Channel 4 are on the drugs again – and this time newsreader Jon Snow will be inhaling a huge bag of skunk. But this isn’t just a cunning way for Jon and co to get stoned, because it’s all being done in the name of science.

Jon was joined in the trials by a few other media stalwarts, including commentator Matthew Parris and former royal correspondent Jennie Bond.

The programme also ran through a list of other famous people who have admitted to smoking weed – y’know just to prove it’s pretty widespread. Sadly these guys didn’t drop into the studio.

Other people had a definite wish list of who they wanted to see on future editions of the show.

Now we know this isn’t just about watching celebs get stoned. The whole programme was designed to look at the difference between two types of cannabis – your old-school hash and the stronger skunk.

Some people had some questions about the way they were doing it.

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Trial 1: Do you like music?

It turns out all our straight-laced celebrity guinea pigs like music. Well, we say “straight-laced”, but Jennie Bond has been constantly telling us how much hash she blazed at uni.

Quite predictably, the trials (using either placebo, hash, or skunk and with the tester oblivious to which they were inhaling) proved that cannabis makes people enjoy music more.

Trial 2: Can you remember a news story?

A pretty easy one for the likes of Snow, Bond and Parris, right? In the test they got to listen to a brief news story and then had to recall the details a minute later.

The placebo was fine, but the weed left them completely helpless. As the stats showed at the end of the trial, skunk impairs the memory 30% and hash does so at 33%.

Trial 3: Can you hear voices in white noise?

A bit of a weird one this one. The guinea pigs were played a few different clips of white noise, some with voices speaking behind them. A sober brain could distinguish between the voices and empty white noise – as the show demonstrated.

It’s a test to look into paranoia. A test that skunk failed very badly. Apparently there’s a 270% increase in paranoia on skunk, compared to a 170% increase on hash.

Jon Snow reacts to skunk

Now, for the moment we’ve all been waiting for – Jon Snow inhaling a shed-load of skunk.

At first he feels “woolly” and “not totally in control”. Then they stuck him in an MRI machine to look at the patterns in his brain. After five minutes he admitted he was “feeling more and more anxious”.

Soon it was all too much for Jon and he needed to get out. The poor befuddled news anchor instinctively leaned in for a hug from the woman operating the machine.

He couldn’t help a quick humble brag though. “If you can stick it out in Gaza you can stick it out in a bloody scanner,” muttered the distraught journalist.

And just to hammer home how distraught Jon was actually feeling, he was then asked to say any words that came into his head. He chose “frightened”, “hospital”, “psychiatric ward”, “knife”, and “jump”.

Jon said he’d been in an MRI scanner before with no negative feelings. He also admitted he’s smoked cannabis before, but not this “aggressive filth”.

On the flip side, another of the guinea pigs was a former drug enforcement officer. He had a whale of a time on the skunk – which Jon seemed a little peeved about.

The show was rounded off by an in-depth look at cannabis use across society, as well as some of the other side effects. One was the salience areas in the brain – the part that takes all the inputs and prioritises them into the ones that need dealing with now and others which can be saved for later.

As presenter Dr Christian Jessen quipped: ”You could possibly argue that Matthew Parris on skunk is much less motivated.”

Evetually the show came to an end. Jon snow rounded up what we’d all learned: skunk is much worse than hash, and cannabis makes music more enjoyable. Which left one viewer quietly concerned.