Marijuana: Where there is no smoke...

clipped from www.nature.com Vaporizing cannabis leaves instead of burning them can release the drug's active ingredient just as effectively — while avoiding the harmful toxins inhaled through smoking the drug, according to a pilot study. The active ingredient in cannabis leaves is in oils on the surface of leaf 'hairs'. The potential benefits of marijuana include pain relief for multiple-sclerosis sufferers, a treatment for glaucoma, as an appetite stimulant for AIDS patients and an anti-nausea agent for people on chemotherapy. Rather than smoking, some use the leaves to make tea or cakes for consumption. But this means that the active agents are metabolized by the liver rather than entering the bloodstream unaltered. the pace of research has been slow, partly because there is only one source of research-approved marijuana in the United States the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) which critics accuse of dictating research along a political agenda.