FINAL Flashcards
Marijuana Prevalence
Most abused drug in the US
Almost 50% of HS seniors report having tried it at least once
Debate of its effects being beneficial
Cannabis (or marijuana / hemp)
A plant
-Hemp is the agricultural product (containing little THC or CBD)
-Marijuana/cannabis is the drug form
*Name used to stigmatize it with Mexican folk
-All the same species of plant
Cannabinoids / Main psychoactive chemicals in cannabis
Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol / 9-THC / THC
-Agonist at the CB1 and CB2 receptors
8-THC / CBD - cannabidiol that is a less potent psychoactive version
Synthetic cannabinoids - Spice, K2
World History of Cannabis: Plant to product
-First agricultural product cultivated
-Grown easily in a range of environments (Causing slang of weed/grass)
-Cultivated to make bags, rope, ect
*Made from fibrous stem. Seeds produce oils
World History of Cannabis: Origin
-Thought to originate in E or S Asia (C/W China specifically), then spread through Europe and Africa
-Shen Nung described psychoactive & medicinal properties in 2737 BC
-Greek historian Herodotus, 500 BC, tells of peoples from Scythia and the Araxes River, grew hemp to throw on fire and inhale
-1545, cannabis in the W hemisphere, Spanish introduced the plant to Chile in order to make fiber
Hashish
Preparation of cannabis
-Use of marijuana not known to Europe until the 1800s when Napoleon’s army smoked in N Africa
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report
British govt concerned about India’s marijuana use b/c of effects on their $
-Wanted to criminalize and benefit from addiction treatment
-Report of the Commission, released in 1894, was over 3,000 pages, most extensive study on it ever, concluding
*Traditional medicine use (Indian hemp)
*NBD aside from heavy usage
American History of Marijuana
More commonly used to made products, not originally thought of as a drug
-1619 permitted and required by King James I to grow hemp
*used in PA and other colonies as money
-Little evidence of recreational or industrial use during colonial times
-1840s, drugs w/ cannabis sold in US and UK, Irish doctor and scientist named William O’Shaughnessy
-Laws put in against those who used w/out prescription
Anslinger and “Reefer Madness”
Movie dramatizing the effects of weed, blaming it for changes happening. Anslinger went of using to suddenly against it.
Marijuana Tax act (1937)
Similar to Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, to control/limit who could grow, possess, or sell weed.
LaGuardia Report (MJ)
Committee of doctors studying weed after the tax act
-Did not show the effects of “Reefer Madness”
1963 Unconstitutional (MJ)
-Grown during WWII for hemp
-Leery showed to follow the tax act, they would have to break the 5th amendment
-Tax act was deemed unconstitutional
1970 marijuana is put onto Sched. I
1973, decriminalization by state follows
-1973 Oregon decriminalized
-1990s San Francisco did too, CA entirely following by 1996 under Proposition 215: Allowed use w/ doctor permission
2005 Gonzalez VS Raich (MJ)
DEA would come in and arrest people despite it being legal for the area
-Fed govt had constitutional right to ban it
2012-2018 State Legalization (MJ)
-States begin legalizing marijuana with restrictions (Washington and Colorado started)
-Only about 10 consider it to be illegal
-2014, Rohrabacher–Farr amendment prevents Dept of Justice from prosecuting in legalized states
-2018, hemp derived CBD is legal
Marijuana types and percents
Marijuana - Plant material that is dried and smoked. 6.7% (now 15-28% THC)
Sinsemilla 11.1% - Sexually immature female plant
Hashish 27.7% - Dark resin oil stuff
-THC is very lipophilic
-Kief - Steel wool and brush to get trichomes
-Most potent
Hash Oil 24.9% (can be almost 100% now)
-Dabs, HBO, Wax
-Extremely potent!
