Is it a stimulant? Depressant? I’ve always understood it to be a hallucinogen, but I can’t find a site that classifies it. I’ve checked the DEA and the FBI but to no avail. Does anyone know if a site exists?
It’s a depressant (and a euphoric, to the extent that the term means anything).
Sorry, SwC – like Nametag, I don’t have a cite to back this up (I couldn’t find one of those nifty charts they loved to show us all the time in high school). From what I’ve seen, marijuana is commonly labeled a depressant, though some organizations say it’s also a mild hallucinogen, because it can distort perception of time and perspective. Personally, I think this is a reach that some groups use to make pot sound worse than it is.
I think marijuana’s label as a depressant is from people who don’t know any better since some of the more obvious effects of usage suggest it acts as a depressant (you get mellow and so on although I think it actually increases your heart rate).
However, without a cite at hand I am neraly positive it is classified as a hallucinogen by the medical and law enforcement communities. I took a class called ‘Drugs in Society’ in college and I remember this point specifically when they were discussing marijuana.
Marijuana is generally considered a class all of its own. If anything it’s closest to the hallucinogens as Whack-a-Mole stated. It’s not a depressant. It can cause full blown panic attacks in certain people replete with rapid heartbeat, derealization and depersonalization.
Well the problem is that Marijuana is not a single drug, it’s a plant containing thousands of active chemicals. Delta-9-tetrahydro-Cannabinol is a depressant, soporific, and euphoriant all in one (dependent on a lot of other variables). Other ingredients in the plant can cause the tachycardia and other physical effects.
Marijuana actually does increase your resting heart rate which is why it doesn’t strickly fall into the depressant category. When I was in college I also remember discussing marijuana in the hallucinogen section of my text book, there was even a case study indicating that audio and visual hallucinations did occur after smoking large quantities of pot. But I also know of a case where very little marijuana was ingested and hallucinations occured. Of course these little side bars don’t really help me as I don’t have a site or a cite for either of them.
The only relevant sites I’ve found seem to back up Chief Crunch’s statement that marijuana is in its own class. It (cannabis, THC) is listed apart from stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens.
While looking for backup to the hallucinogen classification for marijuana I found this link: Pharmacology of Marijuana: Just Another Sedative. The person writing the article says marijuana belongs to a group of drugs called “anesthetic-sedative-hypnotics” of which he says alcohol belongs to.
I’m not sure what to think about this guy. He is listed as the Professor of Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco, but he uses some odd language you would expect to come from a hippie and not a Professor of Pharmacology (look in the quote above as he describes MDMA, MDA and LSD as ‘magic’ substances).
Anyway, it is there for your perusal. That the feds view it as a hallucinogen is without doubt. Whether that classification actually makes any sense is a topic for debate btu I’m sure the feds don’t give a rat’s ass and prefer pot to keep the hallucinogen sticker as it is more ‘scary’.
According to rxlist.com, Marinol (dronabinol) is a cannabinoid with complex effects on the central nervous system. Dronabinol is basically synthetic THC, mostly used in AIDS patients and those undergoing chemotherapy for its appetite stimulation and anti-emetic properties. BTW, it was recently moved from a class 2 drug (drugs like Oxycontin and Percocet) to the less-regulated class 3 (drugs like Vicodin and Lortab). At least some in the scientific community don’t feel that THC is that huge of a problem.
isn’t Marijuana classified as “The Spark”? As in “Marijuana is the spark, heroin is the fuse…LSD is the bomb!” (Sgt. Joe Friday) 
I just have to add this…
Many years ago, when I was in the police academy in Wisconsin, many of the movies (no VHS then) they showed us were narated by Jack Webb. Even then (very early 80’s) we thought he was pretty, uh…square.
Clearly the evidence is all over the place. No official cite, but in my college psychopharmacology class, marijuana was a schedule one drug which fell into the hallucinogen class with LSD, peyote, mushrooms and the like. It was not a sedative/hypnotic, nor a depressant. Alcohol is a depressant. Drugs like Valium are sedative/hypnotics.
Take that FWIW… since I have no cite to back this up.
I’ve seen the schedule I listing elsewhere, in fact I think that was on the DEA’s website. But schedule I is a category of addictive drugs that cause a substantial risk to the user. I’m not sure Marijuana falls into that group. This all stems from the John Stossel report the other day where he argued that legalizing drugs might be a better, more effective way to handle the drug epidemic.
These folks consider it to be a central nervous system depressant and a hallucinogen. Sounds right to me.
another vote for chief crunch’s contribution.
When I took “healthful living” (a university class) two years ago, we were taught that it had formerly been misplaced in several categories, the “best” one being a hallucinagin, but it really was all alone, with it’s own unique category.