Hi, everybody.
Welcome back to www.engvid.com.
I'm Adam.
Today, I have a bit of a special lesson for you, but it's based on some recent news.
Okay?
I'm not sure if you've all heard, but in Canada, marijuana is going to become legal; or it
is legal, depending on when you're watching this.
So, today we're going to talk about cannabis, which is the technical name of marijuana.
I'm sure you've all heard of this word at some point in your lives.
So, what I'm going to do: I'm going to explain to you a little bit about this flower; this
plant; this "drug", if you want to call it that.
I'm going to give you some technical information first, and then I'm going to give you a little
bit more of the street language.
Okay?
The things that...
If you come to Canada, the things you're going to hear people talk about when they're talking
about cannabis or marijuana.
Okay?
It's a big industry; it's going to make billions of dollars for the Canadian government in
terms of taxes.
It's already a big industry in the United States, but I'll talk a little bit about that
as well.
First, let's talk about some technical information.
So, cannabis, it's a type of flower; it's a plant; it grows.
There are two main types of this flower; two geneses, I guess you could call them: sativa
and indica.
So, if you think about coffee beans, most of you are familiar with the Arabica bean.
Right?
So, different beans have different types; same with the cannabis - different types of
cannabis.
The most common name for it that most people know is marijuana.
Okay?
Now, the things you have to think about, about this plant: It's not just about drugs.
It's not just about getting some sort of feeling in your head when you smoke it or ingest it
somehow.
Right?
This plant has been in use for thousands of years.
Okay?
It has a lot of very good properties.
So, we're going to look at the three main properties of this plant.
Psychoactive.
The psychoactive component of this plant is the THC.
Now, we don't need to get into the technical words, but the THC is the part of the plant
that when you ingest it or smoke it, makes you feel high or makes you feel somehow different
than you do normally.
Okay?
Then there's the medicinal component; this is called CBD.
This is...
Doesn't give you any sort of feeling; it doesn't change how you feel, but it is very good for
helping you get rid of pains, or discomfort, or just to help you relax, help your body
feel a little bit better.
If you have some muscle issues, this also helps relieve the pain and the tears, etc.
So, medicinal cannabis has been legal for a few years in Canada and in the US, and it's
becoming legal in more and more countries around the world because, especially for cancer
patients, this helps them a lot; it helps them get rid of the pain, helps them sleep,
etc.
So, this has been around for a while now.
Again, the psychoactive; the regular, every day marijuana has also been around for a long
time, but it's been around on the black market, meaning that it has been sold illegally.
So, the government doesn't get any taxes from this; it's just people selling to people,
and it's all cash, and it's all under the table or black market.
Now it is legal, and that's a whole different story.
Now, the industrial component of cannabis has been around for...
This is what's been around for a long, long time; millennia, like a few thousand years.
The industrial component is called hemp; this is the fiber of the plant.
It comes from the tea...
From the leaves and from the stalk; the part that's holding up the plant.
Okay?
Hemp can be used for food; it can be used to make clothing.
Like, if you ever...
If you've ever seen a shirt or pants made of hemp, it's very, very strong material.
Okay?
So, it can last a very long time, it can be used for all kinds of things, and it's a very
valuable product to have, and it can be sold and made into lots of things.
So, that's the...
What's in the plant.
Okay?
Now, let's talk about some things around it.
So, first of all, there are different strains of cannabis.
Now, a strain, basically, is like a type.
If you take one plant of a certain type and you take another plant of a certain type,
and you mix the seeds and create a third type.
So, the different strains will give different effects.
You can have a strain that has no THC - means it doesn't make you feel any different and
it just has a lot more CBD; or one that has a higher level of THC, so it could give you
different kinds of feelings - it can help you sleep, it can help you feel relaxed, it
can help you feel happy.
For some people, it works that way.
Okay?
So, all kinds of different strains.
And a dispensary, this is the place where you go to buy the cannabis.
This is for legal cannabis.
On the black market, you find a little parking lot, and there's a guy sitting in his car,
and you go to the window, and you give him the cash.
He gives you a little bag of something, and that's how that works.
A dispensary; legitimate.
You go in, there's a counter...
Everything's proper, I guess you could say.
Now, there are many derivatives you can get from cannabis.
So, a lot of people think that when you're smoking marijuana you just take the leaf,
and you roll it, and you smoke it.
Okay?
But there are many other ways to ingest cannabis.
You can make...
They can make cannabis oil that you can put in your tea, or you can smoke that, I guess,
in a vape; I'll talk about that in a second.
There are all kinds of different extracts.
So, if you think about vanilla, the vanilla bean - they squeeze it, and they get, like,
a vanilla juice and they can use that in all your baking.
Same thing with cannabis; they take out the certain elements of it, make it liquid, and
then you use it for all kinds of things, like edibles.
"Edible" means you can eat it.
So, now you can buy candy with cannabis; you can buy cookies with cannabis.
Some people don't like to smoke it, so they eat it or they drink it, or some other way.
Now, a lot of you might know this word: "hash" or "hashish".
This is also a derivative that, when they take the plant and they put it through some
sort of process, and what they get at the end is called a resin, which is like a sticky
substance that comes out of the plant.
And they process that, it becomes brown, and they squeeze it into, like, a little brick,
and then you can use that for whatever you do with it; mostly for the THC value of it.
Now, it has been legal for medicinal use, as I mentioned, for a few years.
Now it is available for recreational use.
"Recreational" means for fun.
You don't need it, you're not sick, you don't have any pains; you just want to relax, or
you want to sleep, or you want to have a different experience.
Okay?
All kinds of different reasons that people like to ingest cannabis.
Now, before you ask: No, I have not tried it.
I'm not really into drugs and stuff like that, but I do know about this because in Canada
it's quite popular.
