Decarboxylation
The reaction that turns the acids the plant actually makes into the compounds people know by name.
The living plant does not produce THC or CBD. It produces their acidic forms, THCA and CBDA. Decarboxylation is the reaction that removes a carboxyl group as carbon dioxide and leaves the neutral compound behind.
Heat drives it, and so, slowly, does time. This is why raw plant material behaves differently from heated material, and why any extract intended for medical use has to be made under a controlled temperature profile rather than by guesswork.
The balance is delicate: too little heat leaves the conversion incomplete, too much drives off the volatile terpenes and oxidises THC into CBN. Analytical work on the kinetics of the reaction is what makes consistent dosing possible at all.
Sources
- Wang, M., et al. (2016). Decarboxylation study of acidic cannabinoids: a novel approach using ultra-high-performance supercritical fluid chromatography/photodiode array-mass spectrometry. Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, 1(1), 262–271. DOI