I’m applying for a job that requires a drug test. I was just wondering … how long does THC stay in your system?
About a month. If you’ve only smoked once in the past few weeks, and it was just a couple of puffs, chances are you’ll turn out clean anyway. But if you’re a regular, heavy smoker, it’s going to take a good month of pot abstinence to drain the accumulated THC from your body to the point where you’re clean on a pee-test. Faking the test is always an option, be it through buying a product at your local head shop that fools the test, chugging lots and lots of water right before it to dilute your sample or swapping your own urine with synthetic pee (from the Internet) or a clean sample (from an understanding friend). There are many ways to justify doing this, ethically speaking, since the very idea of the test is invasive and against what can be considered your basic human rights … but if you have enough advance notice, I recommend just taking a break from smoking for a month. Not because you have to, but because you want to. For one, it re-sensitizes your body to the drug, making smaller amounts more effective. Also, taking occasional breaks can make you feel better about yourself and your ability to exhibit self-control. It’s an easy drug to become dependent on, but taking control to prove to yourself you don’t need the drug makes it taste and feel that much sweeter when you return to the THC club.
I thought K2 was going to become illegal in December. How come I can still buy it?
The DEA is dragging its feet on the matter and the new regulations have yet to be published, but the laws are on the way. Eventually. Of course, even then only five of the most popular synthetic cannabinoid blends will be banned, leaving a loophole for other recipes. But do we really care either way? Smoking chemicals with unknown properties that were sprayed onto some dried sticks doesn’t sound that appealing to me, legal or not. I’d rather break the law than break my body. “Incense” has nothing to do with real marijuana, and though rigorous testing hasn’t been done to prove it’s ultimately harmful or not, either way, to me it still doesn’t sound any more appealing than sniffing glue, huffing paint or injecting crystal meth. There are lots of things in this world that can get you high, but it’s up to each individual to decide which ones are worth the potential risks. For me, marijuana passes the test, but the sketchy chemicals they sell at Mobil that the law can’t keep up with … not so much.
Does marijuana really kill brain cells?
No. This is one of the classic propaganda myths that somehow lingered for decades, but even the government now admits that pot doesn’t kill brain cells, so let’s put it to rest once and for all. The most likely reason for this myth was a poorly run study using monkeys conducted by a guy named Dr. Robert G. Heath from Tulane University Medical School. He claimed that three monkeys had brain damage after being heavily dosed with cannabis. The experiment was repeated at a later date by Dr. William Slikker of the National Center for Toxicological Research and by Charles Rebert and Gordon Pryor of SRI International, with better controls, and larger samples, and it could not be replicated. Experiments with humans also showed no brain damage. In science, when an experiment cannot be replicated, it becomes invalid. One half-assed study produced a result that anti-pot crusaders approved of, so they trumpeted the results to the masses even though the results were later proven to be wrong.
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