Like I said, it's now legal.
I do know people who have experimented.
It's up to you what to do with it.
But if you're going to come live in Canada, you need to know a little bit about this because
it's going to be pretty popular, I think.
The stock market is going crazy with the company...
The cannabis company stocks, so it's going to be part of everyday life and everyday culture
here, and it already has been in movies and all kinds of other things.
So, now we need to look at the street language for cannabis; not the technical language,
so let's get to that.
Okay, so now I'm going to give you a whole bunch of vocabulary; a lot of slang for how
people talk about cannabis when the discussion comes up.
Now, before I get into that, some of you might be thinking: "Well, you know, Adam, why do
you know all these words?
How did you learn all these words?"
Well, to be honest, marijuana or cannabis, whatever you want to call it, has been part
of popular culture for a very long time.
I'm going to talk to you about three movies first.
Reefer Madness.
So, this movie was made in the 1950s to try to scare young people away from smoking marijuana.
But it has such a cult following now.
It's actually a very popular movie because it's so silly and it didn't scare anybody.
People used to laugh about it growing up, like, kids.
So, it did the actual opposite.
Okay?
Cheech & Chong were two characters that made a bunch of movies, and the movies are all
about smoking marijuana.
Okay?
And they're comedies, and they were very popular in the 70s, and everybody...
Again, depending on your age...
Like, young people today might not know, but older people know who Cheech and Chong are.
Okay?
Everybody knows.
Whether you're a smoker or not, they were very popular.
And then in the 90s, you had Pineapple Express; a very popular pot movie.
So, there's...
It's in the movies all the time.
It's in the books.
Jack Kerouac is a very famous American writer, and his most famous book, On the Road, is
full of stories about people getting together, and smoking, and doing all kinds of things.
So, it's in part...
It's part of popular culture in North America; you can't really escape it.
You're going to see it, you're going to read it, you're going to hear about it in conversations,
so it's good to know a lot of these words.
Okay?
So, let's start.
So, most people don't call cannabis "cannabis", except in scientific terms, or in business
terms, or in academic terms.
On the street, people have all kinds of names for it.
Pot, weed, grass, Mary Jane for marijuana, bud because at the top of the plant there's
a bud that is the actual thing you smoke I believe, tea...
I don't know.
This is from Jack Kerouac; I'm not sure if people actually still use that.
Laughing gas, herb, and wacky tabacky.
So, tobacco, but it makes you a little bit crazy.
Okay?
All kinds of words.
I'm sure there are many more that I'm not familiar with, but again, these are the main
ones; you'll hear them.
Reefer is actually sometimes used as well.
Now, paraphernalia.
Paraphernalia is all the products or all the things that you can buy that are not the plant
itself; the things you can buy to smoke the plant, or decorations for your house, or whatever.
Some people are very proud of this culture, and they have all kinds of things to show
it.
But in terms of actually how you ingest it, you can use a bong which is basically like
a big tube with water inside, and you light the...
You light the bowl.
You put the cannabis in a bowl, you light it, and you inhale through the water to smoke
it.
Then you can just use a pipe or you can use a vape, which is like an electronic system
to heat it up, and then inhale it.
Now, you can also roll it in paper and smoke it like a cigarette.
There's a joint, a spliff, a blunt, and I think the casual word is doobie.
Okay?
Now, as far as I understand, a joint uses cigarette paper to roll the...
The tobacco.
The marijuana.
A blunt uses cigar leaf; you take a leaf off of a cigar and you use that to roll.
And a spliff is a combination of cannabis with loose tobacco to smoke that.
And I think "doobie" is just a casual word.
Now, when you...
If you smoke a cigarette, you take a drag.
That's a drag.
When you smoke a joint, you toke or you take a pull off the joint.
And nicknames for people who smoke a lot, like the people who smoke all day, every day,
people call them stoner or pothead.
Now, these are usually, like, a bit negative terms; it's not a nice name to call somebody
a stoner or a pothead, but they're the nicknames for people who smoke a lot.
These days, because it's becoming more popular and it's becoming more mainstream - again,
because it's becoming legal, now people are calling people who smoke a lot weedologists
because they're connoisseurs; they study weed.
They study pot, or marijuana, or cannabis, and they know all the different strains, all
the different types, and they're, like, a little bit professional, and they're like
connoisseurs, like wine...
People who drink different types of wine; people who smoke different types of cannabis.
Okay?
So, that's basically it.
If you're coming to Canada, you need to know this because, again, it's legal, it's going
to be pretty much everywhere, there are going to be stores, people will probably be smoking
outside.
Nobody's exactly sure how the police are going to enforce any of the actual laws.
It's still an experiment; time will tell how it works.
In the US, federally, meaning according to the US government, marijuana is illegal; but
in several states it is already legal for medical use, and I think there's about eight
or nine states where it's legal for recreational use right now.
But just a bit of a warning: If you're in Canada and you plan to travel to the US: Be
very careful at the border.
Make sure you don't have any with you; you will go to jail.
Make sure you don't tell them that you're a smoker because they won't let you in.
There are going to be a lot of problems going back and forth from Canada to the US, like,
over land border.
It's not legal in the US.
If you're in Canada before October 17th, 2018, it's still not legal; if you're there after,
it is legal.
Make sure you're very familiar with the laws; what you're allowed to do, what you're not
allowed to do.
Don't get yourself into trouble.
Okay?
And that's it.
If you have any questions about this, I'll do my best to answer them.
Ask in the comment section below at www.engvid.com.
There's also a quiz you can review and refresh your idea about all the vocab.
And if you like the video, don't forget to give me a like and subscribe to my channel.
And come back for more useful, everyday English vocabulary.
Okay?
See you then.