Post #1: Cannabis and Technology

Welcome to Budding Technology: the home of all things related to technology and the cannabis industry. We will cover everything from genetics to grow facilities, harvesting to waste control, extraction methods to product creation, active ingredient delivery mechanisms to scientific cannabinoid breakthroughs. We will be covering it all, with a focus on emerging technologies and methods being deployed in the industry. Why? Well, basically EVERYTHING is emerging, and it is changing rapidly!

"...the illegal market is crawling out from the shadows with their tried and tested methods that increase yield and their home-grown extraction processes and products"

Cannabis and technology make strange bedfellows. One is helping us soar to a digital future and the other an ancient plant. Cannabis is an easily grown, hardy, weed full of active ingredients called cannabinoids. Its use has been traced back 1000s (if not tens) of years. It can now be found naturally all over the world from the Himalayas to Indonesia, South America to the Middle East though it is believed that its origins are from South Asia. 

Vendor's showing their wears at this year's Karma

Cup. Will this be the last year for this grey market

industry event?

Depending on where it was grown (and cultivated) by ancient peoples it has a unique genetic make-up and contains varying concentrations of specific cannabinoids which, scientists believe, were purposely cultivated to contain these attributes that helped specific ancient peoples. These are the secrets the market is trying to discover and uncover. And the race is on…

"Edibles, vapes (like tobacco vaporizers), tablets, sugars, strips that dissolve in your mouth, even tampons, are seen as new delivery mechanisms."

And it all comes back to human science. You see, people have an endocannabinoid system (ECS) in their body which is located in our central and periphery nervous systems. These are a series of neuron receptors (cells binding with molecules called endocannabinoids) which help mediate appetite, pain and memory (to name a few). 

Two main receptors make up the ECS: Cannabinoid Receptor 1 (CB1) and Cannabinoid Receptor 2 (CB2). There are two main endocannabinoid molecules: anandamide and 2-Ag. Cannabinoids attach to these molecules and the nervous system then "interprets" the message or signal (like, you are hungry aka. munchies). A future blog will cover this in detail but it is hurting my head now. 

The glands in the cannabis plant also produce terpenes (oils) and cannabinoids (active ingredients such as THC and CBD).  Terpenes are what gives the specific taste and smell of a strain of cannabis just as sap in pine trees has the distinctive scent. They range wildly in their smells and tastes bringing names to such strains as Blueberry Kush, THC Cheese, Sour Diesel and Pineapple Express: each actually smells like its namesake (the cheese is kind of gross in my opinion). And there is now scientific research into how “terps” actually help the body intake specific active ingredients with their specific taste and smell. 

Here is a great article and infographic produced by Leafly which shows the huge array of terps found in cannabis. Terpenes are not just found in cannabis. The same terps found in, say OG Kush, can also be found in hops and coriander. (As an FYI, OG stands for "Original Gangster" and is derived from early rap artists like Dr Dre, Ice Cube and the late Eazy-E). 

"This crazy emerging market with even crazier business ventures and crazier still technological solutions is hard to monitor."

There are 113 cannabinoids in cannabis with the most commonly known being phytocannabinoid tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is the one that gets you “high”. But other cannabinoids such as CBD are proving to be very effective in treating symptoms for various human ailments such as Parkinson’s, autism and epilepsy to name just a few. According to Wiki, there are actually 483 compounds in the plant, many have not been fully researched. 

As such, the scientists and geneticists are moving in. Pharmaceutical companies are stealthily swimming around the industry like great while sharks, the illegal market is emerging from the shadows with their tried and tested methods that increase yield and their home-grown extraction methods and products. It is the Wild West.

This crazy emerging market with even crazier business ventures and crazier still technological solutions is hard to monitor. Edibles, vapes (like tobacco vaporizers), tablets, sugars, strips that dissolve in your mouth, even tampons, are seen as new delivery mechanisms. Extraction machines to pull out specific cannabinoids run upwards of a million dollars. These extracted ingredients are going into massage oils, skin treatments and almost any cream, ointment or drop one could think of. How are they doing it? Is it safe? What is the true science behind the claims? 

These are the things that Budding Technology will investigate. If we get something wrong, tell us. If you disagree with our position on a specific issue, tell us. If you want to know more about a specific subject, ask.

And if you are a true hater of anything cannabis, believe it is a gateway drug to crack and meth and think pot smokers and hippies are unwashed and stupid, well you should probably be reading something else. We are open-minded, professional and have experience in the industry. We are interested in dialogue and advancing technology. We are not interested in a bun fight. Thank you.

All the best and be happy.