On Sat, 29 Mar 2003 11:16:34 +0000, Kay Easton
wrotc:

In article , Hussein M.
writes

Cannabis sativa is a dioecious plant.

Those who grow it for its psychotropic properties have in recent
years developed a style of growing called "sin semilla" (without
seeds). This requires identifying the sex of seedlings as they flower
and promptly removing all the male plants.

Why that way around? Why not grow only male plants? Are the female
plants better?

Can't one just remove the flowers?

Are you really interested?!

The psychotropic chemicals (amongst them THC) are produced by little
glands with a technical name beginning with trach ....? (Can't be
bothered to look it up). These are most concentrated on the bracts of
the female flowers. All parts of the plant, both male and female
contain cannabinoids but the female bracts are the richest.

The seeds contain some THC but they are purported to give one a
headache and have an annoying habit of going pop when burning. In the
old hippy days the ritual of rolling the seeds out of the grass on a
sloping surface could result in a varying quantities of smokable
material. A scruffy "deal" could result in a bag almost entirely of
seeds which had fallen to the bottom of some bin or other.

I think that answers your question. All said and done, Cannabis is a
plant of very many uses and it is a shame that twentieth century homo
sapiens has such a childish and immature attitude to it. Imagine a
country declaring war on a plant! Mind you, that particular country,
lately en fevered by a bout of hubris, seems singularly unsuccessful
of late in prosecuting a successful war.

There is no question in my mind that THC (quite apart from the
noxious substances consumed with it), is bad for a fit and sane human
being.

Even if you eradicate the accompanying noxious substances
customarily ingested with the drug (for example by dissolving the fat
soluble THC in butter and cooking with it), the way in which
cannabinoids monkey with your brain synapses cannot be good
physiologically, psychologically, psychically or spiritually (if you
wish to draw distinctions between the latter three). Psyche: From the
Greeks, who understood by the word an encompassing meaning best
conveyed in English by the word 'soul' (I am led to believe).

There is actually a cannabinoid produced naturally by the mammal
brain (called by a different name). Ingestion of the 'exotic'
cannabinoid tends to make the brain stop making its own. The human
(naturally occurring) cannabinoid is all tied in with dopamine,
serotonin and the other chemical transmitters which regulate amidst a
labyrinth of checks and balances, how much our 'reward centre' is
activated.

It's not true that cannabis is not addictive. Maybe not in the same
brutal physiological way that heroin/sugar are, but certainly in a way
which preys on the vulnerability of those who seek delusional escape
from the experience called life which they find, for whatever reason,
unhappy or uninspiring. Cannabis withdrawal even has a street name
"The gyps".

So, instead of becoming artists or whatever, some of those afflicted
by angst (recognised or as yet unrecognised) take the easy option of
sinking into an artificially induced bicameral state. The subconscious
world of dreams and delusions which render impotent the more obviously
beneficial and constructive experience of the (always existing and
important) primordial and instinctual. Wot brought us thus far. The
selfish gene. Whatever.

There's loads of new stuff coming out from the new neuro imaging and
brain scanning technologies. Surprising corroboration of Jane's
bi-cameral mind theory - which people seemed to find so unsettling and
keen to debunk.

It is anecdotal that regular ingestion of foreign (non-human)
cannabinoids tends to deprive the consumer of the facility to dream.

No. Sorry Stoner. Gawping at the tv and giggling with discrimination
blown to ribbons, filled with an inexplicable surge of self worth and
optimism which will be out like the tide in given time, is no
substitute for a dream that is truly free and in more than one sense.

Hussein
Grow a little garden