Sure you do. You're putting heated Cannabis sativa or Cannabis indica in your body, containing cannabinoids that react with receptors in your nervous system. Despite the prohibitions, you probably have ample anecdotes that the side effects are generally increased appetite, decreased motivation, possible paranoia, and conversations that are pointless to anyone that is not high.
Even someone with multiple PhD degrees in the relevant areas of study isn't necessarily going to know the complete catalog of molecules involved, nor know which of those are biologically active in humans and which are inert, nor know which molecules agonize or antagonize which receptors, or whether they promote or inhibit uptake or reuptake of related neurotransmitters, nor know the short-term or long-term effects on any particular individual. There are only a few people that actually study the plant in enough detail to know those things.
This is, for the most part, because the federal prohibition has stifled scientific inquiry, by limiting both the availability of the plant to prospective researchers, and restricting the grant money far beyond what is normal for pharmaceutical research on other plants flagged for further investigation from traditional herb lore. Politics over science.
Most people don't know any more about it than ginseng tea, or chewed coca leaves, or even coffee. They don't have to. Eventually, we got to the point where instead of drinking boiled aspen bark tea for headaches, we started swallowing acetylsalicylic acid tablets, because that was determined to be the active analgesic ingredient. But before that, the tea still worked without anyone knowing exactly why, but with more side effects and less reliability. Using the raw plant--especially when harvested from the wild rather than cultivated under controlled conditions--caused less certainty in the dosage. The pills allowed us to take just enough to relieve our pain without causing more damage to our stomachs than was strictly necessary.
But in the case of marijuana, people tend to enjoy the side effects, and nothing in the plant seems to result in health-threatening effects, even from massive overdoses and shockingly frequent usage. So there's no rush to identify active ingredients, except by some twisted impulse to stop sick people from enjoying their treatment, or to prevent people from being able to produce their own medicines outside strict authoritarian supervision.
And different effects can be produced by selective breeding, like the strain for people who need to use a lot of medical marijuana to manage their symptoms, but don't want to be stoned or high all the time. You can't really do that with a drug that doesn't have a genome.
Even someone with multiple PhD degrees in the relevant areas of study isn't necessarily going to know the complete catalog of molecules involved, nor know which of those are biologically active in humans and which are inert, nor know which molecules agonize or antagonize which receptors, or whether they promote or inhibit uptake or reuptake of related neurotransmitters, nor know the short-term or long-term effects on any particular individual. There are only a few people that actually study the plant in enough detail to know those things.
This is, for the most part, because the federal prohibition has stifled scientific inquiry, by limiting both the availability of the plant to prospective researchers, and restricting the grant money far beyond what is normal for pharmaceutical research on other plants flagged for further investigation from traditional herb lore. Politics over science.
Most people don't know any more about it than ginseng tea, or chewed coca leaves, or even coffee. They don't have to. Eventually, we got to the point where instead of drinking boiled aspen bark tea for headaches, we started swallowing acetylsalicylic acid tablets, because that was determined to be the active analgesic ingredient. But before that, the tea still worked without anyone knowing exactly why, but with more side effects and less reliability. Using the raw plant--especially when harvested from the wild rather than cultivated under controlled conditions--caused less certainty in the dosage. The pills allowed us to take just enough to relieve our pain without causing more damage to our stomachs than was strictly necessary.
But in the case of marijuana, people tend to enjoy the side effects, and nothing in the plant seems to result in health-threatening effects, even from massive overdoses and shockingly frequent usage. So there's no rush to identify active ingredients, except by some twisted impulse to stop sick people from enjoying their treatment, or to prevent people from being able to produce their own medicines outside strict authoritarian supervision.
And different effects can be produced by selective breeding, like the strain for people who need to use a lot of medical marijuana to manage their symptoms, but don't want to be stoned or high all the time. You can't really do that with a drug that doesn't have a genome.