Is that true that only few of 421 chemicals in Marijuana resin are responsible for producing "high"?

Answer 1

Yes.

The main chemical that contributes to "high" is THC. Most of the other chemicals don't contribute to this reaction, but do other things to the body, mostly acting as carcinogens or mild toxins.

Answer 2

Yes. The most important, and famous, chemical in marijuana resin is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. Synthetic THC is a prescription drug called Marinol, which is used to control nausea and other symptoms. Patients who use Marinol say that they like regular marijuana better. This seems to indicate that there are other chemicals in marijuana that affect people. There are numerous chemicals found in marijuana, called cannabinoids, some of which are thought to contribute to the high caused by marijuana use.

The number of chemicals in marijuana seems to change every time I read it. I've seen any number between 60 and 421, and I am highly skeptical of all these numbers. Sometimes they say that there are 400 (or whatever number) "harmful" chemicals in marijuana, but this makes me wonder what they're defining as a harmful chemical and what they are defining as a chemical in the first place. For example, marijuana, being the flowers of a plant, would contain chlorophyll, which is found in all plants. Is that counted? What about each protein? Plants contain thousands of different proteins, should each protein be counted, or should the 21 or so amino acids from which these proteins are made be counted instead? The amino acids are found in all life forms, plants, animals, bacteria, everything.

Because of all this, I find counts of the number of chemicals in a plant to be highly suspect, and I feel that if marijuana is harmful, scientists should make an effort to enumerate its harmful effects and determine the exact causes of these effects. This would be more effective than throwing around numbers that can easily be used in a variety of contexts.

Answer 3

Cannabis contains a number of psychoactive compounds, the principle of which is delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The mechanism of action of the drug is the binding of cannabinoid receptor molecules (CB1 and CB2) in the brain and other tissues. In this respect the drug mimics endogenous molecules, discovered only after investigation into the mechanism of action of THC (which, contrary to the user above, is widely and well-studied, obviously, because neurochemistry is an interesting field of study and the existence and purpose of such receptors should be understood.)
Erowid has a nice page on the pharmacology of cannabis:
http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_pharmacology2.shtml

Incidentally, here's some statistics on how widely used these "illegal drugs' are:
http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_stats.shtml

Answer 4

It is possible but I suspect it is a combiation of them. I know of no research being done on this. What legitimite research facility would do such and who would fund it?

By the way, many years ago scientists learned that there were well over 1,000 organics that imparted flavor in typicall coffee. After years of research, they concluded that we needed many of these to provide the familiar flavor and there was no way a few of these organics could do the job.

I suggest you concentrate on your studies - and not on illegal drugs.