It often begins with a late morning drive into the hills and wee valleys of Mendocino or Humbolt County. Up some dusty road to a small parking area, met by an old friend. ZM heaves her stuff into the four-wheeler, then locks her little city skate, a VW Golf, which would be reduced to rubble if it attempted the road ahead. When she returns in a week, it will be so powdered with dust it will look like it’s been to Burning Man in her absence.

ZM is a part time, itinerant marijuana “picker.” Her part in the great chain that brings gourmet quality, organic cannabis to the consumer is to manicure each and every bud individually, to the specification of the particular grower, and to do it well and with good spirits.

“I love this time of the year,” Z shouts over the grinding of the engine. In the rather rudimentary back seat, she is struggling to find the least damaging position in which to endure the startling and frequent crowhopping of the truck across ruts deep enough to swallow a Birkenstock. At a smooth stretch the driver pulls over to admire the lovely valley below, with its ponds reflecting the blue sky and quiltish regularity of form, painted muted greens and glowing yellows by the brush of harvest time.

Indeed, this time of the year, between Equinox and winter’s rain and cold, the natural world trembles in fullness, yields its fruit, begins its resting cycle. Trees and woody plants are engaged in the soothing process of withdrawing their sugars down into their roots to sustain them through the dark days, and sending their multi-colored leaves into the air and to the Earth. Animals like them best when they’re freshly fallen. Deer can be seen in the glades chowing down leaves like kids eating nachos, never pausing in their munching as they raise their heads to peer at passing human. Their coats are getting softer and soon will be shaggy as they assume their coltishly disheveled winter look. Very soon a dizzying variety of mushrooms will raise up their strange and delicious fruits in the litter and rot.

A sudden right onto a small, curving road shortly brings them to the homestead. The assortment of construction materials in the yard suggested that this place is a work in progress, and so it is. An old one-room cabin is settled into a cut in the hillside. A lovely big clawfoot bathtub is perched somehow on the steep hillside behind the cabin. The porch looks down on the roadlet and the mature forest beyond, and from that porch three full-grown Rottweillers are charging in full dudgeon.

The driver and proprietress of the place, all four foot eleven of her, shouts at them by name and drops from the truck into their midst. They quiet, then boil around the truck to snuffle ZM and try out some dog pack body language dominance riffs. ZM is unconcerned and they soon become bored and lunge off to get underfoot as ZM bungs her stuff up the stairs and into the work-in-progress.

Behind the original cabin, this family is adding three rooms and a bathroom that will more than double their living space. Building on is never quick enough, and this addition is in its second year of birth, partly because the men in the clan still have their day jobs in the city and can only spend two or three days a week here. This little marijuana farm back of nowhere is a collective effort. A couple, whom we shall call Deb and Will, and two of his best friends are doing it together: buying in, hauling compost, swinging hammers, splitting wood. Growing organic smoking cannabis in several varieties.

ZM throws her stuff on the bed and opens a sturdy plastic bag which contains her tools: a delicate bonsai pruner, a pair of fine hairdresser’s shears, a light, spring-loaded clipper, and two identical stainless steel bowls, about 3 quart size.
She quickly doffs her traveling clothes and dons some shapeless denims and a venerable t-shirt. She is ready to work.

In the large room, a long table stands under bare twelve-volt light bulbs, surrounded by four very miscellaneous chairs. On it await more clippers, their points down in a small glass of alcohol. ZM has brought her own bottle of drinking water, chewing gum, and travel mug. She has also brought a generous supply of organic yerba mate, which will be her steady companion during her ten-hour days of relentless snip, snip, snipping.

In the adjacent rooms, marijuana plants hang upside down from rope lines, unfinished electrical cable and nails lightly sunk into the bare joists. ZM sets up her station, cuts some branches from the dry plant brought out by Deb, places them on the table and begins.

Her arrhythmic snip-snip-snipping will continue, with only a few breaks for food, sleep and other survival activities, for as long as four days at a stretch (after which she can no longer focus her eyes on the stuff). While she is working, ZM is available for chat, girl talk, political discussion, pontificating, sharing observations about life, telling and hearing stories, listening to music and Amy Goodman – but she will virtually never lift her eyes from the buds in her hands. No eye contact.

