Explained (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 12 - Weed - full transcript

[narrator] This seedling
might not look like much now,

but it will grow into one of the most
notorious plants in human history:

cannabis.

It's the world's
most popular illicit drug,

more prevalent
than all the other ones combined.

Marijuana today
is a highly manicured product,

glistening with sticky,
psychoactive resin.

This is not your mother's weed.

This was more like your mother's weed.

The top strains
from a 1977 issue of High Times magazine.

Today's is a lot stronger.



Confiscated marijuana
is more than three times as potent

as it was in the mid-'90s

when the US government
started keeping track.

And the same trend
has been observed in other countries,

like the Netherlands,
the United Kingdom, and Italy.

Cannabis also grows smaller and faster,

and in hundreds of strains,

offering all different kinds
of flavors and highs.

But an unregulated product
with rapidly changing genetics means

that a lot of people don't know
what they're really buying

and that there are health consequences
we're only starting to understand.

For millennia now, marijuana has been seen
as mysterious and sacred

and even demonic.

But now humans
have learned to engineer it.



So what exactly
have humans done to this plant?

And what does that mean
for the people who use it?

[man] Marijuana is an intoxicating,
mind-muddling drug.

Marijuana is probably the most
dangerous drug in the United States.

Come on, one drag won't hurt you.

That's not what I heard.

[man] Oh, the days of the mild drug
that everybody uses...

It's more potent now than ever.

One of these days
they're gonna change the stupid law,

and it'll be just as legal
to have grass in your pocket

as it is to have beer in the refrigerator.

[narrator] This is 2,700-year-old
psychoactive resin from a cannabis plant.

It was found in a grave in Central Asia,

and it's the oldest evidence
of cannabis being used as a drug.

Cannabis is a domesticated species.

It's one of the species that we've been
co-evolving with for a very long time.

And to say you co-evolve
is to say you're changing it

and presumably it's changing you as well.

[narrator] As humans spread
across the continents, so did cannabis.

But in colder climates, a different
version of the plant developed: hemp.

It couldn't get you high,
but it was just as valued

for other reasons.

[man] Long ago when these
ancient Grecian temples were new,

hemp was already old
in the service of mankind.

[narrator] Hemp was used
to make clothes, rope,

sails, paper, food, fuel,
and construction materials.

Hemp farming was
so important in early America

that towns across the country
named themselves after it.

This was the cannabis
most Europeans and North Americans knew.

But warmer climates, they got
the psychoactive kind of cannabis.

It spread to the Middle East,

where hashish,
a paste made of cannabis resin,

became a popular edible intoxicant.

From there, it spread to India,
where it became a holy drink.

Then into Africa,
where it was used as medicine

and to boost courage before battle.

And then transatlantic slave traders
carried it to the Americas.

And what had been as the same plant,

one path selected
for length and strength of fibers,

and the other paths
selected for psychoactive potency.

[narrator] In 1753, Carl Linnaeus,

a Swedish botanist who created the modern
system of classifying organisms,

named the plant cannabis sativa.

These plants grew tall
and had thin leaflets.

Later on, a variety of the plant found
in the cool mountain climates of India

with darker, thicker leaves
was labeled cannabis indica.

And then there's this little guy,
cannabis ruderalis,

small plants found in Russia.

Linnaeus noticed
something unusual about cannabis.

While most plants have flowers
with both male and female parts,

with cannabis, some plants only produced
seeds and others only produced pollen.

In other words, they were male and female.

Linnaeus isolated some
of the female plants on his windowsill

and got pretty excited
about what happened next.

[Chong] "It was certainly a beautiful
and truly admirable spectacle

to see the unimpregnated female
flourishing,

till they had been
for a very considerable time

exploded in vain

to access the male pollen."

Wow, he's really into this weed, isn't he?

[narrator] Because female cannabis plants
produce bigger psychoactive flowers,

they're much better for getting you high.

Flower has the most resin in it,
the most of the oil.

