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What is marijuana?

Marijuana is a green, brown, or gray mix of dried, crumbled parts from the marijuanas plant. The plant contains chemicals which act on your brain and can change your mood or consciousness.

How do people use marijuanas?

There are many different ways that people use marijuana, including

Rolling it up and smoking it like a cigarette or cigar

Smoking it in a pipe

Mixing it in food and eating it

Brewing it as a tea

Smoking oils from the plant ("dabbing")

Using electronic vaporizers ("vaping")

What are the effects of marijuana?

Marijuana can cause both short-term and long-term effects.

Short term:

While you are high, you may experience

Altered senses, such as seeing brighter colors

Altered sense of time, such as minutes seeming like hours

Changes in mood

Problems with body movement

Trouble with thinking, problem-solving, and memory

Increased appetite

Long term:

In the long term, marijuana can cause health problems, such as

Problems with brain development. People who started using marijuana as teenagers may have trouble with thinking, memory, and learning.

Coughing and breathing problems, if you smoke marijuana frequently

Problems with child development during and after pregnancy, if a woman smokes marijuana while pregnant

Can you overdose on marijuana?

It is possible to overdose on marijuana, if you take a very high dose. Symptoms of an overdose include anxiety, panic, and a rapid heartbeat. In rare cases, an overdose can cause paranoia and hallucinations. There are no reports of people dying from using just marijuana.

Is marijuana addictive?

After using marijuana for a while, it is possible to get addicted to it. You are more likely to become addicted if you use pictures of marijuanas plants every day or you started using it when you were a teenager. If you are addicted, you will have a strong need to take the drug. You may also need to smoke more and more of it to get the same high. When you try to quit, you may have mild withdrawal symptoms such as

Irritability

Trouble sleeping

Decreased appetite

Anxiety

Cravings

What is medical marijuanas?

The marijuana plant has chemicals that can help with some health problems. More states are making it legal to use the plant as medicine for certain medical conditions. But there isn't enough research to show that the whole plant works to treat or cure these conditions. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved the marijuana plant as a medicine. Marijuana is still illegal at the national level.

However, there have been scientific studies of cannabinoids, the chemicals in marijuana. The two main cannabinoids that are of medical interest are THC and CBD. The FDA has approved two drugs that contain THC. These drugs treat nausea caused by chemotherapy and increase appetite in patients who have severe weight loss from AIDS. There is also a liquid drug that contains CBD. It treats two forms of severe childhood epilepsy. Scientists are doing more research with marijuana and its ingredients to treat many diseases and conditions.

Understand the rules

Under the federal Cannabis Act, you can grow up to four images of marijuanas plants for recreational use per household. But some provincial, local and Indigenous governments, as well as landlords and stratas, have their own rules.

Manitoba and Quebec prohibit recreational growing. But in 2019, a Quebec Superior Court judge ruled that the province’s ban was unconstitutional. The Quebec government has appealed the ruling and its website still says recreational growing is a no-no, but Éducaloi, a Quebec charity working to improve legal literacy, says green thumbs are good to grow—for now. “If you decide to grow cannabis at home, be sure to stay up to date on any changes!” Éducaloi cheerfully cautions on its website.

Meanwhile, Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t allow outdoor growing and other provinces have strict guidelines on how it can be done. In B.C., for instance, your crop can’t be visible to the public, while in New Brunswick, your secret garden must be surrounded by a locked enclosure that’s at least five feet tall.

Bowors put deer fencing around her garden and lined it with light, white gardening fabric. “It looks like a big marshmallow,” she says, adding that the fabric also traps the heat, which the plants like.

If you use cannabis for medical reasons, you may be able to get a prescription from a health care provider and a medical certificate to grow, which may allow you more than four plants. (There are many medical cannabis clinics that can help you with the process.) The number of plants you can grow is based on the number of daily grams you’re prescribed and whether you plan to grow inside, outside or both.

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It’s only legal to grow cannabis from seeds or small plants called clones purchased from licensed retailers or producers or gifted to you by legal recreational growers. Recreational growers can purchase seeds from licensed retailers for about $30 to $60 for a pack of four. Clones are slowly coming on the rec market and go for about $40 a pop. Medical growers can get their starting materials from licensed producers and access better bulk prices and more variety in clones.

While there are dozens of online seed banks selling a much wider variety of seeds for cheaper than licensed retailers and producers, it’s important to note that they’re not legal. Ashleigh Brown, founder of SheCann, a digital network for women interested in medical and legal cannabis, cautions that when people buy off the illicit market, they may not be getting what they think and could end up with a much stronger strain, likening it to “a bottle of wine rather than a light beer.”

Select your strains

There are hundreds of strains of cannabis, though only dozens available through licensed retailers and producers. Mikela Moore, a Chilliwack, B.C., grower and O’Cannabis group administrator, says women can avoid decision fatigue by considering two key things: what kind of high you want and your climate, as well as the two main subspecies: indica and sativa.

In general, indicas ground you with a heavy body stone, while sativas lift you up with an energizing head high. There are also hybrids, which are somewhere in between.

“They like to say, ‘Indica put you in-da-couch,’” says Moore, who has a medical certificate to grow cannabis to help treat her insomnia. “Whereas with sativas, you’re going to be able to do your cleaning or go out for a walk.”

Sativas are typically taller and thrive in warm, wet, humid areas and have longer growing seasons. Indicas, on the other hand, are bushier and can better withstand the cold and have shorter growing seasons. There are also ruderalises, a.k.a. autoflowers, which start flowering based on age rather than on light and have an eight- to 10-week lifecycle, making them the smallest of the bunch. Autoflowers are ideal for places that have shorter growing seasons and for people with smaller spaces. “Autoflowers are basically on a genetic timer—they’ll just do their thing no matter how much sun they get,” Moore says.

If you buy standard seeds, it’s important to note that you have a 50-50 chance of getting male or female plants. Only female plants produce buds, while male plants pollinate female plants, causing them to produce seeds in their buds and essentially ruining your crop. This is why you have to chop down male plants. It’s possible to figure out the sex of your plants when they’re about six weeks old (female plants have wispy white hairs while males have pollen sacks), but it’s not always easy for beginners.