Cannabis—also called weed, herb, pot, grass, bud, ganja, Mary Jane, and a vast number of other slang terms—is a greenish-gray mixture of the dried flowers of Cannabis sativa. Some people smoke cannabis in hand-rolled cigarettes called joints; in pipes, water pipes (sometimes called bongs), or in blunts (cannabis rolled in cigar wraps).1 Cannabis can also be used to brew tea and, particularly when it is sold or consumed for medicinal purposes, is frequently mixed into foods (edibles) such as brownies, cookies, or candies. Vaporizers are also increasingly used to consume cannabis. Stronger forms of cannabis include sinsemilla (from specially tended female plants) and concentrated resins containing high doses of cannabis’s active ingredients, including honeylike hash oil, waxy budder, and hard amberlike shatter. These resins are increasingly popular among those who use them both recreationally and medically.
The main psychoactive(mind-altering) chemical in cannabis, responsible for most of the intoxicating effects that people seek, is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The chemical is found in resin produced by the leaves and buds primarily of the female cannabis plant. The plant also contains more than 500 other chemicals, including more than 100 compounds that are chemically related to THC, called cannabinoids.2
NIDA. “What is cannabis? .” National Institute on Drug Abuse, 13 Apr. 2020, https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/marijuana/what-marijuana Accessed 12 Jan. 2021.