[narrator] The leaves and stems contain
some psychoactives, but not that much.

The main psychoactive chemical
is called THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol.

The second major active chemical
is cannabidiol, or CBD,

which reduces anxiety.

But cannabis has more than 100 compounds
that affect the human body,

called cannabinoids.

A few decades ago, researchers discovered

that we produce
a lot of these same chemicals naturally

and have receptors for them
sprinkled all around our bodies.

It's involved with food regulation.

It's involved in cognition.

It's involved with fine motor movement.

It's everywhere.

[narrator] Endocannabinoid systems
are present in every animal

except for insects.

We still don't fully understand
why they're there,

but there's evidence that they play
a key evolutionary role

in regulating appetite,
helping us forget, and reducing stress.

And they might be the chemicals behind
the euphoria you feel after exercise.

But cannabis isn't just cannabinoids.

There are over 400 active compounds

that give each plant
a unique chemical profile.

Oh, hello, Pineapple OGs.

Think of it
like a graphic equalizer on a stereo.

Imagine a graphic equalizer
with over 400 dials on them. THC, cannabidiol, CBG, CBN.

A lot of these things are psychoactive.

A lot of these cannabinoids
are non-psychoactive.

Terpenes are basically
aroma molecules.

Flavonoids are flavor molecules.

And all of these things are mediated...

by the cannabinoid profile,
is what we call it.

[narrator] The popular strain Sour Diesel
gets its peppery note

from the chemical caryophyllene,

which is also found in black pepper,
cloves, and cinnamon.

While Super Lemon Haze contains limonene, a major component
of the peels of citrus fruit.

By selecting
the right combination of cannabinoids

over several plant generations,

growers can create
an iconic name brand product,

like the famous strain
in the movie Pineapple Express.

This is like if that Blue Oyster shit
met that Afghan Kush I had

and they had a baby,

and then meanwhile,
that crazy Northern Lights stuff I had

and the Super Red Espresso Snowflake
met and had a baby,

and by some miracle,
those two babies met and fucked...

"...this would be the shit

they birthed."
[chuckles]

Now that may not sound super scientific,

but that's basically how it works.

[narrator] Today, Pineapple Express

is one of hundreds and hundreds
of unique marijuana strains on the market, some with advertised THC potencies
upward of 25%.

That dramatic evolutionary change
happened because of one thing:

the American war on drugs.

[Nixon] Marijuana is a weed and spreads
like crabgrass once it goes to seed.

In order to fight and defeat this enemy,

it is necessary to wage
a new all-out offensive.

[man] But we need to concentrate
on the organizations,

we need to concentrate on who's
financing them, who's setting them up,

-and we need to cut the heads off there.
-[police radio chat]

[narrator] For the majority
of the 20th century,

most of the marijuana consumed in the US
came from Mexico.

It was terrible stuff.

Marijuana was the...

mostly the leaves...

occasionally the flowers if the dealer
was feeling in a good mood.

Frequently the stems or the seeds
if the dealer was feeling in a bad mood.

And of course
that was garbage that you paid for.

[narrator] Today's growers
mostly sell flowers, or bud.

But the Mexican growers sold the whole
plant: leaves, seeds, stems, and all.

And the result was a product that probably
averaged about 3% THC content by weight.

[narrator] To cut off the flow of cannabis
across the border,

the US started paying Mexico

to spray their marijuana fields
with herbicide in 1975,

so Americans started making
a lot more of it themselves.

But marijuana could only grow
in the sunny US states like California,

because the only marijuana we had
was cannabis sativa.

That changed in the late 1970s,

when Americans brought back
the shorter cold-resistant cannabis indica

from the Hindu Kush mountains.

And we came up with hybrids.

[narrator] Crossbreeding
frost-resistant indica

with existing sativa plants

allowed cannabis to grow
in every single state in America.

And when the Reagan Administration
started using spy planes

to search
for marijuana farms from the air,

indica's smaller size allowed growers
to hide their plants indoors.

