Cannabis (herbal)

Desired Effects:

• Euphoria
• Relaxation (feeling chilled)
• Increased sociability and sensuality.
• The giggles or finding anything funny and/or fascinating
• Appreciation of music etc. People use cannabis for all sorts of reasons from creative thinking to reliving boredom. Some people use it to cope with mental health issues or past trauma.

Side Effects:

• Anxiety
• Paranoia
• Confusion
• Slight decrease in blood pressure and heart rate
• Short term memory loss
• Increased appetite (the ‘munchies’)
• Pink, blood shot eyes
• Cannabis may cause you to sleep too much or not sleep enough.

• Mixing herbal cannabis with tobacco carries all the harms associated with smoking tobacco. While smoking cannabis neat also carries risks from the smoke, it does not contain all the cancer-causing chemicals found in tobacco smoke. So, provided you don’t end up smoking more as a result, is less risky.
• Although vaping herbal cannabis is safer than smoking in a joint, pipe or bong, there may still be some risk of lung injuries.
• If smoking herbal cannabis, avoid inhaling too deeply or holding the smoke in your lungs. It increases intake of tar and other junk in your lungs without getting you any more stoned.
• Smoking bongs or water pipes filters out more THC than tar and you lose lots in side stream smoke.
• A cigarette filter will also filter out THC (reducing the effect) as well as tar, so most people use a cardboard ‘roach’.
• If you start to feel paranoid or freak out, go somewhere quiet where you feel comfortable and safe. Paranoia will wear off in an hour or so when the cannabis does.
• If friends are experiencing a ‘whitey’, stay with them and try and keep them sitting upright, although don’t force them. Some people think a sugary drink helps, but again don’t force them to drink anything.
• If your mates become unwell or freaked out after taking cannabis, stay with them to calm and reassure them. Look after mates in the same way you would want to be looked after yourself. If you are really concerned about a friend, it is best to call for help.
• If sleep becomes a problem, there are more practical ways to help get your sleep back on track than smoking weed.
• As your tolerance increases, you will start to use more to get the same effect. This can get out of hand and lead to dependence.
• Try not to use every day, have days when you go without, particularly if you have to study for an exam.
• Don’t get cannabis laid off or borrow money to pay. Only buy what you can afford.
• If you start to feel worried by your use, cut down or stop. There are services that can help people who feel cannabis has become a problem.

Long term risks:

• Cannabis may increase the risk of psychosis in some people and make the symptoms worse for those who experience them. Risk is increased the younger you are when you start to use regularly as your brain is still developing.
• Cannabis might also increase the risk of depression. However, it is complicated as some people use cannabis to cope with their mental illness.
• Cannabis smoke contains toxic chemicals that increase the risk of smoking related illnesses such as bronchitis and worsen asthma.
• About one in every ten regular uses say they have become dependent on cannabis.

Short term risks:

• Confusion
• Memory loss (it's a waste of time studying after you have smoked cannabis)
• Paranoia
• Feeling or being sick, especially if you have been drinking alcohol. You may even pass out for a short while, known as ‘pulling a whitey’ or
• ‘Greening out’.
• Accidents if driving
• Getting caught.
• Risk of Covid-19 if you share, joints, pipes and vapes.
• Some people use cannabis to temporary relieve the symptoms of stress and anxiety, which might work in the short term, although the anxiety can increase after the cannabis has worn off.

Cannabis effects a variety of different neurotransmitters in the brain so has a wide range of effects. It has been classed as a hallucinogenic drug, although it very rarely causes hallucinations. It is now more commonly classed as a cannabinoid.

• Herbal cannabis is mostly green leaf, but the flowers/buds have a huge variety of colours from orange to purple. It is sold in its dried form either by weight or commonly by price i.e., in £5, £10, £20 plastic snap bags.
• ‘Cali weed’ is often sold in tins or branded packages or tins.
• As the name suggests, ‘Skunk’ as the name suggest has a distinctive and very strong smell both from the plant and smoke, which lingers on clothes and in rooms. Although chemicals called ‘terpenes’ cause some of the smell, it’s recently been discovered that the distinctive ‘skunky’ odour comes from chemicals (known as volatile sulfur compounds) which are also responsible for the stinky smell in garlic and Brussels sprouts.

Class B, under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

• Herbal cannabis is usually smoked in a hand-made cigarette called a joint, spliff, doobie, bifter etc. It is often mixed with tobacco, or in a pipe or water pipe (bong). It can also be vaped in devices that can handle herbal cannabis.
• Raw herbal cannabis isn’t eaten as it needs to be heated by smoking, vaping, or cooking to turn the THC into the active form that gets you high.

Cannabis-based medicinal products (CBMPs) are the name given to medicines that contain varying doses of THC and/or CBD that have been extracted and purified from the cannabis plant. Specially licensed doctors can prescribe medicines with very high levels of THC. Cannabis extract is currently licensed for severe spasticity in multiple sclerosis. However there appears to be very good evidence that it is extremely effective in managing childhood epilepsy. While there are numerous other claims made about the potential of cannabis as medicines for other conditions, the evidence is far from conclusive. There are highly standardised herbal cannabis varieties, that comply with EU medical standards that are produced in Holland, but these are very if ever rarely prescribed in the UK, even by the specialist doctors licensed to do so.



Cannabis plants cultivated for industrial use is known as hemp. It does not contain an enough THC to produce an intoxicating effect, no matter how much you smoke. Hemp is used for fibres used in the paper and textile industries, biodegradable plastics, health foods, and fuels.

• Traditional names for specific types of herbal cannabis like Jamaican Gold or Thai Sticks indicate the country where they were grown.
• British ‘home grown’ cannabis used to be of poor quality because of our climate, but most herbal cannabis plants are now hybrids. These are plants that are a result of cross breeding the wild plants with the most THC.  They are grown indoors under artificial lights in a way that produces lots of female flowers (buds) as this is the part of the plant containing most of the THC.
• ‘Skunk’ was original a specific ‘strain’ of cannabis but is now used as a general term for any of the potent and smelly hybrid varieties.
• There are numerous strains such as ‘Blue cheese’, ‘Straw Dog’, ‘Gelato’, ‘Kush’ etc. The appearance, flavour and smell vary between strains of herbal cannabis, but the potency depends on the amount of THC in the plant.
• Herbal cannabis (weed) is grown both by people who use it and by organised criminal gangs in both in commercial and domestic premises (known as weed farms).
• ‘Cali weed’ Is a name given to potent herbal cannabis that is often sold in a tin or packet and supposedly comes from California, although the tins and labels can be bought on the internet, so it is more likely to have been grown in Wrexham than the west coast of California.