High Times in Ag Science: Marijuana More Potent Than Ever

High Times in Ag Science: Marijuana More Potent Than Ever | Wired Science from Wired.com
Modern agriculture hasn’t just made beef cows beefier and corn cornier, it’s also made pot more potty.

The potency of marijuana, measured by the presence of its (psycho)active ingredient, THC, has tripled since 1987, according to the latest figures from the Department of Justice’s National Drug Intelligence Center.

The new data from the University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project — which is not just a group of your college buddies talking about the differences between now and the old days — was released in the 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment.

The Department of Justice attributed the steadily rising numbers to “increased demand for higher-potency marijuana and improvements in cultivation techniques.”

The new pot is certainly a superior product to the shake of the old days, but it’s nowhere near as strong as some war-on-drug advocates have contended. The old White House drug czar, John Walters, has said publicly that marijuana’s THC content has “increased as much as 30 times,” which researchers say is not supported by the available evidence.

On the other hand, Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project, an organization lobbying to change the drug’s regulation, said that the average American pot doesn’t stack up with the tightly-controlled cannabis in Amsterdam.

“In the Netherlands, where marijuana for medical use is sold in pharmacies and grown to government standards of purity and potency, the minimal allowable potency is 15 percent THC,” Mirken wrote in an email to Wired.com.

Uh-huh.  It’s not your father’s Woodstock Weed!  It’s the deadly Pot 2.0 that’s 2x, 7x, 25x, 400x as strong as what the hippies smoked in the 1960s!

Give me a break.  First of all, if the median weed potency in 1987 was 3% THC, then half of all 80s tokers were smoking industrial hemp, incapable of giving you much more than a headache.

Second, the fluctuation in THC potency among different strains in different areas of the country during different months of the year varies more than the difference between these three “averages”.  Also, what you seize doesn’t really reflect what is available to most consumers.  Sure, you may have seized a nice cache of 20% THC bud, but how many among the average consumers can actually find that or afford it?

Third, the federal government approves of a drug called dronabinol (Marinol) that is synthesized 100% THC in a sesame oil base.  How is it that 100% pure THC in a pill is a prescribe-able Schedule III drug, yet we’re supposed to fear a 9.6% THC flower?

Fourth, delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has no realistic LD-50, a measurement of the lethal dose of that drug that would kill half those who use it.  One scientist estimated if a 150lb man ate 1,500 lbs of cannabis in 15 minutes, that might be enough THC to be toxic.  So even if you smoke more of a more potent bud, you cannot die.  You’ll just fall asleep faster.

Fifth, cannabis consumers, when presented a higher potency product, inhale less of it to achieve the high.  Less smoke is a good thing.  The Netherlands requires a minimum THC potency of 15% in their medical marijuana for this very reason.

Sixth, cannabis consumers, when given a legal choice, actually prefer lower potency strains of cannabis.  A study comparing consumers in San Francisco and Amsterdam found that the buyers in the legal coffeeshops in Holland preferred “mild” or “moderate” varieties, while the black market buyers in Frisco always wanted the most potent varieties, because prohibition means they can’t really know what they’re getting.

Seventh, if you’re really concerned about the potency of marijuana on the streets, why do you let criminals control the market?  Nobody’s gotten hold of much blindness-inducing triple-digit-proof moonshine on the streets lately, have they?  Anybody unknowingly smoked any cigarettes laced with PCP?  No, because we tightly regulate that market for adults and have strict quality controls over the product.