The Discovery of THC

Dr. Raphael Mechoulam

People have been getting stoned off Cannabis for thousands of years, but it’s only been the last half century that we’ve understood why.

It was in 1964 at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel that Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, along with colleagues Dr. Yehiel Gaoni and Dr. Haviv Edery, first isolated delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which we know as THC.

This began our journey of understanding of the mechanisms behind how and why we get high when we consume decarboxylated Cannabis — which continues today — and led to the discovery of cannabinoid receptors in the human brain and the endocannabinoid system in the human body.

Mechoulam and his colleagues also isolated several more of the 113 cannabinoids that have been found so far, including CBD.

In a 2011 interview with High Times Magazine, Mechoulam said that Cannabis wasn’t well known in the U.S. at the time, mostly being used by jazz musicians. We know this wasn’t entirely accurate, though, as Cannabis was being used in most states and the underground industry was growing.

Because it was illegal in many countries by the 1960s, there was little research being done on the plant. As an organic chemist, Mechoulam was interested in biological activity and it was the lack of knowledge or ongoing research that drew him to Cannabis.

He had asked for a research grant from the American-based National Institute of Health (NIH), which turned him down. But they became interested after Mechoulam managed to isolate 10 grams of THC from hashish.

Despite Cannabis being illegal in Isreal, Mechoulam said they were able to do research as the government understood they weren’t selling it on the side. As we say so often, it was a different time back then.

Why the NIH suddenly got involved is also an interesting story, as told to High Times by Mechoulam:

“Yeah, well, they [NIH] didn’t have a single grant on cannabis at that time, but the National Institute of Mental Health did, I think. As I said earlier, the NIH wrote me that they don’t want to, they won’t give me money, because it’s not interesting or relevant. And then, all of a sudden, I get a phone call from the head of pharmacology at NIH, and they’re now interested. So I asked him: “What happened, all of a sudden, that you have great interest?” Well, it turned out that a senator had called NIH – his son smoked pot, and he wanted to know whether it would destroy his mind!

And just like that, the government got NIH to change direction. They don’t want to fight the senators because they need their support, and they looked around and [said] “Aha!” – they don’t support grants on marijuana, so they asked me if I was still working. We had just isolated THC, and that was it.”

Along with illegality, our lack of knowledge also came from the fact isolating THC was not an easy thing to do, as Mechoulam explained to High Times:

See, morphine and cocaine are so-called alkaloids, namely a natural product that contains a nitrogen [atom] on the molecule, and it can give us salt; it precipitates as a salt. And so you have salt: Cocaine is a salt, morphine is a salt – very easy to prepare. It turned out that THC does not have a nitrogen, and it is present in a mixture of compounds – we know that there are about 60 of them now. And they didn’t have the techniques to isolate them in the past. So a few people tried here and there, actually some very good people – one of them [Lord Alexander Todd] got the Nobel Prize for something else. But they never succeeded in isolating the pure substance, and so they never knew whether they had one compound or many compounds, and so on.

Our understanding of THC has grown since that initial breakthrough. We now know there are CB1 and CB2 receptors in our bodies and brains, and that THC binds to these, giving us euphoric effects.

We also now know that when we smoke Cannabis, it becomes decarboxylated and the delta-9-THC molecules are carried from our lungs to our brains via capillaries. But when we eat decarboxylated Cannabis, our livers break the delta-9-THC molecule down, creating the metabolite 11-OH-THC, which is believed to be one of the reasons why edibles last much longer and are stronger than flower.

Another positive that will come from legalization is the fact it makes research easier to undertake, which will expand our understanding further.

To hear Mechoulam tell the story himself, watch this brilliant documentary:

Where some Cannabis slang comes from

Did you know we call good Cannabis Chronic because of Snoop Dogg‘s confusion as a teenager.

Yes, the Snoop Dogg.

He tells the story to Seth Rogen starting at the 10-minute mark below:

Basically when Snoop and his friends first smoked hydroponic weed, they got so baked they misheard/remembered hydro-ponic as hydro-chronic.

They kept calling it that and eventually used it as the title of Dr. Dre’s first album, The Chronic, in 1992, putting it into the mainstream.

A lot of Cannabis slang has an interesting back story.

Take the term 4:20.

Even your grandma knows what it means when someone says 4:20.

But where does it come from?

Back in 1971, a group of five high schoolers in San Rafael, Calif. got tipped off to an outdoor grow they could harvest if they could find, so they made a code for meeting up and discussing the plan.

“4:20 Louis” they’d say, then meet after classes at the Louis Pasteur statue in front of their school.

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The Louis Pasteur statue in front of San Rafael High School.

They didn’t find the weed but kept using the code to meet and smoke and eventually the ‘Louis’ part got dropped as they’d meet other places too.

One of the group later became a roadie for a member of the Grateful Dead, who was also from San Rafael. They used 4:20 on some of their flyers for shows, which spread it among Deadheads, and eventually it was picked up by High Times in an article about Cannabis slang and terminology, spreading it to the mainstream.

Some Cannabis slang is fairly straight forward.

We call them “dabs” because you dab a concentrate onto heat to take a hit.

