Cannabis

Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the Cannabis plant used for medical or recreational purposes. The main psychoactive part of cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol, one of 483 known compounds in the plant, including at least 65 other cannabinoids.

What it looks and smells like

Weed is made from drying out the leaves and flowering parts of the cannabis plant. It can look like dried herbs and is usually brownish-green in colour.

How to consume it

Joints - In the UK, most people mix it with tobacco and roll it into a cannabis cigarette known as a spliff or joint. Some people don’t use tobacco at all and make weed-only spliffs.

Bongs - Users do this mix by mixing the drug with tobacco and putting it in a pipe, lighting it, and then inhaling the smoke through water out of a large tube. There are many types of bongs, and not everyone uses tobacco.

Edibles- People do this by mixing it into cakes (hash brownies), tea, and even yoghurt. The effects can take longer to kick in if you take it this way and last longer. You might also accidentally end up taking a larger dose than you wanted to.

Vape - This method has become more popular in recent years. Most people use a vapouriser, which heats the cannabis, rather than burning it. Very little is known about the health impact of vaping cannabis.

Feeling after taking cannabis

Cannabis is classed as a hallucinogenic and sedative drug. It can make people feel more aware of their senses and more relaxed (stoned), and its hallucinogenic effects can give you the feeling that time is slowing down.

It can also make you very hungry, known as ‘the munchies’, or make you feel very sick, known as ‘a whitey’.

People who take cannabis say they feel:

• Relaxed
• Paranoid
• Chilled out
• Confused
• Happy
• Sick
• Giggly
• Anxious
• Hungry
• Light-headed
• Faint

Its effects vary massively depending on:

• The kind of person you are
• What you take (some types of cannabis are stronger than others)
• The environment you’re in
• How much you take
• How often you take it

The hallucinogenic effects of cannabis are mainly due to a compound in cannabis called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol).

The other important compound in cannabis is CBD (cannabidiol). Skunk and other forms of strong cannabis contain high levels of THC but very little, or no, CBD.

It's thought that CBD can balance out some of the effects of THC and make users less likely to feel anxious and paranoid. You can’t tell from looking or smelling cannabis whether there's a balance of CBD and THC in it, but in general, hash may have more CBD than skunk.

Effects on behaviour

Cannabis can make some people giggly and chatty, and other people paranoid, confused and anxious—it really depends on the type of person taking it and the circumstances they take it under.

Some people:

• Experience mild hallucinations if they take particularly strong cannabis.
• Become lethargic and unmotivated.
• Have problems concentrating and learning new information. This is because studies suggest that cannabis effects the part of the brain we use for learning and remembering things.
• Perform badly in exams. Because cannabis impacts the part of the brain we use for learning and remembering things, regular use by young people (whose brains are still developing) has been linked to poor exam results.

How long the feeling lasts

How long the effects last and the drug stays in your system depends on how much you’ve taken, your size, whether you’ve eaten and what other drugs you may have also taken.

When smoked, it normally takes a minute or two to feel stoned. If you eat cannabis, it can up to an hour.

Generally, the effect is strongest for about 10 minutes to half an hour after smoking cannabis, but if you smoke a lot, you may still feel stoned for a couple of hours. If you eat cannabis, the peak effects can last for two to four hours, and there may even be a few more hours before the effects wear off completely.

Drug test

If you’ve used cannabis as a one-off, it will show up in a urine test for around two to three days afterwards.

However, this can go up to a month for regular users.

How long a drug can be detected for depends on how much is taken, and which testing kit is used. This is only a general guide.

Risks

Physical risks —Smoking cannabis can:

• make you wheeze and out of breath
• make you cough uncomfortably or painfully
• make your asthma worse if you have it

There's been less research on it but smoking cannabis is likely to have many of the long term physical health risk as smoking tobacco (even if you don't mix the cannabis with tobacco). So smoking cannabis can also:

• Give you lung cancer
• Increase your heart rate and affect your blood pressure, which makes it particularly harmful for people with heart disease
• Reduce your sperm count if you're male, affecting your ability to have children
• Suppress your ovulation if you’re female, affecting your ability to have children
• Increase the risk of your baby being born smaller than expected if you smoke it while pregnant.
• Mental risks - affect your motivation to do things
• Impair your memory so you can’t remember things or learn new information
• Give you mood swings
• disturb your sleep and make you depressed
• Make you anxious, panicky, or even aggressive
• Make you see or hear things that aren’t there (known as hallucinating or tripping)
• Cause hours (or days) of anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations, which only settle down if the person stops taking it – and sometimes don’t settle down at all
• Cause a serious relapse for people with psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia
• Increase your chances of developing illnesses like schizophrenia, especially if you have a family background of mental illness and you start smoking in your teenage years

Addiction

Heavy cannabis users often get cravings and find it hard not to take the drug—even when they know it’s causing them physical, mental or social problems.

When heavy users do try to stop they can:

• Feel moody and irritable
• Feel sick
• Find it hard to sleep
• Find it hard to eat
• Experience sweating and shaking
• Get diarrhea

If you roll your spliffs with tobacco, you’re also at risk of getting addicted (or staying addicted) to nicotine.