“It can become a habit, talking with people without ever looking at them, and I have to remind myself to look out my eyeholes at people during meals and downtimes. Sometimes I spend days and days with a person and we still feel like strangers because we’ve hardly laid eyes on each other…”

Outside the glass door, the dogs are thundering back and forth along the verandah, belling about the ORV coming down from the grow site, which it does about five times a day. They bark when it leaves again, too. It’s one of their favorite things: barking at the ORV, being yelled at by name, then plummeting down to the road to “chase” it to the growing site. Everyone seems to enjoy it.

After she makes sure ZM has all that she needs, Deb departs to her work at the “grow” site, down the little road, accompanied by all three dogs, and up over a rise to a large army tent with its side flaps raised. Several sleeping tents on nearby platforms are the bivouacs of the night guards. A baseball game issues from the radio of a classy white four-wheeler parked near a sunny half acre that is fenced to about 12 feet. The top wires have streamers and sticks tangled in them, to give the deer a visual so they will not even try to leap over. Inside are many ten gallon planters in rows, each with one vibrant cannabis plant reaching its buds to the sun. Her buds, that is.

There are several varieties here. All are clones, all are females, perfect copies of the mother plants from which they were cut and carefully rooted. They have clever names like Crystal Chunk, Purple Kush, MK Ultra. Some are tall and light green, with slender leaves and numerous small buds dotted along their long boughs, terminated with the flourish of a hefty bud (called a “cola”) as long as your hand. Others are squat and dark, their leaves broad and their buds heavy and bristling with tiny “hairs” that are turning from milky to red as they mature. The 5-based fractal pattern of the center of each terminal cola is repeated perfectly by the succession of larger and larger leaves that feed, define and display the treasure at the center. Some of these cola buds are as long as a bottle of wine and are referred to in terms of certin lifestock anatomy. They all look like they are dusted with fine sugar that glitters in the sun.

At this time of year the plants display different stages of maturity, according to their strain. Some of the hairs on the buds are plump and milky, indicating they are not ripe and will be left to put on more weight and more potency before being harvested. Others show more red hairs and are nearing their peak. Through her jeweler’s loupe, Deb inspects the all-important “tricombs,” bearers of the psychoactive resins that marijuana smokers love. At that magnification they look like tiny thorns and they are also maturing from milk to copper.

There’s something sexy about these desperate ladies, all straining to attract the pollen that will never come, as there isn’t a male cannabis plant for miles around. Their heavy resin, deep, spicy scents and trembling vigor are the expression of their frustration. They will complete their life cycle, as dictated by the light and temperature, without ever realizing fertility. They are sinsemilla – without seeds.

Inside the big tent the grow manager, Des, is working with the dozen or so plants hanging upside down to dry. He is pulling off leaves, checking for mold, and loading the ORV with plants that are ready to meet their destiny at ZM’s clippers. He’s a bit of a surprise in this setting: a tall black man with shoulders like an Oakland Raider, impeccably dressed and groomed, smiling under his 21st century shades. Des, who has taught college level political science and applied mathematics, will use his share of the money from this crop to go to Thailand for the eye surgery he needs to cure his impending congenital blindness.

He speaks with pride about his work with these plants. The soil in the pots has been replenished with organic nutrients and compost before the babies were brought home from the nurseries. They were carefully planted, each in her own big pot, coddled, caressed and fed through the roots and leaves throughout the spring and summer. As summer waned, they were boosted with super nutrients to put on weight. Shade leaves, some as large as a tortilla, have been plucked for the grand finale, which is now, when the plant socks all her life force into her buds. The fruit of these ladies will be realized in the hearts and minds of eager smokers.

Returning to the cabin, Deb consults with ZM about dinner. As she works, ZM becomes intimately familiar with each variety these folks grew this year: Crystal Chunk: frothy and covered with sugar. Hong Kong: a similar sativa type, heavier. Maui: dark, heavy, richly powdered. Others. Her work is repetitive in the extreme and she pursues it with a one-pointedness that arises from the facts that she is a meditator and is being paid according to the weight of perfectly finished bud that she produces. Snip, snip, snip.

ZM is a respected member of an upscale North Bay community. She will earn about $4,000 in the several weeks when the outdoor marijuana crop is being brought in, dried and manicured. This will allow her a month or so of economic slack to pursue her projects, which this year include producing community events and creating a new product and the means to bring it to market. Shoot high, girl.

