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Comment by droopyEyelids | Hacker News Reader

Have there been any double blind tests of the difference between Sativa and Indica?

As someone who doesn't smoke, it sure sounds like sommelier's talk.

Even though it's almost legal now, the world of cannabis is full of so much mystical mumbo jumbo and outright fabrication. Take the whole CBD thing, for example. The only consensus seems to be that people who sell it say it does whatever the customer wants.

And how much CBD oil is actually being produced? Enough to stock every vape shop and every head shop in every strip mall in the entire USA with a few liters? Seems hard to imagine an industry that size.

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There's a range of cannabinoids with varying effects; I believe this is something that's studied, acknowledged, but still not completely understood. THC is just the main one. The variations explain the differences between strains, "pure" Indica having higher concentration of THC, but lower diversity of cannabinoids. In reality everything is a blend.

This is in contrast to alcohol, which is straight ethanol, all the time. There's no difference in the active ingredients in alcohols. Anybody that claims a different high, based on beer, whiskey, ect., is only referring to environment and aesthetic influences, which do matter (also, hangovers may vary, due to ingredients used). There's bullshit in the industry, specifically w/CBD and medical claims, but I think it goes well beyond sommelier's talk.

Marijuana is not an easy to understand and classify, unlike other drugs, like alcohol. I think it's been pretty well established that there are significant differences between strains, though I suppose you're right, I've never seen a specific study.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5576603/

Does this look like a double-blind placebo-controlled study to you? It looks like an interview to me

The interview seems to support the "sommelier's talk" hypothesis, considering the doctor explicitly says that "the sativa/indica distinction as commonly applied in the lay literature is total nonsense and an exercise in futility."

CBD has been demonstrated to stop seizures, so it does have some use. That said its possibilities are likely way oversold.

Here's a very cool example, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ybu-_tDXb8

It's not oversold. You'll be hearing more and more about it.

However, it's often sold in 'salves' and edibles in ineffectively small amounts, cheifly to those who are 'socially' allergic to cannabis.

After thirty years of smoking, I've found no real difference between sativa and indica strains. There are a half dozen different deltas of THC, and CBD has it's own. That's where the real variety in effect comes from. But it could be any strain that has this. The general consensus is sativa = active, indica = sleepy, but I've found it both ways. Ultimately the grower/gardener has a much bigger effect on the quality than the strain.

Cannabis chemistry and pharmacology science may be in its relative infancy, but it's already a broad and established field.

Gotta push back on the CBD part. Epidiolex was approved by the FDA (priority, fast track), but so far, multiple lines of evidence have shown it to be efficacious for a number of conditions.

The sativa/indica spectrum isn't really accurate. Pot is more like a multidimensional feature vector crossed with the user's feature vector- a complex multivariate interaction.

Indica, Sativa and Ruderalis are separate species of the genus Cannabis.

That's correct, kind of- nearly all modern cannabis are not pure strains, and the labelling at stores doesn't correspond to the species definitions.

Nearly all are cross breeds, yes. That does not mean that the labels are inaccurate - the species just don't correspond to lay-person's assumptions.

Trainwreck and it's daughter strain, Casey Jones, for example, have a heavily Indica dominant lineage, but behave veyr much like a Sativa. Casey Jones is amusing to bring out at parties: the volume of the room rises precipitously for about 20 minutes, and then... silence. :) It's very reliable.

The quality of the information on strains at the stores depends on the store you frequent. I tip well if the salesperson is knowledgeable and helpful.

I think we're in general agreement (and both a lot more experienced than the average person). I've seen things labelled at pure sativa which did nothing but cause people to feel couch lock, and pure indicas that lead to head highs in the stratosphere. I don't think the physiological effect is correlated strongly with the strain.

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