A question for the chemist

[inkspot]

Not sure where this question goes for the chemists in the house.

Last week I read an article in the paper about a police raid on a business that provides "pot-laced" desserts for medicinal purposes. Surprisingly, there was a list of several top name companies that received this product.

Anyway, back in the day making brownies with pot was like adding parsley to spaghetti; just throw some in for good measure and viola! A friend and I got talking (while smoking of course) apparently she is more familiar with modern "pot" baking than me. My question to her, that she didn't know, was when the THC is extracted from the plant, what form is it in to bake with? crystal, liquid, powder?

Maybe this should be in the cooking section?

Thanks

 

[_n8o_]

from personal experience when cooking with pot say making a cake or something of the like, You wouldn't put the pot directly into the cake you'd make a butter out of it first, so but some cabbage into butter and boil it, I would then assume that when the pot is boiling in the butter the heat sucks the thc from the pot in the form of a liquid almost as if you were making a pot of tea. On the other hand when you use a vaporiser to smoke through all that happens is that the pot is heated (not burned like smoking a joint) and the thc vaporises so then it could be thought that after it was vaporised it could then be cooled back into condensation then forming drops of thc. This is just theory i have about it and only my own thoughts but seems some what logical to me

 

[inkspot]

Thanks for sharing your theory n8o, that made perfect sense, and what a process! My son's teacher has cancer stage 4, she is taking pot pills. I imagine the vaporizing process is used for pill form. It's all very fascinating to me. btw I going to let betty crocker do my baking

 

[_n8o_]

I wonder if they use some kind of cold extraction for the pills of if they were to make an oil first and then mix it into the pills, Saying that though when making oil from pot its a pretty costic solution as you would use butane or a form of ethenol to extract the thc and i couldn't imagine that would be to good for a cancer patient

 

[samoth]

My question to her, that she didn't know, was when the THC is extracted from the plant, what form is it in to bake with? crystal, liquid, powder?

People both eat the plant raw or grinded up as well as cook it in a butter. High temperatures will destroy the THC, so microwaving and hot ovens are out of the question.

One could grind up the plant and sprinkle it in food and cook at low temperature. The more common way is cooking the marijuana with butter, where the THC dissolves in the butter (it's lipid-soluable). This doesn't increase potency or anything, but it allows for faster absorption in the organism when consumed. Rather, consuming it raw decreases absortion in the stomach and digestive track.

I don't think the heating process does anything except degrades the molecules in high temperature. There might be a -COOH group or something that does something in heat or what have you, but I don't know much about marijuana.

For advanced discussion of recreational drugs, I would suggest visiting and searching the site www.bluelight.ru. For example, here is a 9-page thread on the subject of cooking with cannabis.

In contrast to my previous statement, I found the following from Bluelight during a brief search: "In the plant the cannabinoids exist mainly in their carboxylic forms as cannabinoid acids. However, the phenolic form of THC is responsible for the psychotropic and the most medicinal effects. Decarboxylation (separation of CO2) to the phenolic form occurs readily over time, upon heating or under alkaline conditions", which implies that heating does increase potency and/or bioavailability.

 

[inkspot]

Thanks Samoth for the information and the links.

 

[chembeaker]

Not sure where this question goes for the chemists in the house.

Last week I read an article in the paper about a police raid on a business that provides "pot-laced" desserts for medicinal purposes. Surprisingly, there was a list of several top name companies that received this product.

Anyway, back in the day making brownies with pot was like adding parsley to spaghetti; just throw some in for good measure and viola! A friend and I got talking (while smoking of course) apparently she is more familiar with modern "pot" baking than me. My question to her, that she didn't know, was when the THC is extracted from the plant, what form is it in to bake with? crystal, liquid, powder?

Maybe this should be in the cooking section?

Thanks

at standard temperature and pressure THC exists as a colorless to amber colored oil or buttery wax depending on the extraction method used. When baking with it however it is never purified to exist on its own, it is taken up into a solvent like butter or vegetable oil that act as a carrier for the thc to get it into the right spots of our brain lol