Cannabis

Soft black resin, furry green leaves and hard brown lumps, cannabis can look very different depending on its type – but it all comes from cannabis plants.

You’re most likely to come across these types:

Also known as grass, weed is made from drying out the flowering parts of the cannabis plant. It can look like dried herbs and is usually brownish-green in colour.

Not nearly as common as it used to be, hash (or hashish) is made from the resin of the cannabis plant and can be black, brown, soft or hard – depending on the type.

This is a dark, sticky and honey-coloured substance that’s much less common than other types.

These are highly concentrated forms of cannabis that are extracted using butane. They come in a solid form known as 'dab' or 'shatter' and can be used as e-liquids in vape pens.

Cannabis has a musky, sweet smell. Some of the more potent types of cannabis can have a stronger smell, but this isn’t a reliable guide to the strength of any particular batch.

Smoke Joints or Bowls

In the US, most people roll it in a joint or pack it into a pipe

Smoke bongs

Users do this by putting it in a bowl, lighting it, and then inhaling the smoke through water out of a large tube. There are many types of bongs.

Eat and drink it (edibles)

People do this by mixing it into cakes (hash brownies), tea, cookies or sweets (gummies/lollipops). The amount of cannabis in these products can vary greatly. The effects of consuming edibles are unpredictable and it can be very easy to accidentally take a larger dose than you wanted to. Its Best to start with a low dose until you know how to use it.

Vape it

This method has become more popular in recent years. Most people use a vaporizer which heats the cannabis, rather than burning it. Very little is known about the health impact of vaping cannabis.

The effects of cannabis can vary massively. Some people say feeling 'stoned' makes them feel chilled out and happy in their own thoughts, while others say it makes them giggly and chatty. But it can also make people feel lethargic, unmotivated and some people become paranoid, confused and anxious. 

The sort of experience you have depends on a lot of things like;

• the kind of person you are (e.g. outgoing or shy)
• the mood you're in, (if you're feeling down it will probably make you feel worse)
• the environment you're in (you're more likely to feel paranoid or anxious if you don't feel comfortable where you are or if you're with people you don't trust)
• how much THC it has (the main psychoactive compound in cannabis)
• how much CBD it has (which is thought to make users less likely to feel anxious and paranoid)
• how much you take
• how often you take it

Cannabis has also been proven to help alleviate; depression, anxiety,  chronic pain and nausea .Cannabis changes how you think and some people say it gives them a different perspective on things. It does affect your judgement though and people often think conversations or thoughts they have (whether good or bad) are much more deep or important when they’re stoned than they would do normally.

It can also make you hungry, known as having ‘the munchies’. It can make you feel drowsy or sleepy and can give you the sense that time is slowing down.

The hallucinogenic effects of cannabis are mainly due to a compound in cannabis called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol).

The other important compound in cannabis is CBD (cannabidiol). Skunk and other forms of strong cannabis contain high levels of THC but very little, or no, CBD.

It's thought that CBD can balance out some of the effects of THC and make users less likely to feel anxious and paranoid. You can’t tell from looking or smelling cannabis whether there's a balance of CBD and THC in it, but in general, hash may have more CBD than skunk.

Cannabis can make some people giggly and chatty, and other people paranoid, confused and anxious – it really depends on the type of person taking it and the circumstances they take it under.

Some people:

• Experience mild hallucinations if they take particularly strong cannabis.
• Become lethargic and unmotivated.
• Increase social ability and creativity
• Makes you think of things from a different perspective

How long the effects last and the drug stays in your system depends on how much you’ve taken, your size, whether you’ve eaten and what other drugs you may have also taken.

When smoked, it normally takes a minute or two to feel stoned. If you eat cannabis, it can up to an hour.

This depends on how much you smoke. Generally, the effect is strongest for about 10 minutes to half an hour after smoking cannabis, but if you smoke a lot, you may still feel stoned for a couple of hours. If you eat cannabis, the peak effects can last for 2 to 4 hours, and there may even be a few more hours before the effects wear off completely.

If you’ve used cannabis as a one-off, it will show up in a urine test for around 2 to 3 days afterwards.

However, this can go up to a month for regular users.

How long a drug can be detected for depends on how much is taken and which testing kit is used. This is only a general guide.

Smoking cannabis can;

• make you wheeze and out of breath
• make you cough uncomfortably or painfully
• make your asthma worse if you have it

There's been less research on it but smoking cannabis is likely to have many of the long term physical health risk as smoking tobacco (even if you don't mix the cannabis with tobacco). So smoking cannabis can also;

• increase the risk of lung cancer
• increase your heart rate and affect your blood pressure, which makes it particularly harmful for people with heart disease
• reduce your sperm count if you're male, affecting your ability to have children
• suppress your ovulation if you’re female, affecting your ability to have children
• increase the risk of your baby being born smaller than expected if you smoke it while pregnant

Using cannabis can:

• affect your motivation to do things
• impair your memory so you can’t remember things or learn new information
• give you mood swings
• disturb your sleep and make you depressed
• make you anxious, panicky, or even aggressive
• make you see or hear things that aren’t there (known as hallucinating or tripping)
• cause hours (or days) of anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations, which only settle down if the person stops taking it – and sometimes don’t settle down at all
• cause a serious relapse for people with psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia
• increase your chances of developing illnesses like schizophrenia, especially if you have a family background of mental illness and you start smoking in your teenage years

Yes. Heavy cannabis users often get cravings and find it hard not to take the drug – even when they know it’s causing them physical, mental or social problems.

When heavy users do try to stop they can:

• feel moody and irritable
• feel sick
• find it hard to sleep
• find it hard to eat
• experience sweating and shaking
• get diarrhoea

If you roll your spliffs with tobacco, you’re also at risk of getting addicted (or staying addicted) to nicotine.