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Salem Health: Addictions, Substance Abuse & Alcoholism, Second Edition

Marijuana

by Christopher M. Aanstoos, PhD, Michael Moglia

Category: Substances

Also known as: Cannabis; dope; ganja; grass; hashish; hemp; mary jane; pot; smoke; weed

Definition: Marijuana consists of the dried, shredded leaves and flowers of hemp plants in the genus

Cannabis, especially Cannabis sativa. Its psychoactive effects derive from a substance in the resin of the plant, called delta-9-tetraydrocannabinol (also known as THC).

Status: Illegal in the United States under federal law, but legalized or decriminalized to varying degrees in some states. Illegal or restricted in most other countries.

Classification: Schedule I controlled substance

Source: Cannabis sativa is a hardy annual that grows wild in almost every climactic region and condition. In hot, dry climates, the plant produces much more of the resin containing THC, the active ingredient of marijuana.

Transmission route: Ingested nasally by smoking; ingested orally

Overview

Marijuana consists of the dried, shredded leaves, stems, seeds and flowers of the hemp plant Cannabis sativa. Marijuana is one of the first drugs to be used for its psychoactive qualities. It is the most commonly used illicit drug in the United States. Archeological evidence dates its cultivation to around 8,000 BCE in China, where its fibers were used to make textiles and later paper. The type of marijuana used for such purposes is more fibrous and is called hemp. It is unclear when the psychoactive effects of marijuana were discovered. The discovery of these psychoactive effects also coincides with the discovery of the medicinal uses of the drug, which has pervaded its history and is a significant feature of its contemporary status. The most common use of the drug is for its psychoactive effects. The psychoactive effects derive from a substance in the resin of the plant, called delta-9-tetraydrocannabinol (also known as THC).

History of Use

The common misconception of marijuana is that there are no other qualities of the plant besides the psychoactive effects produced when ingested. This is not the case, which is shown in both the historical and present-day usage of the plant. In India, records show that psychoactive effects of marijuana were known since at least the second millennium BCE. The Vedas state it was originally given by the god Shiva because it “releases us from anxiety.” Marijuana also was an important aspect of the practice of Tantric sex. The Persians, the Scythians, and especially the Arabs, also used marijuana for its psychoactive effects, but most cultures familiar with the plant knew it only for the quality of its fibers for rope and clothing.

Throughout European history, the economic value of hemp contributed to its prevailing use, though medieval magicians, witches, and sorcerers used marijuana for its psychoactive powers. Mainstream Europeans learned of such effects only when they began to colonize Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the nineteenth century, marijuana was used by leading artists and writers, especially in France and most famously at the Paris Hashish Club.

The Cannabis sativa plant. (Niccolo Caranti via Wikimedia Commons)

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In the United States, interest in marijuana’s psychoactive properties increased in the mid-nineteenth century, especially with the 1857 publication of Fitz Hugh Ludlow’s The Hasheesh Eater. Popular magazines and books included stories of its use, and marijuana was available at local pharmacies. By the end of the century, some of the most prominent psychologists in the United States also studied the drug through personal use. Even so, by the twentieth century, marijuana was largely limited to upper-class intellectuals. Most Americans did not know anything about marijuana; their drugs of choice were opium, morphine, cocaine, and alcohol.

Racism against Chinese immigrants, combined with a desire to build commercial interests in China, contributed to the US Congress passing the Harrison Act in 1914. The Harrison Act imposed recordkeeping and taxation requirements on the sale of opium and included other previously popular narcotic drugs, such as morphine and cocaine, which were recognized as having problematic addictive properties. Marijuana was also included due to its classification as a narcotic, though it had no similar reputation for addiction. Five years later, the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution prohibited alcohol and began an era in which the federal government had authority over matters of morality, cast in the light of the intensifying class warfare as minorities and the working class fought for labor rights.

