Professor Lee, a friend of mine asked me this question:
“I’ve heard that cannabis’s psychotropic effects are only activated when it’s cooked/heated/burned and that when consumed raw (i.e. as per wheat grass), the medicinal effects are there without the high.”
What do you know about that? I am not gonna lie, I had no idea! I told him that you probably don’t want to eat raw cannabis but after that I was stumped! Never heard of it before man!! Can you let us know about this?
From J.
Dear J,
This one brought up an old misconception that I had been making for years. As it turns out heating the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and the cannabinoids (CBD) does not “activate” or convert them into some exotic new chemical compounds. Consuming raw cannabis will affect one just like eating magic brownies will.
However, the problems with eating raw cannabis are twofold: First, it takes quite a while for the effects to be felt if you eat it raw. Approximately two to two-and-a-half hours or so. And second, buds just don’t taste good. Anyone who has had to eat their stash while being pulled over knows that.
“Why no officer that’s just oregano stuck in my teeth.”
Simply put, when you spark up a bowl the THC/CBD crystals are broken down into a vapor like form, smoke, that is quickly absorbed by your lungs. Likewise, dissolving THC/CBD with alcohol or oil, such as butter fat, extracts the THC out of the plant matter. It can then be easily transferred into baked goods. Even vaporizers don’t do anything more complicated than leach the THC/CBD from a solid state into a water vapor mixture.
Those that claim that they have tried eating raw cannabis with no effect have to factor in that tolerances vary from person to person and so does patience. If they choked down some buds only to give up a half an hour later, and smoke a joint, then they sabotaged their own experiment. I hope this helped to clear up the matter and we can all move on to that plate of green-ey sugar cookies that just came out of the oven.
Mmmmmmm good!
Professor Lee