Deb brings hot yerba mate lattes and snacks from one room and a steady supply of fragrant green stems from another. She sits for a few minutes to chat.

“My life is idyllic here. We lived in the city for twenty-five years. We raised our kids there, but in the last few years we were there, it became increasingly dangerous in our neighborhood. We started looking for land. We have friends in this county and when we found this place, we knew it was home.”

Deb is being characteristically modest. She and Will raised two kids of their own and big parts of several other peoples’ kids as well, all in a city of millions. When the young ones were fledged, Deb and Will sold their city house and with a couple of longtime friends, bought this place four years ago. It is paid for, and they buy more nearby mountain land whenever it is available and they can. Friends bought the land below and are putting up yurts. Old Ed up the hill is in fact very old, and they will buy his land when he passes. They are building something good for themselves up here.

The cannabis crop gives Deb and Will, her husband of thirty years, a safe place that is home. It both requires and allows Deb to spend more time on the mountain and less doing itinerant bookkeeping services back in the city. Deb has a lovely little horse, the neighbors are friendly and far away, the well runs cold and clear. Life is good.

In fact, Deb is the duct tape that holds this little universe together. She is the Shakti who directs and balances the heavy male energy. Other than one of the dogs and all of the plants, Deb is the only female in this scene. She is the queen, and a peaceful, hardworking one she is.

By dinnertime, ZM has stripped and manicured one whole plant and has begun on another. The perfect buds are safely inside several carefully marked ziplock bags. The stems stand by the little woodstove. They make excellent fire starter. The “shake,” which is all the leafy material rejected by the trimmer, is in a grocery bag on the floor. It will be processed, by one of several popular methods, into a fine green hash that smells like the harvest.

ZM’s fingers are black and sticky. Though she is careful to touch the buds only minimally, this cannabis is sparkling with resinous crystals that inevitably coat surfaces they contact with what is colloquially known as “finger hash.” As she prepares to break for dinner, ZM rolls this tarry stuff off several fingers and into a little black ball, which she stashes in a tiny box she keeps in her pocket with her lip balm and cell phone.

By dinnertime Will and Art, the fourth partner, have arrived. Des has been cooking dinner with Deb, so with ZM there are five for dinner in the little old front cabin. They tuck into an excellent vegetable curry, fat chicken sausages and brown basmati rice cooked perfectly.

After dinner the family adjourns to the cutting table. ZM resumes her relentless, high speed trimming while the others smoke and talk. Will speaks in his voice of dark honey:

“It’s medicine. Marijuana is medicine. My work is to grow the best medicine possible for myself and the patients we supply. I love my work here and I love my work in the city.” (Will teaches at-risk young men and women construction and job skills.) “Cannabis allows me to work with these kids, even though my pay is pretty low, to try to help them prepare for real life - and stay sane doing that and build a place for my family.

“I fell in love with pot the first time I smoked it. I learned to grow it that same year, and for years and years, I never sold it. I just knew it wasn’t right. I actually gave away most of what I grew. I just had to grow it, couldn’t stop, never wanted to. I got good at it. Then, a few years ago, I felt a shift that I had permission to also sell pot. Yeah, it was Prop 215, but it was also a spiritual shift, I guess…Now we have this place. I’m doing the things I love to do and do best: growing cannabis and working with the kids. Deb and I are solid. I am a happy, happy man.” He inhales deeply. ZM nods pensively and reaches for another stem.

Now let us depart this peaceful mountain home and be transported as if by magic - forward in time and northward in direction to a rather good dirt road that winds deep into forested hills. Redwoods in the low, wet places; higher up, oak and pines. The white oaks seem to be doing well, but all the tan oaks are failing rapidly or already dead, alas. Changes. The road goes on and on, but eventually we turn off it at a flat space only mostly occupied by a very large Tonka toy, which explains the goodness of the road, and a weathered four-wheeler. Bear greets us warmly and revs it for the short but precipitous ride to his house at the top of the hill.

Bear has cheerfully agreed to talk with this reporter, as has his picker, Marjorie, who is locally known and respected for the quality and speed of her work. She is inside working now.

