I read with interest the recent CMAJ editorial on marijuana.1 The numerous contradictory reports on the effects of smoking marijuana can be easily clarified: marijuana is a crude herb that contains at least 10 psychotropics as well as several hundred long-chain hydrocarbons. Each “joint” has a different chemical makeup.
For the chemicals in marijuana to be approved as medications they would have to be tested by means of the traditional, and only legally approved, methodology: gas chromatographic analysis of the plant and mass spectrometry. Once all of the chemicals were isolated, a large amount of each chemical would have to be synthesized so the appropiate toxicological and pharmacological studies in animals could be carried out.
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