Bhang - Legal form (milkshake)
Synthetic Cannabinoids (sCB’s)
Used in vaping or in plant
-Similar effects
* OD or EXTREME effects
-Can be dirty
-Pyrolytic compounds: heating and metabolism causing adverse effects
-Can be laced
Trichome
Small hairlike growths, producing THC
-Delta 9 and Phyto-cannabinoids
-Warmer grow environment = INC THC
Pharmacokinetics of marijuana
11-OH-THC
-CB1 agonist
-Body turns THC into “super weed”
-Crosses BBB faster than THC
THC-COOH
-Carboxy-THC
-Inert substance
Made from 11-OH-THC
Lipophilic, which is why it stays in the body’s fatty tissue for so long, up to 95 days
Peaks after 10 minutes when smoked
Drug testing Marijuana
-Looking for the metabolites of marijuana, only in the system w/ ingestion or smoking
-Cannot test how high but how many metabolites
Pharmacodynamics of MJ
CB1 and CB2 receptors
-1 causes psychological effects
-2 causes immune response
*anti-inflammatory effects, little found in the brain,
2-AG and anandamide
-Endocannabinoids
Acute Psych effects of MJ
Motor Control: Basal ganglia and cerebellum, sedation and DEC movement
Euphoria
Paranoia, psychosis, sociability, and relaxation
Attention, judgment, decision making
Memory: Impairment of STM, acting on CB1 receptors in hippocampus
Appetite: CB1 receptors in the hypothalamus
Is marijuana the gateway drug? Sequence, association, and causality
By sequencing, yes. If someone has done hard drugs, they likely tried MJ first
-1/5 support this claim
Association: Using MJ is correlational to other drugs but its small
-Those who use more than 50 times/yr, 140x chance of using harder
Causality: no
-INC use, INC time w/ other users, INC chance of going harder
-Possible + outlook for other drugs
-Environment and sociocultural outlook
Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD)
It is addictive
-9% of 22.2M past month users
-Withdrawal: Opposite of effects
-50% of US has tried weed (but thats likely actually higher)
Amotivational syndrome.
Little evidence of MJ > amotivational but rather that depression > MJ use > amotivational
-MJ > Loss of interest > Is cultural
Schizophrenia risk, Cog impairments, and MJ
INC Schz risk in those w/ genetic risk for Schz
-Especially in youngers, possible brain DEC development
-INC alcohol toxicity
Lasting cognitive impairments/Improvements:
-cell death by activating proteins that respond to stress and injury, hippocampus vulnerable
-THC &CBD antioxidants, protecting against cell death, protecting against strokes
-Possible help on TBI and MDMA abuse
-Memory and verbal impairment
-LT users may tolerate COG impairments
Lung harms of MJ
-Same lung damage cigarettes do BUT no lung cancer in animals but double risk in humans
*INC holding in and INC ammonia
-Not too sure about cancer
Body harms of Mj
-Hormonal and cardiovascular effects: Some cortisol (tolerance happens), DEC in BP and HR (paranoia?)
-Immune suppression: Possible pro- and anti-immunity signals, possible help in some illnesses, INC illness susceptibility
-Reproduction: DEC sperm and movement in men
-Pregnancy and childbirth: DEC weight and IQ, hyperactive behavior
Cannabinoids in medicine
Helping w/ Appetite stimulation, nausea, pain, MS, glaucoma, PTSD and anxiety, Spasticity and movement disorders, and cancer.
CB1 antagonists
Having the opposite effect as MJ
-Help people lose weight and quit smoking
-Can cause nausea, anxiety, and depression
-Not FDA approved
Alcohol / ethyl alcohol or ethanol
A chemical that interacts w/ receptors in the body to change how we feel and act.
-Long history of recreational and religious use
-AOD (alcohol and other drugs), originating from food
Fermentation
Yeast consumes sugar, excretes alcohol and carbon dioxide as waste products
-Naturally reach up to 15%
Alcohol and Religion
People knew of the positive and negative effects of alcohol
-Major religions address morality
-Ancient Greece and Rome had cults of the god known as Dionysus or Bacchus, whose ceremonies included heavy alcohol use, rape, and other violence. Islam prohibits drinking. Buddhists usually don’t drink, calling it heedlessness. Hinduism and Christianity do not prohibit drinking, but warn about overindulgence.
Alcohol and American History
-Pre-colonization NA rarely drank, influenced by Aztecs. N had little manufacturing.
-Europeans brought beer, wine, and distilled spirits
*Religion permissive
*Fermentation = preservation
*Was safer to drink than water during illness breakout
-Post-Colo.: Brewed from crops, pilgrims afraid of the water (despite being safer than Europe’s), breweries and taverns became popular
*Rum and molasses import, slave trade but was easier to make liquor from local crops
-German, Polish, and Czech immigration, 1850s INC German-style lager, especially in Midwestern cities
*Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Schlitz, and Yuengling
*1873, there was 1 brewery for every 10,000 Americans, making 9 million barrels of beer per year
*18th and 19th centuries, Americans drank two or three times as much as they do today.
Taverns and alcohol
Center of life in many communities, late hours
*Used for town meetings, elections, mail delivery, and places to stay
*PRE Revolutionary War, the British saw them as places to discuss resistance against the government.
Temperance of Alcohol
Abstaining from alcohol
-Grows in 1800s
-F issue, Alcohol = Anti Family.
*women’s suffrage (M doesn’t make money, gets drunk, goes home and beats wife)
*Anti-Saloon League and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union
-Benjamin Rush supported heavy taxation of alcohol.
-States start to go dry
-Carrie Nation, was notorious for “hatchetations:” she would enter saloons and smash liquor with an ax.