Through an ornate but utterly organic gate and past an unruly fall vegetable garden stands a white marine vinyl greenhouse, its flaps raised to the lovely fall day. Inside are several large pots, some with plants still in them, most with just bare stalks. Bear returns to his task of lopping off branches and laying them in a big black bag for transport to the drying shed. He points to a row of official-looking papers stapled to one of the center poles.

“I registered with the sheriff as a legitimate Prop 215 caregiver/grower three years ago. For the first time in maybe 20 years we did not live in fear from August to November. We don’t have to pray for protection when we hear helicopters in the sky, because we’re on their maps as a legitimate 215 grow and they respect that. We don’t even keep watch on the road anymore, either, not like we used to.” He waved a sticky hand at the certificates. “This is who we’re growing for here, including me. In this county it’s so many square feet of grow space per patient. The state and some other counties tell you how many plants and how much dried weight each patient can have.” He smiles contentedly, hoists two big bags spilling with vibrant green and trudges up the hill.

Inside the classic backwoods hippy house, Marjorie barely looks up. A pro. She is sitting near the warm stove, an old Timberline, in the best light in the room, snip, snip, snip. Marjorie is surrounded by grocery bags containing various stages and components of dry marijuana, which her flying fingers and flashing blades are transforming into high grade medicinal marijuana.

Like many semi-pro pickers, Marjorie doesn’t smoke. Trimming pot is something she does because it’s easy and convenient and pays well. To lots of single mothers in that area, it’s the difference between making it and not making it. Marjorie has worked in large trimming crews, all of whom were single mothers, valued by growers because they are highly motivated and flexible.

Her technique is neat. She keeps the bud moving in her hand, keeps the snippers snipping with a steady rhythm. Don’t fall in love with the individual buds, she advises, just make them look their best and send them on their way. Cut from the tip to the stem for a close shave, from the stem to the tip for selective cutting and a shaggier bud, grower’s choice. She prefers bonsai nippers and she is, indeed, very fast. The buds she drops into the bag beside her are uniformly textured, the size of blackberries or rarely strawberries, with red hairs against a fresh green leaf, sugary and tight.

I notice a baby food jar with a few green marijuana seeds inside. Bear is truly a grower of the old school, as are many hereabouts. He breeds his own seed, sometimes with his own male plant (grown indoors where it can’t sow any wild oats), sometimes swapping boughs ripe with pollen with the neighbors. He has been growing in these parts for many years, from the early days of the marijuana boom, through the years and years of the annual federal reign of terror called CAMP, into the peaceful present.

Bear is an artist who works in natural materials in neo-native style. His wife, who is working in town, is a drug and alcohol counselor in the schools and at a residential treatment home. Together they have expanded the old cottage into a cozy four bedrooms (also a work in progress) and are raising the last two of their collective offspring.

What are some of the changes he’s noticed since Prop 215?

“Well, first it’s so peaceful these days because we are growing medical marijuana. Small growers like us are not the targets anymore. They’re going after big operations, thousands of plants, often being tended by Mexicans. They usually say it’s the work of a Mexican drug cartel, but I reckon they’re usually just a bunch of illegal immigrants hired by somebody to do the work and take the risk.

“Another thing is the kids. Sixteen, fifteen year olds from grower families, growing themselves, second generation. Kids with lots of money of their own and no real reason to, like, go to school or learn other skills. I don’t know, there’s something disturbing about that.”

Marjorie agrees. In the small town central to this remote area, many shiny new trucks and SUVs are parked on the three block of the main street. A dozen coffee shops, cleverly named burrito places, and grumpy-looking old bars occupy the store fronts of this venerable former logging town, now given over to a different harvest of equal or greater value. On the sidewalks seriously dread-headed young people, and more than a few older ones, their fingers suspiciously dirty, linger, hopeful of work trimming, as young growers cruise in their growling, over-amped rigs.

The road to our third grow is paved and smooth. The site itself is not far off the road, not far at all. Inside a modern building, waist high troughs are planted with ten-inch clones that reach hungrily for the eerie full spectrum light banks suspended inches above them. Fans whir, closely controlling the humidity and temperature in the room.