Marijuana was primarily used by Mexican immigrants in the western United States, immigrants who had been welcomed for the inexpensive labor they supplied. They were then blamed for job losses as agribusiness reduced farm workforces during the 1910s and 1920s. During those decades every western state passed laws to make marijuana illegal. Its criminalization was supported by alleged links between marijuana use and laziness, promiscuity, mental illness, and violence, all of which were based on the apparently greater incidence of such symptoms in the minority populations who tended to use marijuana.

As the Great Depression accelerated job losses during the 1930s, the rhetoric of violence-prone minorities fueled by marijuana next targeted African Americans in major cities. Led by Harry Anslinger, the director of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics, public advocacy for marijuana’s criminalization as a “killer weed” convinced Congress in 1937 to prohibit its possession with the Marijuana Tax Act. Subsequent legislation in 1951 and 1956 increased penalties.

In the 1960s, marijuana use increased dramatically and became the focus of intense controversy that has continued as a national debate into the present. Marijuana, used especially by college-age youth disaffected by the dominant culture, became an expression of the youth rebellion those on both sides of a cultural divide. President Richard M. Nixon’s “War on Drugs” was his attempt to curtail the rebellion. As middle-class youths became subject to arrest and incarceration, the justification for marijuana’s criminalization came into question. Even as strictures against its use were increased in 1968 and 1970, presidential commissions in 1962, 1963, 1967, and 1972 concluded that the claims against marijuana were exaggerated or false.

Trends in marijuana use continued at high levels despite mandatory penalties. Statistics for twelfth graders who have used marijuana is over 60 percent in the late 1970s. But by the early 1990’s usage declined to a low just under 40 percent. This no-tolerance policy began to be challenged by the middle of the 1990’s as a resurgence of research into the properties of marijuana showed its medicinal benefits. This research led to several US states allowing medical cannabis use, beginning with California in 1996. A World Health Organization (WHO) survey in 2008 found that 42 percent of the US population, more than 100 million people, had used marijuana at least once, the highest rate in WHO’s seventeen-country study. In 2009, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that 28.5 million Americans age twelve years and older had used marijuana at least once in the year prior. That same year, US attorney general Eric Holder announced that the federal government would adopt new guidelines tolerating medicinal use of marijuana according to states’ regulations, though the drug remained federally illegal.

Modern Use

The last decade has seen the most dramatic shift in marijuana legislation since the 1960’s. On the federal level, marijuana is still considered a Schedule 1 controlled substance, making possession of the substance a criminal offense. Despite this, several states have passed legislation that has made medicinal or recreational use of the drug legal. Currently, recreational marijuana is legal in nine states; Maine, Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Maine, Nevada, California and Vermont. It is also legal in Washington D.C. Medical marijuana is legal in 30 states and Washington D.C. Marijuana laws vary on a state-to-state basis.

There are three principle reasons that the legalization movement has continued to build momentum. The first reason is that research has concluded that marijuana is a viable medicine that can be used to treat a wide range of symptoms. Some of the more popular applications of medical marijuana are as an alternative to opioid-based medication to manage pain, as an anti-nausea medication for patients undergoing chemotherapy treatment, and as an anti-anxiety medication for PTSD treatment. The second reason is that legalizing marijuana has been shown to have financial benefits for a state’s economy government. These benefits include an economic boon from tax revenue and reducing government expenditure on the enforcement of marijuana. The final reason is that marijuana is at its height of popularity among the American public. Public support of marijuana legislation has grown significantly, with 64% of Americans in favor of legalization. Nearly 41 million Americans used marijuana in 2017, compared to around 37.5 million in 2016.

Worldwide, marijuana legalization remains controversial. In 2013 Uruguay became the first nation to legalize growing, selling, and consuming marijuana, although with strict regulations.

Effects and Potential Risks

Marijuana is a mild intoxicant, with aspects of both a stimulant and a tranquilizer. When smoked, the effects of marijuana begin in minutes and can last for hours; the maximum intensity occurs within the first hour. These effects, colloquially known as getting high, vary considerably according to the potency, the dosage, the setting, and the person’s experience and attitude.

