Everything is finally in place for the beginning of the long-awaited MAPS/California NORML marijuana smoke filtration study. By the time you read this, 250 grams of marijuana, donated by the United States Government to the research team at the American Health Foundation, will almost certainly have arrived at the research laboratory. After six months of trying and failing to import high potency marijuana from the Netherlands for this study, MAPS has succeeded in obtaining marijuana from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). NIDA has kindly agreed to supply the research project with the same variety of marijuana that NIDA supplies to the eight patients who receive marijuana legally for their medicinal use.
This study is needed because there are no scientific data currently available describing the filtration effects of water pipes and vaporizers on marijuana smoke. Data about the filtration effects of water pipes for tobacco smoke are encouraging (see MAPS Vol. 3, No. 2, p. 4), so it may well be that with marijuana smoke these devices would substantially reduce the proportion of tars and particulate matter inhaled along with the THC and other cannabinoids. This study is especially important since the patient population in which the medicinal use of marijuana will soon ( I hope) be tested is comprised of AIDS patients, who already have a compromised immune system. If delivery systems can be developed that minimize marijuana smoke's potentially stressful effect on the immune system, the risk/benefit ratio for the medical use of marijuana may decrease dramatically. This research will help the FDA balance the harmful effects of marijuana against its beneficial effects. Of particular interest in this regard is a recent scientific study at the University of Florida which demonstrated that THC itself seems to enhance immune system functioning in AIDS patients. The more that the non-therapeutic ingredients in marijuana smoke can be filtered out, the greater the beneficial effect of smoked marijuana.
Some critics of this study suggest that it will provide ammunition for the argument that marijuana is not safe enough for medicinal use when its smoke is not filtered. They fear that this study will thus undermine the effort to secure approval for unfiltered marijuana smoke as a medicine, and place people who claim a medical necessity defense at greater risk of losing their cases. I personally believe that these fears are unfounded. Moreover, I think it is irresponsible and ultimately self-defeating to ignore the risks of marijuana smoke. The search for safer and more effective methods of helping severely ill patients must be conducted in the most comprehensive and highly scientific manner. Marijuana, like any other drug, has it risks. It behooves those who believe it has benefits to seek ways to minimize those risks.
MAPS' approach to the risks associated with marijuana smoking contrasts dramatically with the approach taken by the tobacco industry regarding the health risks of the cigarette. In a fascinating series of articles in the New York Times (June 16-18,1994), the secret research projects of the tobacco industry were described. A major direction of research was called Project Ariel, which was a series of studies in the 1960's intended to produce a safer nicotine delivery device than the cigarette. Project Ariel was abandoned after initial prototypes were unsuccessful, in part because they delivered too much nicotine in too short a time. After Project Ariel was closed down, all reports about this direction of research were kept secret.
In the effort to develop safer methods of smoking marijuana, MAPS will report all the data that are gathered, whatever the results.
The key question is whether the tars will be selectively filtered out to a greater degree than the cannabinoids, resulting in a smoke that has a higher proportion of cannabinoids than before it passed through the water. If the cannabinoids and tars are filtered out equally, smokers will still end up inhaling the same proportion of each to reach the desired therapeutic levels of the cannabinoids.
Water pipes do reduce the temperature of the smoke. Since heat is an important co-factor for carcinogenicity, water pipes offer at least this safety advantage.
Vaporizers also have another extremely useful property; they are extraordinarily efficient. When the marijuana plant components are burned, only a fraction of the cannabinoid constituents are turned into a vapor and inhaled with the marijuana smoke. Cannabinoids are highly combustible, so much so that a large proportion of them in a marijuana joint are burned up and destroyed. With a vaporizer, the same amount of marijuana can produce at least twice as many inhaled cannabinoids, and probably much more. Given that AIDS patients in the final stages of their disease have usually exhausted all financial resources, the efficiency of the vaporizer can dramatically reduce the cost of the medicinal use of marijuana.
