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An Overview of the Cannabis Plant
On Earth, there exists a plant with psychoactive properties used by human beings for at
least 3000 years, which has its origins somewhere in Asia, possibly the region known today as
the country Kazakhstan. Cannabis or marijuana, as it is more widely known as, is a plant been
used by human beings to relieve ailments from pain relief to earache to childbirth to spiritual
purposes. The plant appears throughout recorded history as a remedy to relieve a wide variety of
ailments, as stated before, but one of its first notable appearances in human history occurs as
early as 2737 BCE. Where almost 3000 years ago, according to Chinese legend, the Emperor
Shen Neng, of China, was prescribing marijuana tea for the treatment of gout, rheumatism,
malaria and, even poor memory which is ironic to say the least. Around 1200 to 800 BCE,
cannabis is mentioned in the Hindu sacred text Atharva Veda , translated as the Science of
Charms, as sacred grass one of the five sacred plants of India, where it was used medicinally
and ritually as an offering to the Hindu deity Shiva. As one may conclude, cannabis has had an
interesting relationship with humanity for quite some time, to say the least, which today
continues to be a very popular plant among people in the present day.
Today, the plant is not widely used as a type of folk remedy or religious sacrament, but as
a drug known as marijuana, weed, pot, and my personal favorite, Mary Jane. People use cannabis
for a wide variety of reasons, mostly to achieve a sense of pleasure or euphoria by temporarily
altering their sense of consciousness or otherwise simply known as getting stoned or high.
The plant Cannabis sativa or Cannabis indica contains within it a specific chemical, amongst at
least 400 other ones, known as tetrahydrocannabinol or abbreviated as THC that is primarily
responsible for the psychoactive properties the plant possesses. Tetrahydrocannabinol is the
primary psychoactive component of cannabis and hypothesized that it originated in the cannabis

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plant as a self-defense mechanism against herbivores, possibly due to its bitter taste. In addition,
tetrahydrocannabinol for the plant to protect itself from harmful UV rays since THC has shown
high UV-B absorption properties, otherwise known the skin burning variety of UV rays at 280315 nanometers of the light spectrum; hence, THC protects the plant from harmful radiation
from the sun. If that theory is correct, that the Cannabis plant evolved to produce THC to protect
itself from herbivores, it should have hue of the plants ancestors to have considered a defense
against omnivores too. I reflect and casually ponder that if hypothetically, the plant somehow
had a conscious intelligence, may have actually been a brilliant strategy for survival, again
assuming the plant was intelligent, because of the fact that human beings throughout the world
have cultivated and have assured the plants survival throughout the passage of time. Especially
since, cannabis in all its many different forms, one of the most popular drugs, behind caffeine
and alcohol, that human beings consume today for both recreational and medicinal purposes not
unlike it as always been used in one way or another apparently.
The Cannabis plant, predictably, has been the topic of controversy for quite some time, to
say the very least, hence even the word controversy might even be a bit of an understatement. It
was in the year 1876 the Sultan of Turkey, gives the United States a gift of marijuana, in
Philadelphia. This is significant because before in the United States, Cannabis popularly known
as an ingredient in various patent medicines in the United States, not widely used as an inhaled
substance, as it was in the East. So therefore, four years after the Sultan of Turkey gave the
United States marijuana, Turkish smoke shops started opening up all across the northeastern
United States. As one can speculate, marijuana became popular over time, especially in response
to the prohibition of alcohol; especially notably in the in New Orleans during the 1920s, where
it could be argued created a slow domino effect all the way until the Narcotic Control Act of

