Medical Marijuana & Prepping

Medical marijuana & prepping.

That’s right, we went there.

The purpose of this article is to take a look at whether the physiological benefits of medical marijuana merits examination, or whether it’s an all-around bad idea. Of course, you KNOW the next paragraph is going to be completely filled with caveats, disclaimers and advice to follow the law, don’t you? We won’t disappoint on that score.

Before we start, the disclaimers and caveats

At 3BY, have never and will never encourage anybody to break any law, period. We have readers from all over the USA, and internationally, and different parts of the US & other countries have their own laws regarding marijuana. Don’t break that law; and if you do, realize that you are going against our explicit best advice.

Salty and Spice do not use marijuana. In fact, neither of us has never so much has taken a single drag of the stuff in our entire life. Not once. We’ve never had any in our possession (well, OK, Salty passed a few from one seat to the next at several Rush concerts in the early 1980’s, but seriously, it was a Rush concert in the early 1980’s… he didn’t take a drag, though) despite once being falsely accused* (I’ll share that story at the end, since Uncle George likes my humorous family stories). 

We are not going to pass judgment on anybody, nor are we going to talk about the political implications of this discussion (any political comments will be deleted on sight, as all political comments always are), rather we are going to go on the assumption that you won’t have any marijuana in your possession unless it is legal for you to do where you live.

Also, we’re not physicians and this isn’t medical advice. It’s just information sharing.

The rest is up to you.

Is marijuana really a medicine?

Well, yah. At least a good chunk of its activity comes from a group of compounds called the cannabinoids. The two most significant cannabinoids in marijuana are THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabindiol). Marijuana’s cannabinoids look chemically a lot like some of the chemicals (called endogenous cannabinoids) our brain cells use to communicate with one another. Therefore, the cannabinoids from marijuana can turn up or down the activity of particular brain centers. 

Actions run by the brain centers that use cannabinoids can be altered by medical marijuana. Glaucoma was the first disorder widely recognized as medically treatable with marijuana. (This led to some interesting anthropology classes for Spice. Her college instructor smoked to relieve his glaucoma before class.) Chronic pain  the and nausea and lack of appetite from chemotherapy are the conditions that most often use medical marijuana. The muscle spasms of MS and amyelotropic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gherig’s disease) and a couple of rare forms of seizure are also popular targets. (1)

It’s also used by some to treat a wide variety of other conditions. Frequent flier include anxiety, Crohn’s disease, and PTSD. 

From a scan of the literature, the safety profiles of the various products aren’t spotless; but then they aren’t for any drug. The safety does look much better than that of the more readily prescribed alternatives for the conditions, such as opiates for pain.

Is medical marijuana a good choice for a prepper’s medicine chest?

That’s a separate question entirely. To be a good prepper choice, a drug has to:

1) Work. For some conditions, it seems clear that cannabinoids do work.

2) Be stockable in enough quantity to be useful, or be a renewable resource.

3) Be reliable after being in storage for extended periods.

Let’s look at the latter two issues:

Stockable in quantity

Rules for medical marijuana vary quite a bit by region and medical diagnosis.  Therefore, there’s no ‘one answer fits all’ in whether developing a stockpile is practicable. As for producing it as a renewable resource, I’m not going there; either personally or in writing. I don’t value doing it personally. Also, I don’t know a thing about growing it beyond what I know about growing any plant, so I’ve nothing useful to add. 

I do note that every condition for which medical marijuana is usually recommended is a chronic condition. That means sticking a couple bottles of concentrate in the back of a refrigerator somewhere is not going to be a useful approach. That makes it less useful as a prepping item.

Reliable after being in storage

It doesn’t appear that cannabinoid doses of commercial products are reliable, full stop. (2) Of the edibles tested, only 17% had about as much active ingredient as claimed, 23% had more, 60% had less. Right off the shelf, you didn’t know how much you’d be getting. That’s pretty much in line with what you find in other products that aren’t actually under FDA overwatch (med marijuana isn’t).

Suppose for the sake of argument that what you buy is as potent as its supposed to be. Will it stay that way on the shelf? Uncertain. First, the information that’s out there is from shaky sources. No offense to Leafly and such folks; they might do a good job; but they aren’t exactly the Journal of the American Medical Association. The lack of high-quality research is unsurprising, since marijuana’s still a Schedule I drug. Research on such drugs is a logistical nightmare. 

Also, the information that is there indicates that shelf life varies quite a bit by product. Survivability depends quite a lot on the quality of starting product, specific method of refinement, and storage. Some products lose potency after a few months; some are reported as lasting ‘almost indefinitely’. Eh, I’d put a big ole shake of salt on the latter claim myself, having seen the structure of the molecules; but I’m no expert.

Add those issues together, and the medical marijuana products appear to have a weakness in the ‘reliability after storage’ department. That weakness could be partly mitigated by using a high quality source and storing everything dark, cool, and sealed away from air.

One last consideration

At the time of this writing, medical marijuana is legal in some states. However, it’s still against federal law. How will that shake out? I don’t know. I do know that I, Spice, as a gun owner, do not want to have thing one to do with violations of drug law. Drug law violations and gun ownership are not good companions.

NOTE: The following has nothing to do with prepping, it’s just another one of Salty’s family stories

*Unexpectedly, Salty was accused of being marijuana fiend

I knew something was desperately wrong the moment I stepped in the door. Mom had that third level angry look on her, and those lasers she called eyes were boring in on 14-year-old Salty.

