We’re celebrating 8 big years of GGT this year with a look back at some of the favourite stories we’ve published.
Enrico Mandarino is Participant “A”.
(From the former GGT column, “Our Man In The Field”)
Last month a historical first-ever marijuana study in Canada took place, in which researchers evaluated the best method of ingesting weed. The delivery system chosen will then be used in a pilot study.
I was ‘Participant A’.
Two delivery systems were being tested: the pipe and the joint. I was asked to refrain from smoking weed four days prior to taking part in this study. (This was easily the hardest part of the study for me, but anything in the name of science.) I arrived at St. Michael’s Hospital excited that Canada is finally moving forward on researching marijuana. The researchers involved in this study seemed equally excited.
They met me in the only smoking room in the hospital, used for palliative care patients who smoke cigarettes. A sign on the door read: ‘This room is being used for medical purposes’. I need a sign like that for my apartment.
A nurse, who at first had no idea what the study was about, set me up with an IV catheter with a valve on one end of it; over four hours she would collect blood samples at various intervals after smoking to be tested for levels of THC. I felt like an Italian barrel of wine with a tap.
Then the fun began.
A researcher timed me inhaling weed from a pipe for ten seconds while another timed me holding it in for ten seconds. This was meant to keep going for a minute, but we quickly realized that would actually be very difficult, so the protocol was changed to inhale for five seconds and hold for five.
At the end of the smoking phase, when an exact quantity of marijuana was ingested, the nurse took blood samples at fifteen minute intervals for the first hour, and then once for the next three hours. By this point she had a mask on so she wouldn’t get a buzz from all the smoke in the room. In between each blood draw I was asked to fill out a questionnaire in regards to how hungry I was feeling. I was only famished after three hours.
Many interested people came by to see history in the making. One nurse came in the room saying she’d been told to come in and take a deep breath.
I was back for a second visit after a four-day wash out period (more brutal suffering in the name of science). This time I was testing the classic joint as delivery method.
The joints themselves came from the hospital pharmacy that morning and the weed was 2% from a legal source in the United States. The pharmacist who had the responsibility of rolling the 500 mg joints was quite excited.
One goal of this first phase of the study was to produce a graph showing the increase in THC levels in my blood immediately after smoking the marijuana and to then chart it dissipating over a four hour period.
The results are going to be used in the submission for the pilot study, which, if accepted, will be titled ‘The Efficacy of Smoked Cannabis on Appetite Stimulation in Persons Living with HIV/AIDS’ and will be a randomized, double blinded, placebo controlled crossover pilot study, enrolling 32 patients.
Again I smoked up under the same conditions and blood was drawn at the same time. But as for the hunger levels they were also interested in, I may have disappointed them. Weed normally gives me incredible munchies, but the scientific atmosphere and having people study you smoking maryjane and then draw your blood just didn’t lend itself to craving Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. In fact the blood work made me nauseous.
But I ate like a pig when I finally got back home.