And remember cannabis ruderalis?

Crossbreeding with it allowed
for shorter flowering times,

so plants could sprout faster.

And these hybrids
were now able to be grown indoors.

And they didn't take 12 weeks to grow,

and they didn't grow
eight and ten and 12 feet tall.

[narrator] But the biggest transformation
to the plant

was the rediscovery
of an ancient breeding method

based on the same phenomenon Carl Linnaeus
had observed on his windowsill.

It turns out that process
makes flowers ooze psychoactive resin.

One day somebody said to me,
"Hey, there's this new kind of weed.

It's called Sinse."

Sinsemilla.
It's basically Spanish for "seedless."

[narrator] When female plants
are pollinated,

their THC production slows
to produce seeds.

But if you keep female plants
away from male plants,

they never get pollinated,
never produce seeds,

and their THC production never slows down.

Basically, a process of producing

a bunch of sexually frustrated
female marijuana plants.

[narrator] And by clipping
from those females,

growers could clone a new generation
of genetically identical plants,

skipping
the pollination process altogether.

Unfortunately, these plants
are never going to get to have sex.

So they're just going to keep creating
more and more resin,

trying to attract that pollen
so that they can make seeds.

And if you think about it,
the modern cannabis plant

that's been bred to be all flowers
is really kind of a botanical freak.

And the flowers are huge,

totally out of proportion
to the plant itself.

It's kind of grotesque actually.

[narrator] The average THC content
of Sinsemilla

was several times higher
than normal cannabis.

But the THC content for both hasn't
changed much over the last couple decades.

Weed, on average,
has gotten so much more potent

because Americans started buying
a lot more of the stronger version.

But that resulted in another change.

THC, the psychoactive compound,
and CBD, the relaxing one, are connected.

The more THC there is in a plant,
the less CBD.

Even back in the 1990s,

the ratio of THC to CBD in the plant
was about 11 to one.

Today, you know, 30 years later nearly,

we have THC to CBD ratios
on the order of 250 to one.

And so you get stuff with more and more
THC and less and less CBD.

There's gonna be a higher rate
of people getting freaked out.

And that appears to be true.

They run the risk
of having increased anxiety, paranoia,

maybe thinking
that they're losing their mind.

Those are the major sort of concerns
that I worry about

when people with lack of tolerance
use high THC-containing products.

[narrator] Legal pot shops
will usually label

the THC and CBD levels
of different strains,

along with a couple other key descriptors.

There's just one problem:

the words we use to classify this plant
don't actually mean anything.

If you shop for marijuana,

chances are you're familiar
with these names.

Indica or sativa?

Indica and sativa.

Indica versus sativa.

[inhales]

Indica and sativa.

And I just basically call it
"daytime pot" and "nighttime pot."

[narrator] The sativa-indica binary

has been the basis
for how most marijuana is sold.

Sativas provide an energetic high feeling,

while indicas give
a lethargic stoned feeling.

But much of what we think of these things
are just myths.

[narrator]
Because of extensive crossbreeding,

how a plant today looks

doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with how it makes you feel.

It used to be very easy
to visually identify.

And it was
that broad-leafed varieties were indica

and thin-leafed varieties were sativa.

And now, because they've been
so intercrossed and interbred so much,

you can have a broad-leafed variety
that is straight-up sativa in its effects.

[narrator] And we can't do a genetic test
for indica or sativa

because there's no genetic sample
of pure indica or sativa.

And we're not sure that there ever was.

When you have people labeling something
70% sativa, 70% indica,

it's 100% subjective.

It's done by somebody smoking it

and deciding that they are getting either
an indica or a sativa effect from it.

Indica dominant to indica-sativa hybrid

sounds really technical and scientific
even though it's complete nonsense.

So people say it.

I think we're going to look back
at this period

and laugh at those hipsters
in the legal stores

selling us sativa and indica

and telling us what it does
and all this hokey shit.

I think we're going to laugh at that.