Whether vaporizers will work as they theoretically should is an open scientific question not previously tested. Some anecdotal reports indicate that the subjective experience of marijuana smoke that has been vaporized is somewhat different than when the same marijuana is smoked in a joint. What these differences are, and what implications, if any, they have for the therapeutic effects of the vaporizer, remains to be determined.
The second water pipe that will be tested was manufactured by a MAPS member and donated to the project. This pipe is basically a hookah, with a long plastic hose attached to a bowl. It may be that the passage of marijuana smoke through a long hose will cause some of the heavier particulates and tars to become deposited in the hose, leaving smoke with a higher concentration of cannabinoids. This pipe is also designed to release the smoke at the bottom of the water bowl, for maximum contact with the water.
The third pipe to be studied will be a standard water pipe, just like the varieties commercially available in some stores (usually with a note saying that they are for tobacco use only). This water pipe is simply a long plastic cylinder about a foot long and several inches in diameter. A short air tube is positioned near the bottom of the cylinder so that it lies under a few inches of water. I imagine that most water pipes in use in the United States today are of this variety.
The vaporizer that I saw was an ingenious combination of a vaporizer and a water pipe, and was designed to get the benefits of both devices. For those of you who have access to the Internet, in particular the alt.drugs discussion group, you may have noticed a long-running discussion on vaporizer theory and design. All of the vaporizers that have been mentioned have utilized a hot plate of some sort, often a car cigarette lighter, with a temperature control device permitting the user to heat the marijuana to the desired temperature.
The vaporizer we will use in this study is of a completely different design. Rather than using a hot plate for the heating element, this vaporizer uses hot air. The hot air is generated by a commercially available paint stripper gun available at hardware stores, at a cost of about $40. The tool blows a stream of hot air through the interior of a round metal tube with a diameter of about an inch, at a range of temperatures from several hundred degrees up to and exceeding 1000¡ F. When used as a marijuana vaporizer, the temperature is set at about 450¡ F. The end of the tube is positioned about an inch above a small pipe bowl which has a hole at the bottom, just like a standard pipe bowl. That small bowl is placed on top of a much larger beaker of water. A small tube for inhaling the vapor has been inserted into the larger beaker beneath the level of the water.
The vaporizer/water pipe works rather simply. The hot air blows down on the marijuana that is in the first bowl. A screen is secured on both the top and the bottom of the bowl so that the marijuana stays in place. As the temperature of the marijuana increases, the cannabinoids start to vaporize. The downward pressure of the hot air pushes the vapor down into the beaker below. When enough vapor has collected in the beaker, the smoker inhales on the tube. This draws the vapor through the water, cooling it before it goes into the lungs. At no time does the marijuana burn. The people at the Buyers Club report that the smoke is so smooth that sometimes they are not even sure that anything has been inhaled. The used marijuana changes color slightly, and loses weight due to the removal of the cannabinoids by vaporization.
One disadvantage of this system is that it requires an electric outlet, and is not portable. Another is that the paint stripper gets extremely hot and can inflict pain if touched. If this technology proves useful after scientific analysis of the smokestream, further modifications of the prototype will be made.
MAPS has made an initial $8,000 payment toward the study's cost, paid at the commencement of the research phase of this project. After MAPS receives a progress report at the three month point, an additional $8,000 will be paid. The final $9,000 will be paid upon receipt of the final report, in part by MAPS and in part by California NORML. In addition to its report to MAPS and California NORML, the American Health Foundation has agreed to prepare a scientific paper describing its results which will be submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal for publication.
If this initial study is promising, it would be desireable to conduct a subsequent study to further analyze the constituents of marijuana smoke. This study would include the vaporizer, the most effective of the different water pipes tested, and both a filter- tipped and a nonfilter marijuana cigarette. The cost of this study has been already negotiated with the American Health Foundation, and would be $15,000. This sum has not yet been raised.
The nature of research is that your cherished beliefs and deepest hopes may be drawn into question. But, after all, isn't it better to know for sure?