Rich, the proprietor of this cannabis intensive, smiles shyly. Behind him shelves hold dozens of jugs and bottles of hydroponic potions, the contents of which are offered to the plants according to his own strict protocol. He speaks proudly of this strain, which he had a hand in developing. It is bred specifically for hydroponic cultivation and for crystal density. There are not many real colas, and those few are small, but these plants mature in seventy to ninety days without fail. Rich controls the nutrients and light cycle to optimize their growth and the concentration of psychoactive components in the cannabis. This grow op can be expected to yield ten pounds of finished buds, worth over $3000 per pound, four times a year.

Imagine. There is a great demand for indoor-grown marijuana and there is a lot of it being grown in these parts. Buyers want small, uniform buds, no stems at all, and either a light spiciness like Rich’s strain, or the dark skunky kind. Smokers pay well for it, too, somewhere around ten dollars a gram. Imagine.

Out by the pool two women are, you guessed it, snip, snip, snipping away. They are listening to an audio book and, of course, don’t look up. We leave them to their work.

The people we met in these stories are kind, sane, healthy and smart. Most of them have advanced college degrees. Why do they grow marijuana?

The cheap and easy and wrong answer is that they make truckloads of cash and live like kings.

Though the cash flow is impressive on the surface, there is also substantial overhead; land, shelter, fencing, wells and pumps and chainsaws, workers, four-wheelers that get ruined in three years, road maintenance materials and equipment, to say nothing of normal expenses such as food, putting kids through school, and taking a desperately needed vacation during the slack time. Notice that nearly all the growers we met have not quit their day jobs, which means they are stretched between two, usually breathtakingly different worlds, and they live very simply in both, without exception.

Fall is the easy time for growers, the reward after a spring and summer of hard manual labor and risk-taking, both legal and agricultural. One grower did the math for me: calculated hourly, the grower receives less pay than the picker. Way less. The question stands: Why do they do it?

In a nutshell, they do it because they love it. These small mom and pop grow ops are labors of love that support the lifestyle these unusual people choose: peaceful, forested land of their own to care for; hand built homes; remote and widely scattered but strong community; working within the natural cycle in difficult, beautiful settings; doing work that they are settled in their hearts is good and right.

But still, why marijuana? If the margin in these small ops is low, why take the risk all those years, and even now?

Oddly, the risk is what made it all worth it: marijuana prohibition drives and maintains the high value of the product. That made it worth taking a chance, trusting their karma (but tying their camel, nonetheless). Cannabis is one of Earth’s easiest plants to grow well. Grown outside, it requires few or no pesticides; it actually improves the quality of the soil by drawing nitrogen into it; and it thrives on organic or conventional soil amendments. Seed and fiber hemp (other breeds of cannabis) grown as row crops even choke out the weeds themselves.

As usual, normal market forces responded to the prohibition and scarcity of the product, and the dollar value of marijuana multiplied several times over the last few decades. On- and off-the-grid homesteads were bought and ultimately paid for by the value added by prohibition. Businesses were started, taxes were paid, candidates were supported, local politics were joined in. Generous “taxes” were paid to charities and other good causes. As the logging economy of the north counties declined, marijuana was there to support the small towns and businesses.

Naturally a product with such a large retail value attracted the attention of organized crime. Applying economy of scale to the production, backers purchase large tracts of remote land and install grow operations in the thousands of plants. Usually this is done without regard for the health of the land or the workers, who are often hapless illegal immigrants hired to do the grueling work and be there when armed thieves or law enforcement show up.

Of course, marijuana, because it is illegal, also contributes substantially to the law enforcement, legal, prison and prison industry sectors. Of the roughly two million Americans known to be in county, state or federal prisons today, a little less than half are serving time for drug related crime and about half of those are in for marijuana, mostly possession, but also cultivation and sale. In 2003, the number of marijuana arrests in the United States (by state and local police) was the largest in history: 755,186! And 88% of those arrests were for possession, not sale or manufacture. (Source: FBI's division of Uniform Crime Reports, Crime in the United States: 2003, published in October 2004.) That’s a lot of easy prisoners, and they’re all in for a long, long time because of mandatory minimum sentences. Marijuana even takes care of its enemies.

Wholesale prices are leveling off over the last few years as more marijuana comes onto the market. It may be that the demand will not quite keep up with the supply in the near future, as more people figure out how to grow their own. One day, marijuana will have a market value that is a reflection of its intrinsic value alone.

What is marijuana’s intrinsic value?

The intrinsic value of marijuana can be found in two broad categories: medicine and recreation/spiritual.

