Eating dope is a serious business. The effects are quite hard to predict

Despite the claims made by the anti-decriminalisation lobby, smoking cannabis is a relatively innocuous activity. Unless the dope you are smoking happens to be unusually powerful, your intoxication has a natural cut-off point, beyond which it is virtually impossible to progress. In this respect, smoking cannabis is less risky than drinking alcohol, because the only factor limiting a person's drunkenness is how much liquor he or she is able to consume.

Eating dope, by contrast, is a serious business. When cannabis is ingested, the effects are felt more intensely, last much longer, and are a good deal harder to predict. In the parlance of drug-taking, "losing it completely" becomes a real possibility. Of the two methods, it is not surprising that smoking cannabis should be the more popular. It is natural for more users to prefer the predictability of a joint to the out-and-out trippiness of a space cake. For the diehard pothead, on the other hand, ingestion remains the most satisfying means of getting stoned.

This was certainly the case for Adam Gottlieb, who in 1973 wrote what is widely considered to be the definitive cannabis cookbook, The Art and Science of Cooking with Cannabis. In it, Gottlieb advances various arguments in support of his view that ingestion is preferable to smoking. He writes, for example, that smoking "is irritating to the throat and lungs", whereas eating cannabis has "no discernible side effects".

Gottlieb's arguments become less convincing when he allows the all-consuming nature of his hobby to influence what he says. For example, he claims that the "long high" which results from ingesting cannabis "can be of great value to a person who is going to a place where he cannot conveniently re-stone himself with the hard-to-conceal smoke. It is always such a contra-hedonistic bother, for instance, to try to sneak a few hasty booster tokes in the toilet stalls during the intermission at a double feature." The logic of this argument is hard to fault, but it is unlikely that it would persuade anyone who doesn't already share Gottlieb's conviction that you necessarily enhance any given activity by undertaking it while high.

Given Gottlieb's fondness for getting stoned, it is not surprising that he should be scornful of those who fail to be utterly rigorous in their pursuit of this objective. One of his particular bugbears, for example, is cannabis tea. In the book's opening chapter, he notes that THC (the active component of cannabis) is soluble only in fat and alcohol. This means that, from a scientific point of view, cannabis tea is an unsound beverage; THC would have to be soluble in water for it to be effective. Gottlieb is appalled that, "in the supposedly enlightened Twentieth Century", people should be so ignorant as to steep their leaves in boiling water.

Of all the recipes in Cooking with Cannabis, Gottlieb derives most pleasure from creme de Gras. When describing this, his sentences acquire the expansive air of the true connoisseur. Creme de Gras, he writes, "is a liqueur of the highest calibre . . . The fragrant, balsamy aroma and flavour of fresh cannabis are entirely preserved." Gottlieb's pride in creme de Gras leads him to make astonishing claims on its behalf: "Not only will the liquor industry make billions from it when this short period of marijuana prohibition has ended, but it may even play a major role in the survival and evolution of the human race."

This month, another cannabis cookbook, Cannabis Cafe, was published. Written by a woman called Eric, it is a well-put-together collection, but seems unlikely to replace Cooking with Cannabis as the definitive work on the subject. Unlike Gottlieb, Eric's approach is more philanthropic than hedonistic. She is particularly interested in the medicinal uses of cannabis: one of her chapters is devoted to those (such as some multiple sclerosis sufferers) who take it as a pain reliever.

Ultimately, what is most impressive about such books is the fact of their completion. Considering that eating just a small quantity of cannabis is likely to incapacitate you for most of the day, the writers must have put in a staggering amount of research. Seen from this perspective, they are true labours of love.

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