is also the source of a valuable oil. Its leaves and roots build, aerate, and otherwise improve the soil.10 Industrial hemp requires no pesticides, and growing hemp can even clear fields of weeds without any herbicides. It can be fertilized using a combination of manure and rotation with nitrogen-fixing crops instead of chemical fertilizers. Due to its rugged nature, industrial hemp is an excellent crop for organic farming. With its myriad of commercial applications for its fiber and oil, industrial hemp offers exceptional economic value to farmer and manufacturer alike, with no potential for drug abuse.
Psychoactive drug content tends to be quite low in industrial seed lines grown in temperate climates. The cannabinoid compounds are most heavily concentrated in the female flower. A Dutch study of drug content in the flowers of two hundred hemp cultivars found ninety-seven varieties in the range of 0.06 to 1.77 percent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive drug found in marijuana. Street-grade marijuana seized in the United States has hovered around 3 percent THC since 1982,11 and medical grade should preferably be 4 percent or more.12 The dense, industrial planting patterns lower the drug potency of even the most potent seed lines to minimal levels.13 The competition for sunlight directs energy away from producing resinous compounds and toward producing a taller, stalkier plant. Furthermore, industrial hemp is often harvested before the crop goes to flower and its resin flow becomes most potent. Seed selection for low-THC hermaphroditic cultivars allows for an easy visual distinction, since the male and female flowers are intermingled on the same stalk, rather than isolated on separate plants.
Industrial hemp crop in Spain.
An early 1970s study proved that hemp grown for fiber is particularly low in THC.14 Researcher Gilbert Fournier, commenting on the leaves and flowering tops of French monoecious (hermaphroditic) hemp, estimated that for “a minimal inebriant effect, one would have to smoke all at once 50 to 100 cigarettes of fiber hemp in order to obtain this effect.”15 Furthermore, there is essentially no THC in the stalk, seeds, or roots.16 The nonpsychoactive compound cannabidiol (CBD) is relatively high in fiber hemp but low in marijuana, which makes industrial hemp doubly useless for smoking, because CBD actively blocks the psychoactive effects of THC.
Nevertheless, the leaves and flowering tops of certain cannabis plants do produce an attractive, aromatic herb. These seed lines are bred specifically for the therapeutic and spiritual value of their resinous female flowers. These “buds” produce an effective natural medicine comprising some sixty unique and therapeutically active organic compounds, along with a mild psychoactive substance. The human brain has special binding sites to which at least one cannabis compound, THC, attaches. These receptors are a unique part of our genetic design that put the human mind and the cannabis plant into direct contact.17
CANNABIS FLOWERS
Hemp sexuality is highly evolved. Cannabis is dioecious, meaning it has two completely separate flowers. About half the plants emerging from any batch of seeds will be male, and the remaining half female. Pollen-bearing, staminate male flowers occur in certain plants, while seed-producing, pistillate female flowers bloom on their own plants. Individual plants do occasionally become monoecious, especially during times of stress.18 However, even specially bred monoecious seed lines tend to revert back to their dioecious ways over the course of a few seasons, and these hybrids have to be crossbred every year or two from the original dioecious genetic seed stock.
In the case of cannabis, the sexes are not created equal. The male is smaller, less vigorous, and has a shorter life span, serving primarily to pass on genetic material. Since the female blossom appears to the inexperienced eye to be little more than a thick leaf cluster atop the stem, it is the male plants that have often been called “flowering hemp.” Their staminate flowers do look more like traditional blossoms with five greenish yellow or purplish sepals set in small radiating pod clusters hanging along the upper branches. At maturity, these pods burst open, and five stamens release a light and powdery pollen that is carried over a wide area on the wind. This thick, dusty pollen, a source of hay fever and allergies, adheres to the sticky resin excreted by the female flower. Once captured, it fertilizes the ovaries so the female plant can go to seed. Males die soon after their pollen is shed; the females remain green and vigorous for two months longer while the seeds develop.
Each individual female flower is a small, green, solitary, stemless blossom. It consists of a calyx—a thin, green, pointed pouch with a slit along one side; a pod that is nearly closed around the ovary except where two small white stigmas project through its apex to catch any passing pollen. The stigmas look like starched white threads poking up, and sometimes turn rusty orange as the flower ripens and matures. As the flowers grow, they become so tightly crowded together that they come to look like a thick, spiked club or a dense tangle of matted fur. This is why the flowering upper branches of cannabis are sometimes called by the Spanish word for an animal’s tail, cola. Nestled together at the base of the small leaves near the ends of the branches, the flowers form tight clusters known as “buds.” They are not, however, a traditional bud in the sense of a bloom that has not yet fully matured and opened into a flower.