This.

Was.

Bad.

It was spring, really the first truly warm day we had after what had been a brutal winter. We had moved into our new house in the fall but it had been cold and rainy. When winter hit, it was long and hard and wet, and it seemed like it would never end. 

Finally, the first really nice day had arrived. The days were lengthening and my plan was to drop off my homework, then run next door over to Duggan’s (a retired farmer who was teaching me how to make and mend horse harnesses) barn and work some more on the set of wither straps I was making for Henry’s harness (Henry was a cart pony). The straps were done but I was working on the decorative tooling. ANYWAY…

All thoughts of Duggan, wither straps and Henry’s harness flew out the window in the face of mom’s Level 3 rage.

Did your mom have anger levels?

Mine did. Here’s how they went:

1. Two name angry. “Salty Smith, get your tail in here!”
2. Three name angry. “Salty Hieronymus Smith, you get your self in this room RIGHT THIS MINUTE!!!!”.
3. Speechless angry. “…splutter…. You… you little… splutter, growl, snarl… why I’m gonna… slather, gasp…“

My beloved, kind and middle sister (who had also been on the bus after school) looked at me and laughed, “I don’t know what you did, you little jerk, but” she said with a smirk…

The eyes of rage

The eyes of the mother turned to her like spotlights boring into a Heinkel He 111 bomber over London during the blitz… Mom’s finger came up and pointed down the hallway. There was one word, and only one word, needed to make my sister disappear into her room so fast I thought we were going to be shaken by her sonic boom: “Go”.

Those angry eyes turned their cone of radiation back in my direction. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and calmly said “go to your room”.

I walked down the hallway, and opened my room door. My room was on the south side of the house, and had several large windows which were letting in the afternoon sun. With the door closed, it had gotten fairly stuffy… and there was somewhat of an odd smell about my room.

The room itself looked like it was hit by a bomb. Time to fess up here, I’m a bit of a slob (Spice is probably spitting out her drink into the screen laughing reading this. It’s like saying the Pacific Ocean is a small puddle that’s fairly damp). Having said that, my mother didn’t allow me to leave my room a mess.

When I say this place looked like a bomb hit it, I’m not kidding. Posters on the wall were ripped up and torn in half, pretty much everything I owned was in one big pile on the floor. The bed mattress was sitting against a wall, the box spring cover was cut open… I mean, it was crazy.

She grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, with a calm look on her fact that was 100 times more scary than the rage of a minute before.

“Where is it?”

I was perplexed.

Look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I didn’t have some contraband, what 14-year-old boy doesn’t. Aside from a stiletto switchblade and a couple of magazines I’m not particularly proud to say I owned, I was pretty clean cut. I was sure she couldn’t be talking about the knife or the magazines, because neither of them had ever been in the house and nobody else knew about them

Pro Tip: Pay attention to your surroundings, and if you see crews show up to tear out railroad tracks it’s time to go get your switchblade out of the can it’s hiding in under the small trestle.

I honestly had no idea what she was talking about.

“Don’t you DARE lie to me, I can SMELL it!” she said in a voice colder than the south pole in July.

I stared at her blankly.

Apparently I have a very convincing blank stare (I’ve actually been told this many times since) because for the first time a look of doubt crossed her face as a new idea struck her… perhaps I really didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. 

“That smell,” she said. “I know what that smell is, don’t try to fool me”.

I sniffed again, and yes, there was a noticeable odor that was something different than old gym socks that hadn’t made it down the laundry chute yet.

“Yeah,” I said, “I smelled that when I came in. My room smelled a little like that when I first moved in but it went away, I wonder what it is?”

“It’s marijuana,” she said coldly.

“Oh, that’s what it smells like,” I said. “I always figured it smelled something like dad’s pipe.”

I’m not that good of an actor

There are no Oscars sitting on my shelf, and at some point in time during our ensuing conversation she came to believe what I was saying… and it was entirely true, I had never smelled the stuff before, had no idea what it was.

I was friends with the neighbors who sold the house and the man (he was about 20) who lived in my room before me. I told him about it and the fit my mother had thrown, and he just about wet his pants laughing. He told me he had to move out in a hurry and he must have missed the stash he kept inside the window sill, told me there was one board that just sat in place and was never nailed down. He’d hide some of  his weed in there.

When the sun heated up the wall and window frame area for the first time in months, the smell from the rotting weed filled the room.

I’m no nark

Now there’s no way I was going to nark him out about this, so I waited a couple of days and then pretended I discovered the loose board myself. I opened it up, looked in and sure enough there was a good size bag of very dried out weed in there. I went and got my mother, who instantly recognized what was up of course.

She was about to rush off and call the boy who had live in my room’s mother but I said “well, how do we even know it was his? They only lived there a year, you wouldn’t want him to get into trouble for something he didn’t do?”

In the end, she let it go… 

The only long lasting part of the whole episode was that my middle sister started calling me “the druggie” instead of “the little jerk.” 

Did I ever mention we really didn’t get along very well as kids?

References 

1) Mayo Clinic Staff. 2018. Medical Marijuana. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in-depth/medical-marijuana/art-20137855.

2) Vandrey R, Raber JC, Raber ME, Douglass B, Miller C, Bonn-Miller MO. Cannabinoid Dose and Label Accuracy in Edible Medical Cannabis Products. JAMA. 2015;313(24):2491–2493. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.6613

*”American medical hashish” by Mjpresson is licensed under CC BY sa/3.0