ABSTRACT
Cannabis is an herb; it contains hundreds of pharmaceutical compounds (Turner et al. 1980). Herbalists contend that polypharmaceutical herbs provide two advantages over single-ingredient synthetic drugs: (1) therapeutic effects of the primary active ingredients in herbs may be synergized by other compounds, and (2) side effects of the primary active ingredients may be mitigated by other compounds. Thus, cannabis has been characterized as a “synergistic shotgun,” in contrast to Marinol (Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, THC), a synthetic, single-ingredient “silver bullet” (McPartland and Pruitt 1999).
