Marijuana Name Game Adds to Prop. 215 Smoke

Once marijuana was called weed and grass and reefer and dope and Mary Jane. Now state lawmakers are preparing a cosmic debate about the medical use of “cannabinoids.”

Same thing, different name, officials say. You can still put it in your pipe and smoke it.

The clinical nomenclature was introduced to the political debate Thursday when the California Medical Assn. announced its strong support for legislation to study the “therapeutic uses of cannabinoids”--a raging issue ever since California voters passed Proposition 215 in November.

“I think it’s one of those insider terms because [doctors] can’t bring themselves to use the same word that normal people say,” said Rand Martin, spokesman for state Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), author of the legislation. “We’re going to call it marijuana.”

Proposition 215 ensured that Californians will soon hear all they ever wanted to know about the chemical, political, medicinal and legal trivia regarding pot.

The initiative sought to allow doctors to recommend marijuana’s medicinal use based on reports that it has therapeutic effects on epilepsy, glaucoma, asthma, nausea, pain and hypertension. Since the measure’s passage, however, federal authorities have threatened to enforce U.S. laws that ban the use of marijuana.

Last month, the respected New England Journal of Medicine criticized the federal response and urged that marijuana be treated as an addictive medicine. Vasconcellos then followed with a bill that seeks to settle the debate about marijuana’s medicinal value with a study.

Despite the flurry of attention, the spicy rhetoric has yet to be flavored with the term “cannabinoids.”

And that’s the case even though Hobie Swan, spokesman for the California Medical Assn., insists that “it’s bandied about all the time here.”

The term is derived from marijuana’s Latin name--Cannabis sativa. But technically, experts say, cannabinoid does not refer to the marijuana plant. Instead, it describes a group of chemicals the plant contains.

The best-known chemical in marijuana is its most psychoactive element--tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.

“But inside the plant there are actually between 360 and 440 chemical compounds,” said Bill Zimmerman, a sponsor of Proposition 215.

Zimmerman said cannabinoids were not even known 30 years ago when marijuana earned many of its labels. He said they have only been identified in the last decade.

Zimmerman speculated that the California Medical Assn.’s news release was probably “written by a lawyer.”

But Dr. Jane Marver, chairwoman of the group’s new task force on medicinal use of marijuana, said the term cannabinoid should not confuse people.

“It’s marijuana, that’s the bottom line,” she said. “I don’t think you should worry too much about people saying cannabinoid.”