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From The Maze Where Realities Converge - the psychedelic encyclopedia of reality from The Ultimate Comment
Cannabis is a herb which when smoked gives varying effects, usually relaxing and mildly euphoric but sometimes heightened paranoia and anxiety depending on circumstances. Erowid classes cannabis as an intoxicant, stimulant, psychedelic and depressant.
- see Set and Setting
Cannabis comes in many forms and in varying strengths. It can be eaten raw or baked into a variety of foods.
When it comes to smoking cannabis, there are two categories that cannabis is widely available in for this purpose.
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Herbal
This consists of dried cannabis leaves and/or flowering tops (buds). This varies in strength depending on the variety, how fresh it is and also how expensive it is. Unfortunately, spending heaps of money on 'grass' doesn't always guarantee good quality. Which is one argument stoners have for legalising weed as it would then be a controlled substance.
Resin or Hashish
Cannabis resin usually comes in a brown lump made from collecting the oil from the leaves and stem of the cannabis plant. Well, this is how it's supposed to be made. Irish resin comes in a bar about 2cm by 6cm by 10cm and weighs approximately nine ounces (a 'nine-bar'), which is then cut and sold on the streets in quarter ounces but Irish hash is probably made by simply meshing the plant material repeatedly, and there are several other materials added to 'bulk' the hashish up. For example, one may find deadly little (sometimes not-so-little) pieces of plastic embedded deep within the hashish. If you know plastic is in it, which you are then smoking, do you even want to know what else is in it? If you're from Ireland and you're going to smoke cannabis, herbal cannabis would be advisable. However, hashish from countries that aren't Ireland can vary in deadlyness. Pollen is a good type of hashish that is more sticky, a sign of higher THC content, as opposed to the dusty spread off Irish hash. Pollen is available in Ireland, but it is rare.
Health
The use of cannabis for medicinal purposes is advocated by many people in favour of its legalisation. Apparently it can be used to treat many conditions, from depression to cancer. In particular, it's useful for eating disorders. However,
Smoking of any kind is damaging to the lungs, causing cancer, emphysema, damage to the immune system, increased risk of respiratory disease, shortness of breath, coughing up of horrid black lumps of tar and ultimately death. It's possible that smoking pure herbal cannabis is not as carcinogenic as smoking tobacco. However, cannabis smoke can not be effectively filtered in a joint, and since most people in Ireland mix hashish (which itself contains diesel oil, rubber and others) with unfiltered tobacco smoke, it's probably the worst thing you can do to your lungs without putting your mouth to an exhaust pipe. There are other methods of consuming cannabis, but they are less popular and entail their own specific problems.
Additionally smoking cannabis can contribute to anxiety, depression, worsen schizophrenia and triggers around 50% of cases of depersonalisation disorder and HPPD. These appear to be in rare cases, but the idea that it only occurs where the mental illness already existed is probably rubbish.
