The Haze Archive Glossary

This glossary covers the terms most commonly used across The Haze Archive. It is editorial, not legal or medical, and it has been written to be readable rather than exhaustive. Where a term has a contested or specialist meaning, we have noted it.

Plant and botany

Cannabinoid. A class of chemical compounds found in the cannabis plant (phytocannabinoids) and produced by the human body (endocannabinoids). The two most discussed phytocannabinoids are THC and CBD.

Landrace. A naturally occurring regional variety of cannabis that has adapted, over many generations, to the local environment without modern breeding intervention. The original Haze parents were landraces from Mexico, Colombia, Thailand and India.

Hybrid. A cross between two distinct genetic lines. Most modern cannabis cultivars are hybrids, often several generations removed from any landrace ancestor.

Sativa, indica, ruderalis. Traditional categories of cannabis plants. The categories are useful as cultural shorthand and increasingly disputed as botanical classifications. This archive uses them because the wider culture still does.

Pharmacology

THC. Tetrahydrocannabinol, the principal psychoactive cannabinoid in cannabis, first isolated by Raphael Mechoulam in 1964.

CBD. Cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive cannabinoid that is the subject of significant contemporary clinical research and now widely available in UK retail as a food supplement.

Endocannabinoid system. The signalling system in the human body that includes the CB1 and CB2 receptors and the molecules — including anandamide and 2-AG — that bind them. Covered in detail in The Discovery of the Endocannabinoid System.

Tincture. A liquid extract, traditionally alcohol-based. Cannabis tinctures were standard pharmacy items in nineteenth-century Britain.

Policy and law

Schedule. Under UK and most international drug law, controlled substances are placed in numbered schedules that determine how they may be possessed, prescribed and researched. Schedule 1 is the most restrictive.

Specials licence. A UK Home Office authorisation that allows a specific named patient to access a medicine that is not generally available. Used for the first UK medical cannabis prescriptions in 2018.

Compassionate use. A general term for programmes — formal or informal — that allow seriously ill patients access to treatments that are not yet generally licensed.

Culture

Coffee shop. In the Dutch context, a licensed establishment permitted to sell small quantities of cannabis to adult customers under a long-standing tolerance policy. Not the same as a dispensary.

Dispensary. In US and Canadian usage, a regulated retail outlet for medical or recreational cannabis.

Head shop. A retailer of smoking accessories — glassware, grinders, papers, vaporisers, storage and cleaning gear. Haze Cartel is a UK head shop. We do not sell cannabis.

Want practical know-how?

For care and cleaning of the gear you already own, visit our practical Guides & Glossary section of the archive, or browse the shop for accessories.