Medical Marijuana
The last decade has been one of accelerating expansion in research and development of cannabis-derived medicines. In Israel research is ongoing into cannabis extracts to treat post traumatic stress in its soldiers, as well as head injury, stroke and cognitive impairment following coronary bypass surgery and osteoporosis.
(http://www.pharmoscorp.com/development/dexanabinol.html)

GW Pharmaceuticals in England has, under the stern eye of their government, developed a sublingual spray composed of whole extracts of the cannabis plant called Sativex. In April 2005, Canada became the first country to approve Sativex for the treatment of neuropathic pain associated with multiple sclerosis. In January of 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a two to three year study of Sativex as a treatment for cancer pain. In Europe Sativex studies are in progress for treatment of neuropathic pain from diabetes, spinal cord injuries and other sources. Other trials are looking into Sativex for treating rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, psychosis, epilepsy, chronic pain and drug dependency. Stay tuned. (see: www.gwpharm.com)

Medical marijuana laws are in place in eleven American states, including most recently Rhode Island, whose legislature overrode their governor’s veto. Conditions approved for medical marijuana in Colorado, for example, include cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS positive, cachexia (wasting away); severe pain; severe nausea; seizures, including epilepsy; persistent muscle spasms, including multiple sclerosis. Other conditions may be treated with medical marijuana at a physician’s discretion. (http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hs/medicalmarijuana/marijuanafactsheet.asp)

What are the health risks associated with medical marijuana? There are very few. Damage to lung tissue from smoking it is negligible. There is no increase in risk of lung cancer. In fact, studies of heavy users in Jamaica have found that ganga smokers have a much smaller incidence of lung cancer than tobacco-only smokers, even if the ganga smokers also smoke tobacco. There are even indications that cannabis actively decreases the growth of cancerous tumors. (http://www.ccguide.org.uk/proven.php)

Cannabis is remarkably safe for most people. It is not generally habit-forming, though a small percentage of smokers do become psychologically dependent on cannabis as they use it to self-medicate their deeper problems. Cannabis does not cause permanent physical changes to the brain, as do the widely addictive drugs such as nicotine, alcohol, heroin and cocaine, drugs which may be encountered when purchasing marijuana in uncontrolled conditions, such as on the street.

The greatest psychosocial concern about marijuana is its use by the very young. The brains of children are developing at a furious pace up through their late teens. Exposure, especially chronic exposure, to marijuana, before the brain has matured, has been correlated to some troubling mental illnesses, including transient psychosis and adult-onset schizophrenia. (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article337171.ece) Children should not be exposed to cannabis, alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs and toxins, period.

For an extensive and impeccably researched report on the therapeutic uses and effects of marijuana, see the 1999 report by the National Academy of Sciences at http://books.nap.edu/html/marimed/. (For exerpts, see http://www.mpp.org/science.html#01)

In the thousands of years that humans have been using cannabis medicinally, ritually and recreationally, there have been no reported incidents of death from overdose or toxicity. To compare this number (zero) with statistics on death from alcohol, tobacco or other substances, Google is there to serve you.

Recreational Use of Marijuana
The vastly greater part of marijuana grown today is consumed for recreational reasons. Use by North Americans can be traced to the late 19th century during the construction of the Panama Canal. Cannabis in all its forms (seed, fiber, medicine and smoke) was utilized freely until the early 1930s, when a major smear campaign was mounted by Hearst,
DuPont, and their cronies that brought about prohibition of cannabis in all its forms. Soldiers in Vietnam and counterculturists in the U.S.A. rediscovered marijuana in the 1950s and famously the 1960s, and its recreational use is now worldwide and holding steady.

The pleasurable effects of marijuana are many. Writers, artists and musicians claim it enhances their creativity and delight in their art. For others, sensual pleasures are enhanced, including listening to music, dancing, making love, eating. Most smokers find the euphoric effects highly desirable, relaxing, and affording of a different perspective on personal problems, interpersonal relations, and life in general. Those with a spiritual bent often find novel insights into their cosmology and practice when cannabis is occasionally added to the mix. Cannabis is for many a social lubricant, allowing users to interact with others easily and with elevated good humor. The effects of marijuana are related to individual tendency, dose, timing, the particular strain of the plant, expectation and setting. Your mileage may vary.