-Church leaders would give fiery sermons from the pulpit about the evils of alcohol
-Teetolers were those completely obstinate
18th amendment starts Jan 1920
-Volstead act: Banning beverages (0.5% and up) for all uses
-Was not a coin flip/monolithic
-Breweries and distilleries out of business
-DS of approval for self and not others
-Speakeasies and moonshine/bathtub gin
*Speakeasies/bars melting pot as everyone was breaking the law
*Illegal production = bad alcohol and the invention of cocktails = deaths
*Cheap alcohol containing methanol (wood alcohol) causing blindness
*INC gambling and organized crime
-21st amendment in DEC 1933, repealed 18th, alcohol is legal
Post prohibition
-Organized crime shifted to other illegal drugs
-13 states still allow dry cities/counties within certain population size
-Prohibition MAY have had a DEC in drinking but definitely in cirrhosis
Brewing
Grain soaked in water until sprout (malt), creating enzymes, water > starches > sugars and alcohol
-Leading to resurgence of microbrewing and small brewpubs
-stronger flavors and higher alcohol content
-Accounting for +12% of beer sales in the US
Distillation (liquor or spirits)
Heating regular alcohol, its potency in vapor, accelerating the fermentation process
-Yeast dies after living in own feces, preventing it from becoming more powerful than 8%
-Relies on alcohol being more volatile than water, evaporating at a lower temperature
-A liquid that is about 10% alcohol can be made into a product that is much more potent (usually 40 to 50%, but often much higher)
Beer
3-9% at 12oz
Number 1
Ale, Lager, and light beer
Ale - Fermented at warm temperatures for a short time, creating a stronger flavor
- British Isles (and early US)
Lager - Fermented in cold temperatures (originally in caves), and usually has a milder flavor and golden color
-Germany, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands, and was popularized in the US when waves of immigrants came from there
Light beer - Removing carbohydrates and/or watering down the beer
-Light beer has been really popular (accounting for 6 of the top 10 beer brands sold), there are INC brands, but DEC sales of beer all around.
-Fewer calories, similar alcohol content, less flavor, similar to lager
Wine, fortified wine, liquor, Liqueurs, and proof
Wine - 13% at 5oz
Fortified wine - Combining wine and a distilled liquor
-Brandy
-cheap, sweetened versions (Mad Dog 20/20, Wild Irish Rose) “bum juice” meant to be drank fast and inexpensively
Liquor - 40%+ at 1.5oz
-Number 2
Liqueurs - Adding sweet or strong flavors
-Baileys, Cointreau, Kahlua, Sambuca, or schnapps
Proof - Older unit of alcohol potency, twice the percentage
Caffeinated alcoholic drinks
Caffeine makes the drinker think they are sober
Can cause extreme intoxication
Appeals to underage drinkers because of the
caffeinated drink
Who drinks?
-In the US, 2.4 gallons of pure alcohol / year = 1.75 drinks/day
-30% adults don’t drink
*½ of the adults aren’t really drinking
-1 in 6 American adults are binge drinking
-Spending x amount of time drinking
-four (for women) or five (for men) drinks on one occasion
Heavy Drinking
5 or more drinking binges in a month
one or more drinking binges a week
Drinking is higher in
-M
-White folk
-During college years
-Those between the ages of 18-29
-13% if underage people binge drank in the past month
-INC in occurrence for older adults
Underage drinking and drinking in college students
-¼ of 8th graders and 60% of 12th graders report having had alcohol at least once
*DEC since 1990
-13%, 12-20 binge drank in the past month.
*INC chance of becoming addicted.
*M = F.
*23% of 12th graders saw harm in drinking every day, and 40% saw no harm in drinking four or five drinks nearly every day.
Alcohol use and binge drinking peak at age 21, then DEC
*College students drink more than those their age who aren’t students but are much less likely to become lifetime users
*1/5 college students w/ Alcohol Use Disorder
Pharmacodynamics of alcohol
GABA-A receptor modulator while inhibiting excitatory glutamate receptors
-Dirty, other things also happen
-Some effects may be due to actions on other
receptors, (nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, ion channels, and cell membranes)
-Not very potent, standard drink contains about 14 grams (about half an ounce) of pure ethanol (100s of times more than MJ, opioids, ect)
Pharmacokinetics
Each drink = 0.002-0.03% of your blood is alcohol
-Drink size role
-Carbonation pushes alcohol into the intestines
-Drinking on an empty stomach leads to INC and quicker impact
-Sex plays a role: M are bigger than F and have more stomach enzymes to break down alcohol
-Individual metabolism - Some people have INC, some people have DEC tolerance
-About 1 drink/hour
-At a constant, No half-life