If the flowers catch pollen and fertilize their ovaries, seed development becomes the major focus of plant activity. This diverts energy away from resin production and adds weight to the herb without increasing its drug content, so pollination is not desirable from a pharmaceutical
standpoint. Cannabis grown for unseeded flower is called sinsemilla, Spanish for “without seed.” Seedless cannabis is not a genetic fluke, like seedless grapes or seedless watermelon; it is simply unfertilized. Since there are no seeds produced, this is the most potent form of marijuana in proportion to its weight, and it generally has the highest market value as long as it is properly cured and manicured.
Tiny mushroom-shaped trichome glands, concentrated on the upper leaves and female flowers of cannabis, contain many of the medicinal compounds. On the more potent varieties of cannabis, these resin glands coat both the calyx and the pistillate hairs, glistening like sparkling, frosty crystals. Within them lie many of the healing chemicals discussed in this book: the resinous herbal compounds.
Female cola
These compounds, in their natural raw form of medical marijuana, are a traditional and clinically proven form of therapy that is safe, effective, and affordable. We will look at what these chemicals are, how cannabis works, what concerns must be addressed regarding consumption and safety, and what all this means to the patient and to society in general. These are questions which have resonated through the ages, and which have gained new immediacy as the movement to legalize cannabis as medicine gathers momentum.
We stand at a threshold of understanding. The future is wide open.
Chapter 2
Cannabis Through the Millennia
As the Hindu poet Kalidasa wrote, “All things which are old are not necessarily true; all things which are new are not necessarily without fault. To the wise men, both of them should be acceptable only if they stand to the test.”
Medical use of cannabis has stood the test of human history, and cannabis is mentioned in most ancient and medieval medicinal texts. Formulas containing hemp’s seed or flowering tops were frequently recommended for difficult childbirth, menstrual cramps, rheumatism and convulsions, earaches, fevers, dysentery, epilepsy and insomnia, as well as to soothe nervous tension, stimulate appetite, and serve as an analgesic and aphrodisiac.1 Although some of its applications are different today, in many respects we can learn much from the traditional use of cannabis hemp.
The oldest confirmed medical use of cannabis was in China. In 3750 B.C. China was a land ruled by petty warlords who sometimes protected and sometimes pillaged the peasants who labored on the land and filled the ranks of their armies. Beginning in the late Stone Age, villagers had begun to build walls to protect their communities from marauding bands of soldiers. At about that time, a series of heroic leaders arose and brought civilization to the region. Among them was a philosopher farmer. His name was Shen Nung, and among his great contributions was teaching his people the value of the cannabis plant, ta ma. He taught the Chinese how to plant and harvest hemp, and how to use its seed in their diet. He taught them how to break fiber from the stalk and make yarn into fabric for clothing and sails; how to make traps to capture game; how to make nets for fishing and fowling. He led them into an era of commerce and prosperity.
Shen Nung
Shen Nung became a mighty—indeed, mythic—emperor. Legend tells us he made it a point to record the healing arts. He collected traditions that had been handed down for generations so that medical knowledge could be shared from region to region and from one generation to the next. He produced the first reported pharmacopoeia, the Pen Ts’ao, the original of which was lost but later reconstructed during the Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220). This work listed true hemp, ta ma, among the “superior” immortality elixirs. The female plant was said to possess yin energy (as opposed to the male plant’s yang) and was recommended for “female weakness,” rheumatism, beri-beri, malaria, constipation, gout, and absentmindedness, among other ailments. Lacking an original manuscript, the date 3727 B.C. is commonly ascribed to the Pen Ts’ao. Modern historians dispute this date, and many consider Shen Nung himself to be a composite figure encompassing numerous historical entities. In some manuscripts, Shen is shown wearing animal skins, but at least one shows him dressed in cannabis leaves, with a curious smile on his face as he picks his teeth with a stem. His reputation survives in the names of several geographic regions of China, such as Shen Dong province. It is still common to find hemp growing as an important crop in these areas.
Calligraphy, ma (hemp)
Another ancient Chinese physician, Hoa-Gho, mixed the resin with wine as a painkiller adminstered to his patients.
The earliest surviving Chinese recipes tend to rely more on hempseed than on the marijuana flower. If any significant amount of the flower surrounding these seeds became mixed in with the recipe, there is a good chance that various cannabis compounds were included in the resulting medicinal mixture. Nevertheless, the region does not have any strong history of using cannabis for its psychoactive properties. Its use was apparently limited to food, fiber, and medicine.
