Hacker News Reader

Comment by kylek | Hacker News Reader

It’s actually way, wayyy more nuanced than that unfortunately. THC is only one of a plethora of components at play (it’s been bred for higher and higher THC content for decades, mostly ignoring the other, more medicinal parts).

Only recently have I started seeing products in dispensaries with cannabinoid/terpenoid profiles to give a more accurate picture of the effects, I think we’re going to start seeing more products that are essentially blends of pure THC/CBD/CBN/CBG/etc + specific terpenes to make very effective targeted medicines.

View on HN

I have to ask: is terpene an actual scientifically defined word? I've only ever heard stoners use it to describe different marijuana strain's scents. Googling it yields nothing but pot-related results. How have I made it through so many years of studying plethoras of high level scientific subjects and am just now hearing this word? Now on HN nonetheless...

As a chemist, yes, terpenes are actual things. Natural products made up of 5 carbon units called isoprenes!

IANA (botanist, chemist?), but terpenoids are in most plants, e.g. pinene is abundant in pine trees, responsible for their smell, and happens to modulate cannabis’s subjective effects in very interesting ways.

A blend good for sleep might have a good amount of THC and CBN (and maybe some CBD) plus the mycrene and beta-caryophyllene terpenes (associated with the more sedating strains).

Indica/sativa don’t really mean anything, strains are mostly just variations of terpenes.

Wikipedia is usually a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terpene

yep, terpenes are organic compounds found in a wide range of plants. It's one of the reason pine trees smell so nice.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terpene and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terpenoid

oh okay

"THC/CBD/CBN/CBG/etc + specific terpenes"

what?

what would be a good place to have a primer about this, what is the public's understanding of this currently, especially in recreational legalized areas

how do we get to more holistic and broader knowledge for consumers. I agree that locking people up and taking their children isn't a productive use of the state in response to marijuana, and I can perceive this blanket legalization needs some fine tuning primarily with consumer education, something more akin to what you might see from a consumptive drug in the federal regulatory framework.

I remember learning about the difference between THC and CBD/etc. from Kurzgesagt's video on Marihuana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP15q815Saw

Reply on news.ycombinator.com