How much do you really know about what’s in the cannabis you use?
Most people know the basics: THC is the compound that gets you high, CBD is known to relax you, and cannabis has potential therapeutic properties.
A CPR News listener asked via Colorado Wonders for a deeper, scientific look at the components in cannabis. That got us thinking: if you only think about THC and CBD, what else might you miss?
Nolan Kane, a plant geneticist at the University of Colorado Boulder, studies the DNA and chemistry of cannabis and other plants. Inside one of CU Boulder’s laboratories, Kane showed off a tall shelf stacked with research equipment. On it, a large, slightly withered cannabis sprig was tucked away.
“You came at the wrong time — usually this room is packed [with cannabis], from floor to ceiling,” he said, gesturing around the tight space, not much bigger than a closet.
Despite the lab’s modest size, there’s a reason cannabis is studied here and not in CU’s other picturesque greenhouses. “All of our cannabis has to be grown in places where we have all the right certification,” he explained.
Kane’s research focuses on empowering consumers — and growers — to make smarter, more informed decisions.
“In this lab, we designed a test to identify whether a plant has the gene to produce THC or CBD,” he explained. “Just doing that helped growers make better choices.”
Have a question or curiosity about the Centennial State? Ask us, and we may answer your question in Colorado Wonders
But cannabis is far more complex than just THC and CBD. “Oh, there are definitely hundreds of different compounds in cannabis,” Kane said. Most of them remain largely understudied. He listed a few: “ There’s THCA, CBDA, CBD, THC, CBG…” each with its own unique effects and interactions within the human body, he said.
These effects happen because human bodies have receptors that respond to cannabis compounds. These receptors, part of what’s known as the endocannabinoid system, can influence things like pain perception, alertness, mood, and sleep. According to Kane, “Some lead to less perception of pain, some lead to sleepiness, some lead to more alertness, depending on the exact mix of compounds you might have taken.”
These interactions are exactly why cannabis has garnered attention in medical research. Studies suggest cannabis can help treat epilepsy, ease pain, and even potentially slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease. But there’s a critical nuance here: it’s not any single chemical that’s solely responsible for these effects. Instead, it’s the intricate way all the chemicals interact, a concept scientists call the “entourage effect.”
Kane explained this with the example of glaucoma treatments. Early researchers thought THC alone was effective, “except that that compound by itself doesn’t have the same effects as when it is amongst other compounds in the plant.” It’s the combination of compounds that truly unlocks cannabis’ medical potential.
But understanding how hundreds of these compounds interact with the human body requires time, resources, and most of all, access. And that’s where things get tricky. Despite cannabis being legal for recreational use in Colorado, researchers still face a maze of federal restrictions and rules that dictate what kinds of cannabis can be studied, how it must be grown, and who can legally work with it.
“Even in Colorado, we can’t study many of the plants people are actually using,” Kane said. Researchers often have access only to cannabis varieties with very low concentrations of medically significant compounds, making comprehensive research difficult.
Even when studies do happen, additional problems crop up. Cannabis strain names aren’t standardized. “Girl Scout Cookies” from one dispensary might be chemically distinct from another dispensary’s version. Even minor differences, such as storage methods, can dramatically alter a plant’s chemical makeup, Kane said.
These research limitations can have real-world implications. Seven percent of US adults report using cannabis for medical purposes to manage health conditions such as chronic pain, anxiety, and PTSD. Without clear understanding and consistent standards, accurately prescribing cannabis or predicting its effects becomes difficult, if not impossible.
Kane acknowledged that research into cannabis’s complexity is just beginning.
“There’s going to be a lot of valuable and interesting information coming out of these studies in the future,” he said. “We are definitely starting to understand that this complexity is important, but we don’t know enough yet.”
Still, for researchers like Kane, the uncertainty isn’t discouraging — it’s exciting. Cannabis, he pointed out, operates very differently from traditional painkillers like opioids, potentially offering safer and more nuanced pain relief.
For thousands of years, people have understood cannabis primarily through personal experience. And until science fully unravels its mysteries, personal experience remains essential.
“Ultimately, for now, that may be the necessary way of understanding this plant,” Kane reflected. The future holds promise, but for now, cannabis remains an intriguing mix of knowns and unknowns.
It’s not just THC and CBD. Cannabis is more complex than you may think. Read More
