ABSTRACT
Cannabis seems a virtual factory for the production of secondary metabolic com pounds (Turner, ElSohly, and Boeren, 1980). A variety of alkanes have been identified (Adams and Jones, 1973; De Zeeuw, Wijsbek, and M alingre, 1973; Mobarak, Bieniek, and Korte, 1974a, 1974b), as well as nitrogenous compounds (ElSohly and Turner, 1976; Hanus, 1975a; M echoulam, 1988), flavonoids (Gellert et a l , 1974; Paris, Henri, and Henri, 1975; Paris and Paris, 1973) and other m iscel laneous compounds (Hanus, 1976a, 1976b). Terpenes appear in abun dance (Hanus, 1975b; Hendricks et al., 1975) and contribute to the characteristic odor of the plant (Hood, Dames, and Barry, 1973) and some of its crude preparations such as hashish. The compounds which comprise the active drug ingredients are apparently unique to this genus and are term ed cannabinoids. Cannabinoids were originally thought to exist as the phenolic compounds, but later research (Fetterman, Doorenbos et al., 1971; M asoud and Doorenbos, 1973; Small and Beckstead, 1973; Turner et al., 1973) indicated their existence predominantly in the form of carboxylic acids which decarboxylate readily with time (M asoud and Doorenbos, 1973; Turner et al., 1973) upon heating (De Zeeuw, M alingre, and Merkus, 1972; Kimura and Okamoto, 1970) or in alkaline conditions (Grlic and Andrec 1961; M asoud and Doorenbos, 1973). Over sixty of these type compounds have been found in the genus (Turner, ElSohly, and Boeren, 1980).