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1956 to the controversy still occurring today. Interestingly enough, in the year 2012 in the United
States, two states have passed laws making the recreational use of marijuana legal at a state level
not federal, specifically Colorado and Washington to be precise. Only the future will tell if the
marijuana stays legal in Colorado and Washington, which from personal insight from various
personal experiences in Colorado, marijuana was already widely available and quite easy for a
person to obtain a medical marijuana card. So from my experiences visiting my family in
Denver, Colorado, from various anecdotes, conversations with my cousins, and from my own
observations, marijuana was already so abundant in Colorado it didnt seem to matter much
whether it was technically legal or not. The effects of cannabis, interestingly enough are by the
effects tetrahydrocannabinol has on the cannabinoid receptors.
Cannabinoid receptors are activated by cannabinoids; usually naturally occurring inside
the body called endocannabinoids or introduced into the body by using cannabis in some form.
Cannabis or marijuana, as it will be referred to henceforth, is primarily used by its most common
route of administration that is through the inhalation of burned marijuana leaves, more precisely
the buds or flowers of an unfertilized female plant, which contain significantly higher
concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol. The most noticeable effects of marijuana include
relaxation, alteration of visual, auditory, and olfactory senses, fatigue, and appetite stimulation.
One of the most widely known side effects that occur with marijuana use is the negative effect it
has on short-term memory, or more precisely working memory. There has been some interesting
and rather recent findings related to the relationship between working memory and marijuana,
specifically it was thought that the cognitive impairments involved with marijuana use was due
to the effects cannabinoid receptors had on neurons, there has now been some findings that
tetrahydrocannabinol effect on cognition is due its effects on glial cells, specifically astrocytes.

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Recent evidence suggests that glial cells also express components of the cannabinoid signaling
system and marijuana-derived compounds act at cannabinoid receptors expressed by glial cells.
Which is further more interesting in that researchers studying the effects of marijuana has on the
brain, they in turn discovered evidence that glial cells play an important role in working memory,
which to me is one of the beauties of scientific research. This to me is making a significant
discovery from an unexpected finding that further contributes to human understanding of the
many mysteries of our world that have so many unanswered questions, but out of sheer luck we
stumble upon an interesting discovery. Which, in this case of these research findings, that the
working memory impairments caused by marijuana are caused by the effect
tetrahydrocannabinol has on glial cells versus neurons, may have given scientist further insight
into how the brain really works since science is ideally always improving.
There has been much debate and controversy from both sides of the opposition regarding
marijuanas negative effects, some such as the federal government have labeled it as a gateway
drug that leads to harder drugs such as cocaine or heroin, where there is little evidence to support
this. The more likely scenario is that since marijuana is illegal in the majority of the United
States and since people therefore have to use the black market to obtain marijuana, they are
exposing themselves to other drugs the black market may provide. It also may also have or even
possible that some purchased marijuana is laced with a different drug unknown to the purchasers.
Therefore, marijuana in of itself does not lead to the abuse of other drugs but the exposure to the
black market with the drugs available being altered in order to influence the buyer to want to try
other drugs may be why marijuana can appear as a gateway drug. In my personal opinion, I think
alcohol serves more as a gateway drug than marijuana because it is more popular and socially
accepted, that and much of the time harder drug use activity is usually in unison with consuming

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alcohol than smoking marijuana at the same time. One possible explanation is that the first drug
a person would probably try first is alcohol, get bored with it, then try marijuana, and if they get
bored with that too then they may explore other types of drugs that are available to them. The
point I stress is that the person might just have a strong need for novelty and it was this quality
the person had innately is what caused their use of harder, far more dangerous drugs than
marijuana.
In conclusion, I have given an overview on some of the background information relating
to marijuana/cannabis and some information on the psychoactive component of marijuana,
tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. In addition, I have included some interesting information
regarding the relatively new information regarding how specifically tetrahydrocannabinol may
have effect more on glial cells than on neurons regarding its negative effect on working memory.
I have also given some current information on how marijuana has been recently legalized, for
recreational purposes, in two states in the United States, as well as some anecdotes from my
travels to one of these states. I have also given my opinion on some common beliefs about
marijuana, specifically my critique of the gateway hypothesis. I do however find it interesting
that now that there seems to be more research into marijuana showing up in scientific literature
and I hope that in the future, science may gain more data that provides valuable information to
just how marijuana affects the human body and be able to gain stronger insights to how it affects
brain anatomy. In reflection, this to me is ironic that we, as a whole, really know so little about
the plant and its effects since humanity has had such a long relationship with the Cannabis plant
throughout history.