Marijuana (also spelled marihuana) is a popular name for the dried flowering tops of drug-type cannabis. Weed, pot, ganja, herb and grass are other common names. Botanically, all of these are Cannabis sativa L.
In practice
The word comes from Mexican Spanish and spread in US English in the early 20th century. It was written into US federal law in the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act and later statutes, and many laws still use it. Some people now avoid the word because of how it was used in early prohibition campaigns; regulators and industry increasingly prefer "cannabis". Ganja comes from Sanskrit and Hindi and entered English through South Asian and Caribbean use.
GenetixBay uses "cannabis" in technical writing and does not police other words.
Don't confuse with
- Hemp: cannabis grown for fibre, seed or low-THC flower, often defined in law by a THC limit.
- Hashish: compressed resin, not flower.
- Cannabis: the genus name, and the neutral modern term for both.
Top shelf is the highest price tier of flower in a shop, used as slang for any premium-looking cannabis; it reflects pricing and appearance, not verified quality.The single botanical species, in the family Cannabaceae, that covers all hemp and drug-type cannabis; "L." credits Linnaeus, who named it in 1753.Hemp is cannabis grown for fibre, seed or other uses and, in many laws, defined as Cannabis sativa with no more than 0.3% THC by dry weight.THC (Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol) is the neutral, decarboxylated cannabinoid mainly responsible for cannabis's reported intoxicating effects; the living plant makes it almost entirely as THCA.Hashish is the traditional pressed resin concentrate of cannabis, made for centuries by sieving or rubbing trichome heads from plants and compressing them into blocks or balls.Sinsemilla (sensi) is seedless cannabis flower from unpollinated female plants; the word is Spanish for "without seed".Scheduling is placing a substance in a legal category of a drug-control law or treaty, which sets how strictly it is controlled and whether medical use is recognised.420 is cannabis culture shorthand for cannabis itself and for April 20, celebrated as an unofficial cannabis day.
