The Emperor Wears No Clothes
by Jack Herer
Lingering THC Metabolites
The Hype: It Stays in Your System for 30 Days
The government also claimed that since “THC metabolites” stay in the body’s fatty cells for up to 30 days after ingestion, just one joint was very dangerous; inferring that the long range view of what these THC metabolites eventually could do to the human race could not even be guessed and other pseudo-scientific double-talk (e.g., phrases like: “might be,” “could mean,” “possibly,” “perhaps,” etc.)*
* “May, might, could, and possibly are not scientific conclusions.” Dr. Fred Oerther, M.D., September 1986.
The Facts: Government’s Own Experts Say That Metabolites Are Non-Toxic, Harmless Residue
We interviewed three doctors of national reputation either currently working (or having worked) for the U.S. government on marijuana research:
– Dr. Thomas Ungerlieder, M.D., UCLA, appointed by Richard Nixon in 1969 to the President’s Select Committee on Marijuana, re-appointed by Ford, Carter, and Reagan, and currently head of California’s “Marijuana Medical Program;”
– Dr. Donald Tashkin, UCLA, M.D., for the last 29 years the U.S. government’s and the world’s leading marijuana researcher on pulmonary functions; and
– Dr. Tod Mikuriya, M.D., former national administrator and grant distributor of the U.S. government’s marijuana research programs in the late 1960s.
In effect these doctors said that the active ingredients in THC are used-up in the first or second pass through the liver. The leftover THC metabolites then attach themselves, in a very normal way, to fatty deposits, for the body to dispose of later, which is a safe and perfectly natural process.
Many chemicals from foods, herbs, and medicines do this same thing all the time in your body. Most are not dangerous and THC metabolites show less toxic* potential than virtually any known metabolic leftovers in your body!
* The U.S. government has also known since 1946 that the oral dose of cannabis required to kill a mouse is about 40,000 times the dose required to produce typical symptoms of intoxication. (Mikuriya, Tod, Marijuana Medical Papers, 1976; Loewe, Journal of Pharmacological and Experimental Therapeutics, October, 1946.)
THC metabolites left in the body can be compared to the ash of a cigarette: The inert ingredient left over after the active cannabinoids have been metabolized by the body. These inert metabolites are what urinary analysis studies show when taken to discharge military or factory or athletic personnel for using, or being in the presence of cannabis within the last 30 days.