Cannabis Industry: Home

Cannabis is a genus of plant that includes the species Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. Cannabis plants can grow as high as eighteen feet. They have green, thin stems, and the leaves branch off into five to seven "fingers." The plant's small green flowers grow in clusters. The dried flowers and leaves of the plant are smoked as the drug marijuana, which is also known as pot, weed, or ganja. Marijuana can also be added to foods and ingested. It was first cultivated in ancient China and India. Marijuana is considered an illegal drug in some countries—including the United States—but it has medicinal properties and can treat and manage a host of ailments and diseases, including cancer, Crohn's disease, epilepsy, and glaucoma. Because of this, some countries, states, and regions have legalized the drug for medicinal purposes. Into the twenty-first century, marijuana also is legal for recreational use in some locations.

This is the botanical name for the hemp plant that originated in Asia. It is the basis of the hemp industry as well as the source of the widely used intoxicant tetrahydrocan-nabinol (THC), the active agent in marijuana, hashish, ganja, and bhang.

Marijuana is the most common name used in the United States for the Cannabis sativa plant, which is one variety of the cannabis or hemp plant family. Cannabis is the more appropriate scientific term and the more common term used throughout the world to refer to the various psychoactive products derived from the Cannabis sativa plant that are used by humans to alter their state of mind. Slang terms for marijuana and other psychoactive products derived from Cannabis sativa change over time but some stable and more current terms include: weed, pot, herb, grass, reefer, Mary Jane, dagga, bhang, Aunt Mary, skunk, boom, gangster, kif, ganja, hashish, and hash oil. Cannabis remains in the early twenty-first century the most widely used illicit substance in the United States and in most other developed countries that regulate marijuana. Between the late 1960s and 2008, marijuana use has generated continued controversy regarding its addictive potential, health consequences, potential for medical use, and legal status.

The marijuana plant Cannabis sativa contains a bewildering array of organic chemicals, with representatives of almost all chemical classes present, including mono- and sesquiterpenes, carbohydrates, aromatics, and a variety of nitrogenous compounds. Interest in the study of this plant has largely focused on the resinous matter, as it is this material that is invested with the pharmacological activity peculiar to the plant. This resin is secreted by the female plant as a protective agent during seed ripening, although it can be found as a microscopic exudates through the aerial portions of plants of either sex. The pure resin, hashish or charas, is the most potent part of the plant and has served as the source material for most chemical studies. The family of chemicals isolated from this source has been referred to as the cannabinoid group.