When science goes to pot

Welcome to the world of science. I didn't do well in high school science and have pretty much avoided addressing scientific subjects formally until now. That's because I've been delving into the science of marijuana to try to figure out some of the hows and whys of medical marijuana's workings. There are some 20,000 published scientific papers analyzing marijuana and its parts. So don't let anybody tell you there is too little known about marijuana to make a call regarding its usefulness.

Most of those papers are beyond my understanding, and making sense of those I could understand came with the help of a medical dictionary. But at least I'm trying. Most public policy and attitudes about the plant have been formed without the help of science. In fact, when President Richard Nixon ramped up the drug war in the early 1970s, it was in direct contradiction of the information and recommendations of his own marijuana task force.

There are probably lots of things we believe wthout a scientific basis, but maybe we're at a point where more clearheaded inquiry is possible. So here we go. First of all, delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol, or THC as we commonly call it, is not the only active substance in marijuana. We know about it mostly because it's what gets you high. However it is not the only component that has medicinal value.

In my last column on medical marijuana, I posed questions about what in marijuana gives you the munchies, what relieves spasm and what causes memory loss — not to mention numerous other effects such as pain reduction and nausea relief. I can't give you definitive answers to all of that, but here is an explanation of how our bodies interact with marijuana.

The first thing we need to get a grip on is the cannabinoid system in the human body. OK, that word sounds like cannabis (the scientific name for marijuana), but that is only because the system was discovered during the 1990s during research on how marijuana affects the brain. Apparently, most multicellular organisms have a cannabinoid system and cannabinoid receptors that process the endocannabinoids (naturally occurring cannabinoids) that they produce. The system plays a role in regulating things like body temperature, blood pressure, hunger, etc.

Or as is formally stated by Neil Goodman, Ph.D., in "An Overview of the Endogenous Cannabinoid System," research suggests "that the endocannabinoids and their receptors constitute a widespread modulatory system that fine-tunes bodily responses to a number of stimuli."

"It's a regulatory system for things like appetite, circulation, pain response and immune response," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and expert witness on marijuana science. "Cannabinoids seem to regulate or maintain all of these different functions. ... When mice are bred not to have these receptors, a couple of very shocking studies show they die almost immediately. They suffer from failure to thrive and have no appetite at birth. If you force them to stay alive, they die of old age long before they become old. If this system doesn't work right, people don't survive."

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