Same with the word “concentrates,” THC and other terpenes are concentrated together, making it stronger than smoking regular flower.

Distillates are distilled.

Other words aren’t as straight forward. Take joint for example.

If I ask you to roll a joint, you’d know what I mean, but why do we call it that?

The first use of the word to refer to a Cannabis cigarette was in a 1938 New Yorker article by Meyer Berger titled Tea for a Viper, which also gave us the term roach for the leftover nub of a joint.

Of course, words will be in use long before they’re first written down.

The word joint had been used since the early 1800s to mean a place where nefarious activities happen, like a bar or an opium den.

The roots of that can be traced back to the French word, Joindre, which means to join or bring together (illegal bars and opium dens were usually side rooms joined to the main one).

A blunt is when you use a cigar paper to roll a joint (and they usually have tobacco added). The name comes from New York, where Phillies Blunt cigars were first used, with blunt referring to the size.

Another word with a fuzzy origin is doobie.

Some say it comes from a popular character on the show Romper Room during the 1950s and 60s, Mr. Do Bee. Others would argue it’s linked to the character Dobie Gillis, who was reportedly the inspiration for Shaggy in The Adventures of Scooby Doo.

Maybe it was a combination of both.

And joints are called spliffs in Jamaica and the West Indies. That’s a blending of the word split, which is a rolling paper, and whiff, which refers to the pungent smell of Ganja when it’s smoked.

The earliest uses of cannabis

There are two* types of Cannabis — Sativa and Indica — and to understand the differences between them, we have to go back to the beginning.

The earliest evidence of Cannabis use by humans comes from the Neolithic Age, which began about 12,000 years ago.

Cannabis was one of the first crops farmed by ancient people. In fact. the name Cannabis Sativa is Latin and translates to ‘farmed hemp.’

Neolithic people figured out that not only are the seeds and oil of the Cannabis plant good to eat, but the fibrous stalks can be processed and woven into things like rope, textiles and clothing.

Agriculture was born, which helped create civilization as we know it.

It didn’t take long for the use of Cannabis to spread and advance from the mountains of central Asia throughout the rest of the known world.

Pottery discovered at a site called Yuan-Shan, in modern-day Taiwan, dates to about 8000BC and had woven Hemp cord pressed into it during the drying stage, which could have either been for decoration or a way of labelling that Cannabis/Hemp seeds or oil was stored inside.

Perhaps both.

The oldest textile made from Hemp discovered so far is a piece of cloth from Mesopotamia — modern-day Iraq/Iran — dating to the same period, about 8000BC.

Cannabis originated in the mountains of modern-day Tibet and northern India and was spread throughout modern-day Iran, China, Japan, Taiwan and southern Siberia by ancient settlers and farmers over several thousand years.

The Scythian, nomadic warriors who lived on the steppes of Eurasia starting around 900BC, played an important role in spreading Cannabis throughout modern-day Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Their word for it, Kanab, is also widely considered the origin of the word, Cannabis.

The earliest use of cannabis in what is now China, Japan and Taiwan, was more as a textile, and became what we know as Cannabis Sativa.

The earliest use of cannabis in what is now India, Iran and southern Siberia, was more as a drug, and became what we know as Cannabis Indica.

Today we know both types produce THC and CBD and due to the fact there was only cross-breeding in the black market for nearly a century, it’s mostly hybrids in North America.

• There are actually three types of Cannabis when you add the little-known Ruderalis to the list.

Shen Nong — Sativa

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Some of the earliest written references to Cannabis involve the mythical Emperor Shen Nong, who is said to have lived around 2700BC and is considered the father of Chinese medicine.

Legends say he sampled 365 herbs — including cannabis — to test their effects as a way of teaching people to be self-sufficient. (He is also said to have died from eating a plant that made his intestines rupture before he could take an antidote).

Shen Nong — which means divine farmer — is credited with creating Chinese agriculture by inventing the ox yoke, the plow and the axe, as well as irrigation and the storage of seeds. He is also said to have discovered tea — which he named cha — after leaves from a tree blew into a pot of boiling water, producing a pleasant smell.

Drinking it gave him a warm feeling that also felt as though spirits were exploring his body, so he chose the character cha, which means to examine or investigate.

There’s no physical evidence of Shen Nong’s existence and whether he was an actual person is a matter of debate as the legend also says he was conceived when his mother inhaled the vapour of a dragon and was born with a transparent stomach, allowing him to see the effects of eating herbs.

Our knowledge of Shen Nong comes from writings that date to around 50BC that were based on oral tradition. These were eventually compiled into the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing (some 2000 years after Shen Nong is said to have lived), which translates roughly to: The Divine Farmer's Book of Herbs.

It says seeds from the Cannabis plant — which was called Ma or DaMa — are good for gaining weight and improving blood flow and energy.

But eating too much, Shen Nong warned, “may make one behold ghosts and frenetically run about.”

Cannabis was still mainly used as a textile and food source but burial cairns found in modern-day western China that date to around 2500BC had ash residue that tested positive for THC.

This would be what we know today as Cannabis Sativa.