A GLOBAL MEDICINE
In the sixteenth century B.C., the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus recorded medical use of cannabis, which was also being used by the Coptics of Thebes in “smoke eating” incense rituals to communicate with God.2 One of the earliest surgeons, Susruta, recognized in India in the third century b.c. that cannabis dried up mucous membranes, and he prescribed it as an antiphlegmatic. In addition to its varied religious and cultural uses in India, cannabis was used in Ayurvedic medicine for the alleviation of migraine headaches and stomach spasms, as an analgesic, antispasmodic, to promote digestion, and to assist in the flow of urine.3
In third-century B.C. Greece, Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine,” set aside the paranormal theory of health care and replaced it with a logical process. He recorded his case history observations along with the results of experimental procedures affecting the diet, emotion, occupation, climate, and environment of the patient. Through close observation, limited intervention, and systematic repetition, he was able to accurately diagnose and successfully treat the ill health of many clients. First he set about identifying a cause, and then devising a suitable cure. Hippocrates held that good health is a matter of balance between the outer world and the patient’s inner being. This was achieved by combining special diets, exercise, bland drinks to stabilize body chemistry, wine to reduce stress, and botanical medicines, including purgatives and emetics, to flush the system. Building on this process, medicine made great strides during the classical era.
Roman drawing of cannabis from Constantinopolitanus (A.D. 500)
Dioscorides, the Roman Emperor Nero’s private physician, praised the hemp plant for its commercial and medicinal properties and listed it as Cannabis sativa, the name it still bears.4 Half a millennium later, the Constantinopolitanus gave us the oldest surviving botanical drawing of the plant.5 In the second century, Pliny the Elder prescribed hempseed for constipated farm animals, the herb for earache, and hemp root poultices to ease cramped joints, gout, and burns.6 His contemporary, Galen, added that hempseed “eliminates farting and dehydrates” and described how Romans would “fry and consume the seed together with other desserts.”7
With the collapse of the Roman Empire and the suppression of knowledge during the Dark Ages, science was put on hold in Europe. The Inquisition brutally enforced its ban of the scientific method, herbal medicine, and anyone who strayed from the political orthodoxy of the medieval Church. Hygiene was a disaster. Health care once again degenerated into a mysterious domain of myth, magic, prayers, talismans, and spells to be cast or broken. Often, the prescribed treatment for any given disease was the drinking of some loathsome potion or the burning of a “witch.”
Elsewhere, life went on in a more cultivated fashion. In China, herbal medicine and acupuncture became highly developed. Sophisticated medical procedures, including surgery, were being taught and practiced in India and parts of northern Africa. Information began to slowly filter back to Europe via the trade routes. Cannabis was discussed by Ibn Beitar in the thirteenth century at a time when Moslem sailors routinely used hashish to control their seasickness. This allowed them to travel by ship under weather conditions whi
ch might otherwise have kept them in port, and also helped them to achieve both their speedy conquest of the Mediterranean and their travel along spice routes to trade with India and distant areas of Asia. Hempseed is also discussed in great depth in the sixteenth-century Chinese manuscript Pen T’sao Kang Mu of Li Shih-chen. He compiled a variety of earlier writings and credited this seed with the power to increase the inner chi and slow human aging, stimulate and enhance circulation, increase the flow of milk in nursing mothers, and help those afflicted with paralysis. Li also said that using the seed to make shampoo would accelerate hair growth.8
During the European Renaissance, the veil of ignorance was slowly lifted after Leonardo da Vinci began to study the details of anatomy. The basis was laid for surgery. Diagnosis became more systematic and empirical. Diseases began to be enumerated, and treatments became more standardized. The development of the printing press to speed the flow of knowledge, the invention of faster ships to spur the European Age of Discovery, and the emergence of scientific methods to test the claims of folk tradition all came to prominence during this time period. European explorers returning from Africa reported that Southern Rhodesians added cannabis to their herbal medicinal blends to treat malaria, blackwater fever, dysentery, blood poisoning, anthrax, and more, and that the Hottentots used hemp to treat snakebites and as a mood elevator.9 Portuguese physician Garcia da Orta traveled to India to practice medicine, and there he became a student as well as a doctor. He selectively bred several strains of resinous cannabis, and in 1563 wrote a scientific treatise on its therapeutic uses.10 The Compleat Herbal, a compendium published in 1645, recommends assorted cannabis preparations for hot or dry cough, jaundice and ague, fluxes, colic, worms and earwigs, inflammations, gout, “knotty joints,” hip pains, and burns.11