Positive short-term experiential effects include feelings of light-heartedness, well-being, euphoria, and increased sensory sensitivity. Negative effects include difficulty with concentration, poor short-term memory retention, decreased motor performance skills, increased levels of anxiety and paranoia. At high dosages, new users may experience disorientation and panic, which can account for some emergency room visits associated with marijuana use.

Longer-term experiential effects are more speculative. Users report that insights remained significant and even life-changing. Negative effects also have been proposed, including amotivational syndrome and an increased tendency to later use other, more dangerous drugs (the “gateway drug” theory). The long-term negative effects are contentious, research fails to definitively produce widely agreed upon risk factors.

Short-term physical effects include dilated blood vessels and increased heart rate. No permanently damaging effects on the body have been found from occasional use of marijuana. The tendency to combine marijuana with other drugs, most notably tobacco, poses health hazards. Several such effects have been asserted, most prominently chromosomal damage, lung damage, brain damage, and depressed immune response.

Research findings on long term effects of heavy marijuana use are highly varied. First, some studies have found a correlation with psychotic or affective mental health outcomes. Whether this correlational link implicates a causal one is hotly debated, but the possibility persists that marijuana use may exacerbate preexisting mental disorders. Second, marijuana smoke contains a number of carcinogens that can be irritants to the lungs. Third, studies on animals also indicate that the cannabinoids in marijuana may accumulate on the brain for days afterward, and it is assumed that larger and more frequent use would result in a longer period of such accumulation.

While marijuana does not cause physical dependence, it is hard not to describe long-term usage as not demonstrating some additive potential. Professionals in the field of substance use disorder have long recognized evidence of psychological dependency, at least anecdotally and empirically. Detailed, well designed research is simply lacking. Withdrawal symptoms are rare, but after prolonged heavy use, may include general unease, insomnia, lethargy, boredom, a reduced experience of pleasure, and a desire to continue use. Based on studies of acute toxicity in animals, it has been determined that a lethal dose of marijuana would be roughly five thousand times a normal dose, impossible to ingest by conventional means. No human deaths directly from marijuana use have been documented.

For Further Information

Booth, Martin. Cannabis: A History. New York: Macmillan, 2005. Print.

“Deglamorizing Cannabis (Editorial).” The Lancet 346 (1995). Print.

Earleywine, Mitch. Understanding Marijuana. New York: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.

Grinspoon, Lester. Marijuana Reconsidered. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Quick American Archives, 1994. Print.

Grinspoon, Peter. 2018. “Medical Marijuana.” Harvard Health Blog. January 9, 2018. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/medical-marijuana-2018011513085.

Iverson, Lester. The Science of Marijuana. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Lopez, German. 2016. “The Federal Drug Scheduling System, Explained.” Vox. Vox. August 11, 2016. https://www.vox.com/2014/9/25/6842187/drug-schedule-list-marijuana.

McCarthy, Justin. “More Than Four in 10 Americans Say They Have Tried Marijuana.” Gallup. Gallup, 22 July 2015. Web. 2 Nov. 2015.

Motel, Seth. “6 Facts About Marijuana.” Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center, 14 Apr. 2015. Web. 2 Nov. 2015.

Zimmer, Lynn, and John Morgan. Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts. New York: Lindesmith Center, 1997. Print.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Aanstoos, Christopher M., and Michael Moglia. "Marijuana." Salem Health: Addictions, Substance Abuse & Alcoholism, Second Edition, edited by Paul Moglia, Salem Press, 2018. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Addictions2e_0178.

APA 7th

Aanstoos, C. M., & Moglia, M. (2018). Marijuana. In P. Moglia (Ed.), Salem Health: Addictions, Substance Abuse & Alcoholism, Second Edition. Salem Press.

CMOS 17th

Aanstoos, Christopher M. and Moglia, Michael. "Marijuana." Edited by Paul Moglia. Salem Health: Addictions, Substance Abuse & Alcoholism, Second Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2018. Accessed May 09, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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