While some researchers are investigating the benefits of medical marijuana, smoked or vaporized cannabis, most are looking at specific cannabis compounds, called cannabinoids.
From a research standpoint, cannabis is considered a “dirty” drug because it contains hundreds of compounds with poorly understood effects. That’s why researchers tend to focus on just one cannabinoid at a time. Only two plant-based cannabinoids, THC and cannabidiol, have been studied extensively, but there could be others with medical benefits that we don’t know about yet.
