Cannabis: Attending to Subjective Effects to Improve Drug Safety

Abstract

No one has clearly delineated the subjective effects of cannabis. The plant contains numerous psychoactive substances. Variation across plants is extremely dramatic, making generalizations about effects difficult. This chapter summarizes previous descriptions of cannabis's subjective effects and proposes a taxonomy of effects that might help distinguish among plants, predict use, and increase drug safety. It argues that attending to cannabis effects and cultivating a vocabulary for describing them will, in the end, help users to appreciate smaller doses and lead to increased safety.