This is a blog post that I have been wanting to write for some time. First, I want to describe what misinformation is and how it is distinguished from disinformation. The two are often confused with each other and are very different things.
In a nutshell, misinformation is information that is false but spread by mistake by people not knowing the information is false. Disinformation, however, is intended to deceive people on purpose, usually to cause some harm to them.
There is something about pothead culture where, when people hear something, they do not do their due diligence to vet the information and just perpetuate what they have heard. I’m going to list a few examples that are specific to the cannabis industry.
Cannabis Kills Brain Cells
I’ve written about this personally in the past. And the harsh reality of this urban legend is that its roots are grounded in a really fucked-up experiment that concerns severe animal cruelty.
If you read the book The Emperor Wears No Clothes by the late great Jack Herer, who is my favorite cannabis activist of all time, you will find the chapter that discusses how we came to this false conclusion. As an animal lover, it’s hard to even type this shit out, but essentially there was an experiment performed by the US government where they asphyxiated chimpanzees to death with cannabis smoke in modified gas masks. Upon observing the primates’ brains, they noticed brain damage — because, you know, they were fucking asphyxiated to death, and the oxygen deprivation to the brain caused brain damage. No, I’m not fucking kidding. Sick sons of bitches.
The reality is much better documented in this article by the National Institute of Health concerning cannabinoids and neurogenesis.
White Ash
The roots of this urban legend are unknown to me, but this misunderstanding is alive and well today among many consumers. The story goes that if you smoke cannabis and the ash turns white (particularly in a joint), then it must mean that the plant is grown well and doesn’t contain contaminants and that the fertilizers are “flushed” out of the plant. This is not true in any way, shape, or form. No matter how well you grow cannabis, the ash turning white is far more dependent on the plant’s flavonoid profile in my experience, which is pronounced as color / foliage during harvest time.
Flushing Fertilizers Out of Cannabis Plants
If I’m going to bring up the white ash myth, it’s only natural that I address the myth about flushing out fertilizers. I have printed out a study where participants in said study were asked to distinguish between plants that were not flushed at all and other plants that were flushed for different periods of time.
The participants in the study couldn’t distinguish between the plants whatsoever — not in taste, harshness of smoke, ash color, or any other distinguishing factors. Lab tests were also implemented to show the content of the flower in the studies to see what residual nutrients were found in the plants. Again, the longer flushes did not show a decrease in nutrients being contained in the plants. In fact, one interesting finding worth mentioning is that participants said the plants that were not flushed at all had the best taste. Find more details about this study in the link here. It is worth mentioning that flushing your POTS through a drain-to-waste soil or hydroponic system is NOT the same thing as flushing your plants and is essential to perform for that type of grow system.
Amber Trichomes to Indicate a Plant is Ready to be Harvested
Oh man, this is a stubborn one — and totally bullshit by the way. I believe this myth is true of one type of lighting system only: an old-school HID method utilizing high-pressure sodium bulbs, which have a very amber-colored light (to the human eye). Back in the day, the consensus was you use metal halide bulbs during veg and HPS during flower. Well, I quickly found that keeping your plants under MH throughout flower was the preferred method for me. In using MH or full-spectrum LED lights, your trichomes will never turn amber, and I martyred some plants to prove this fact — meaning that I let plants actually go past peak quality to prove that they were never going to turn amber.
Although this is a stubborn myth, I think the new feeling is that cloudy trichomes are a better indicator that your plants are about ready to be pulled — but take that with a grain of salt because every plant is different.
Cannabis Use Causes a Decrease in Sperm Count
Total bullshit, and I’ve already written a blog post on this — find it here.
Conclusion
These are just the tip of the cannabis misinformation iceberg floating around out there, but I would say these are the ones I have heard the most frequently. So I implore anyone that is starting to grow to do your own research on anything that you hear, because most of the information that is out there is not (at the very least) 100% accurate. One love.
