GSC Cannabis Lab

Join us for a night of art, music, and cannabis education!

2012-02-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

Grace Slick and The 420 Collection

2012-02-15T09:14:00.000-08:00

Join us on March 1st for an evening with Grace Slick and The 420 Collection. An exhibition by Grace Slick to raise awareness on the issue of medical cannabis at GSC Cannabis Lab, proceeds will benefit The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP).

For more information and to sign up for the raffle online, visit facebook.com/GoldenStateCollective

The Medical Research We Need, Now More Than Ever

2011-12-13T21:14:00.000-08:00

When you walk into your collective and ask your provider which strain is best for your back pain, he or she should point to a cannabis product that is less stimulating as a drug and overall more relaxing, perhaps inducing sleep or just soothing muscles. But how does he or she know which medicine to pick for you, especially if the collective stocks over two dozen types of cannabis?

What the answer should be:

“This knowledge is gathered through the scientific testing and research done on different strains and how they affect patients in numerous studies, which collective operators must work hard to learn.”

This is who you (should) want conducting research on medical cannabis.

What the answer usually is:

“This knowledge is based on personal/subjective interaction with cannabis and/or general street familiarity with the substance. He or she smoked it himself or just asked someone who did.”

Unfortunately, the source of your information more often resembles this gentleman.

It is hard to make informed decisions about medical cannabis because the right to scientifically study cannabis use is not fully granted by the federal government. This blocks an important source of government scientific funding to cannabis that is typically reserved for medical research. This puts a serious halt on the information available out there for everyone because the typical governmental institutions that would normally play a role in producing this information are sadly absent. And yet, the use of this medicine continues to grow with no sign of stopping. Normally, a group of people aims to better understand the things they care about and are involved with instead of closing questions on the topic.

More Americans than ever are using and in support medical cannabis. According to a recent Gallup poll in October 2011 which asked Americans their stance on cannabis, 50% of the US population supported the full legalization (as opposed to the 46% that is against legalization). This figure is up 4% from last year and up 20% since 2000. For many, this 50% marks a very symbolic milestone in the cause promoting the acceptance of cannabis. This progressive trend in American society is no coincidence or any sort of surprise to Medical Cannabis advocate groups or political enthusiasts. However, this change is regrettably happening without the kind pharmaceutical research that typically goes into a medicine before it’s distributed at large.

Interestingly, there are more Americans for than against legalizing cannabis (Gallop, 2011)

This issue dodges the moral question behind medical cannabis, which GSC Cannabis Lab is not interested in answering, and faces the more practical concerns behind understanding the medicine we use as a society: if more and more Americans are using medical cannabis, then America should allocate more resources to understanding it.

The end result of our country’s approach to cannabis is that most of what we know about this medicine is based on knowledge gathered on the personal use level or on plants grown and studied entirely outside of the country. Why this is bad makes sense when comparing what cannabis patients and dispensaries colloquially understand about cannabis with the conclusions different research groups outside the US reach with their work. For example, Dutch researcher Dr. FTJ Pijlman commented in his 2005 paper that there didn’t seem to be much of a difference in the chemical components of different strains and thus the medicinal affects of each type of cannabis. This entirely contradicts the well known albeit poorly documented difference between “mental” and “physical” highs, which can be endlessly explained by users and professionals in the California medical cannabis industry with personal and “street” experience with the plant. This also contradicts what is known about strains/breeds, another wealth of knowledge gathered on a personal level with no basis in the scientific literature beyond commercial catalogues by seed companies.

Whatever the source of misinformation, it must be taken into our own hands and corrected. GSC Cannabis Lab is a part of a movement within the industry to bring empirical science back into the equation. We are not advocating medical cannabis by pushing its research. We are instead providing a source of information to help Americans decide what is good for them. We want medical cannabis researchers to interact with patients and dispensaries to maximize what we can get out of cannabis as a society. We want to make sure that a collective operator can be confident about what he tells his patients without relying on third person anecdotes on how “awesome” a certain strain of Kush is. Most importantly, we want California patients to know their medicine and appreciate that the medical cannabis industry has an obligation to provide them with the medical information they can’t get otherwise.

Support medical cannabis research professionals and make sure that the change we undergo as a society is healthy and informed.

Cannabis Sativa and Indica Compared

2011-12-06T21:57:00.000-08:00

There are hundreds and possibly thousands of marijuana strains out there in the world. These strains range from popular, common name strains like Purple Haze—a breed you can hear dropped in many forms of popular media—to more obscure, hard to find strains like the Chemdog family plants, which until very recently was only available to elite marijuana aficionados. Despite the huge variety of marijuana available these days, almost all of them (over 99%) are ultimately derived from only two cannabis family species. These two essential species are known as Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica and they differ fundamentally in their chemical composition, physiological aesthetic, and medical application. And while sativa is the better known of the two species, both figure prominently and possibly equally in the realm of marijuana strain genetics and breeding.

Even at first glance, the physical structures of sativa and indica plants can be used to reasonably distinguish between the two. Sativa plants are taller and grow leaves which are long and thin. Indica plants on the other hand are more bush-like and have shorter, thicker foliage. Can you determine which of the bottom plants is Sativa and which is Indica? The answer is written directly below the image.

The left is a Sativa plant and the right is an Indica plant.

The Indica and Sativa subspecies differ in their medicinal properties. Sativa strains produce more of a euphoric high, lifting the consumer’s mood and therapeutically relieving stress. Indica strains relax muscle and work as general analgesics, also helping with sleep. A cancer patient hoping to relieve the pain from chemotherapy would benefit greatly from the effects of an Indica plant bud, whereas an individual dealing with depression would better benefit from a Sativa plant bud. Dispensaries are responsible for being aware of these differences. Does your dispensary share this information with you?

This knowledge is vital because these two extremes represent a spectrum upon which different strains are defined, which ultimately derives from differences in plant oil biochemistry. The active chemicals responsible for the medicinal effects of marijuana are collectively called cannabinoids. This group includes THC, CBD, and CBN. Sativa’s cannabinoid profile is dominated by high THC levels and low or no CBD levels. Indica’s chemical profile shows a more balanced mix, with moderate THC levels and higher levels of CBD. A strain’s medical value is therefore determined by the compositional breakdown of these molecules. The graph below illustrates a typical pairing of Sativa and Indica plants and what their cannabinoid profiles might look like next to one another.

Information as illustrated above should be available for all medicinal marijuana products at your dispensary. If it’s not, ask your dispensary operator why this is the case.

It’s important to remember that Sativa and Indica represent extremes along the spectrum of cannabis varieties. Most strains you can find at your local dispensary—even when broadly labeled as one or the other—are actually mixes of the two subspecies. It could be that a dispensary’s use of each subspecies name is only a rough categorization of each strain based on somewhat subjective observations, like a strain’s particular medical applications or a rough estimate of breed composition by percentage (i.e. a dispensary owner might label one strain that’s 54% sativa as a simply “sativa”). This results in a burden for patients who are left to navigate the huge world of marijuana strains and find their way through the clutter of information.

Be assured, there two sides to this coin. These many varieties may seem daunting but they were bred to address specific ailments. A good dispensary will be able to guide you through its strains to find the exact medicine that is right for you. We place heavy emphasis here on using a “good dispensary;” just as you should always use a trusted pharmacy.

-Tuesday, December 6^th