[narrator] Even if the sativa-indica
labels are meaningless,

you would assume at least the strain names
mean something.

When you purchase wine by name,

you expect
a genetically consistent product.

A Merlot can't be sold as a Cabernet.

That's because governments regulate them,

but that's not true with cannabis strains.

People have absolutely no idea
what they're smoking.

The strain names are not reliable.

You can call anything you want
Purple Urkle.

[narrator] Improving that labeling
is especially important,

because we don't know what
a standard unit of marijuana looks like.

We do not have
the cannabis equivalent of a drink,

and we really need to get there

so that people
can start thinking seriously about,

"Well, you know, how stoned
do I want to get?

Do I want to get one puff or two puffs
or three puffs worth stoned?"

But that doesn't make any sense
until we've standardized the puff.

[narrator] But standardizing a puff
requires one big first step:

legal regulated marijuana.

Countries all over the world
are starting to loosen laws on cannabis.

And that can mean more accurate labeling.

In the Netherlands, where
medical marijuana production is legal,

a company called Bedrocan

closely tests the cannabinoid profile
of their products to ensure consistency.

They've done away
with the hippie strain names

in favor of more official titles,
like Betica and Bedrobinal.

When researchers tested them,

their chemical profiles
were extremely consistent.

But White Widow and Amnesia samples
bought from different Amsterdam stores

were all over the place.

If the legal weed market grows,
we might see more of that consistency.

Bedrocan's parent company, Canopy Growth,

got a widely publicized investment
and a historic one.

The investor was
the alcohol giant Constellation Brands.

You may not have heard of them,

but you've probably heard
of some of their products.

[glass clinks]

That raises the question:

What does the Corona of weed look like?

That depends on the market.

It's estimated
that in Colorado's legal pot market,

near daily or daily users
make up the biggest share of demand,

almost 67%.

And the percentage of users
who consume that heavily

keeps going up in the US.

They're gonna be driven by profits.

If most of their goods are sold
to regular and heavy users,

that's who they're gonna market
their products to,

and they're going
to be working aggressively

at developing new regular and heavy users.

But as long as somebody has a bottom line
that's driven by drug abuse,

they're gonna promote drug abuse.

It's not rocket science.

[narrator] Because those heavy users
have a greater tolerance

and are constantly pursuing a better high,

they also drive the average demand
toward high-potency products.

Everybody I know my age
who still smokes complains.

You know, why can't you get
the mellow stuff anymore?

And the answer is the people
who want the mellow stuff...

don't buy enough to matter.

[narrator] Legal stores now sell edibles,
vapor pens, and extracts,

some with concentrations of THC
close to 100%.

But you can now also buy those kinds of
products with only CBD and no THC at all,

which claim to reduce anxiety
without getting you high.

Understanding
how these diverse new products

affect the human body is important,

because marijuana isn't totally harmless.

Studies show it can raise the risk
of schizophrenia and psychosis.

And there's still a lot we don't know
about its long-term health impacts.

But every day also seems to bring

new stories about marijuana's
possibilities as a medicine.

[man] Another study found that people
with chronic pain reported

they reduce the amount
of opioids they use. [woman] Its effectiveness
in treating glaucoma

and alleviating the side effects
of chemotherapy is unrivaled.

Many patients insist pot helped
where other medications failed.

[man] This week's study of 120 children
with a rare form of epilepsy

found those who are given CBD
along with their standard medications

had a nearly 40% reduction
in the frequency of seizures.

[narrator] In the years to come,
engineering this plant

will help us tailor
those possible treatments

and it will open up
a whole new field of medicine.

We've changed plants dramatically before.

Corn, peaches, and watermelon
were once inedible, tiny fruits.

Over thousands of years,
we bred them to fit our desires.

With cannabis, underground growers
made a similar transformation happen

in just a few decades.

And modern agricultural engineering
is about to transform it again.

In the long natural history of cannabis,

which has been going on
for thousands of years

and has had
these very important peak moments,