Marijuana potency surpasses 10 percent, U.S. says
Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 9:20 am | By: Radical Russ
Oh, goodie, here comes a week of news stories on this old trope about Pot 2.0. Hold on, readers…
OXFORD, Mississippi (CNN) — The average potency of marijuana, which has risen steadily for three decades, has exceeded 10 percent for the first time, the U.S. government will report on Thursday.
At the University of Mississippi’s Potency Monitoring Project, where thousands of samples of seized marijuana are tested every year, project director Mahmoud ElSohly said some samples have THC levels exceeding 30 percent.
Average THC concentrations will continue to climb before leveling off at 15 percent or 16 percent in five to 10 years, ElSohly predicted.
The stronger marijuana is of particular concern because high concentrations of THC have the opposite effect of low concentrations, officials say.
Uh… what? The “opposite” effect? You mean if you smoked the old pot you got “high” and if you smoke the new pot you get… what, “low”? If you smoke pot that’s somewhere in-between does anything happen at all? Do you just stay “middle”?
The only “opposite” effect between low-quality and high-quality weed is the reaction you gave your dealer when you’ve spent $300 on an ounce of it.
In addition, while experienced marijuana users may limit their intake of potent marijuana, young and inexperienced users may not moderate their intake and possibly suffer from dysphoria, paranoia, irritability and other negative effects.
If these young and inexperienced users are smoking or vaporizing it, the time between intake and effect is only a few seconds. It’s not like doing shots of whiskey, where forty minutes later while you’re on your sixth shot you realize you’re way drunk and should’ve stopped four shots ago. With marijuana, you smoke it, you feel it. If it’s not enough, you smoke more. If it’s enough, you stop.
Potent marijuana also poses significant risk to the developing adolescent brain, said Edward Jurith, acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Absolutely. That’s why we always say adolescents shouldn’t smoke pot. Potent alcohol also poses significant risks to the developing adolescent brain, and its average potency ranges from 1.5% to 75.5%, and yet every year I see a new marketing campaign for some fruity, wine-coolery alcoholic beverage few people over age 21 would be caught dead drinking.
Increasing potency is leading to higher admissions to emergency rooms and drug treatment programs, officials say.
I don’t know if that’s an intended pun, but I doubt it. I think they meant “more admissions” or “greater numbers of admissions”. Either way, it is a lie. The emergency room figure comes from DAWN, the Drug Abuse Warning Network, which tracks when anyone admitted to an ER tests positive for or admits use of marijuana. Since marijuana is the most used substance and since it stays in your system for days or weeks, it’s no surprise it turns up in the people who go to the ER. However, the DAWN stats do not measure the cause of the ER visit. So, it is possible that you play softball, pull a hamstring, go to the ER, and they detect the joint you smoked at the picnic last weekend — ding, that’s a “marijuana-related emergency room visit”. You might smoke some pot and shoot some heroin, overdose on the heroin and go to the ER, telling them what you’ve done — ding, that’s a “marijuana-related emergency room visit”. You might be a medical marijuana patient, driving to work after medicating last night ten hours ago, and get T-boned by a drunk driver — ding, that’s a “marijuana-related emergency room visit”.
The drug treatment admissions are an even worse statistic. When those ER folks let the police know you tested positive for pot — and remember, that only means you’ve used it, not that you’re currently high — the nice judge gives you the choice of going to jail of going into a drug treatment program (sometimes it’s not a choice). So they arrest you for pot, sentence you to treatment, and then point to increased treatment numbers and say “see how dangerous it is; this is why we need to arrest people for pot!”
The average THC for tested marijuana during 2008 was 10.1 percent, according to the government, compared to 1983 when it was reportedly under 4 percent.
Even drugs seized at the United States’ southwest border are showing increasing potency, the Office of National Drug Control Policy says. The median potency increased from 4.8 percent in 2003 to 7.3 percent in 2007. Marijuana from Mexico and other southern sources traditionally had lower THC content then other sources’.
So then, what you’re telling us is that under your prohibition of marijuana, it has become more than twice as potent. By your standards, during the time you’ve been arresting and incarcerating people for marijuana, it has become stronger, more people are in the ER because of it, and more people are addicted to it.
This is very well written, thank you for protesting the nonsense that is this crazy report. Informing people what’s really going on is important, considering the government and media want us to think that marijuana is just as dangerous as heroin.
For the umpteenth time, can somebody intelligently explain the fricking percentage? Percentage of what? Volume? Weight? Heck the percentage of time I get pissed about articles that refer to THC percentages is about 100%.
The way I understand it, the percentage refers to the amount of THC found in the oils produced by a dried sample of cannabis relative to the total of all cannabinoids and inert materials found in the oils. It certainly can’t refer to %THC by weight or volume of the entire plant!
I’ll get a better answer from Dr. Mitch next week.
Thanks Russ,
Check out this, http://tr.im/lnGp
In this article “Potency is expressed as the percentage of THC per dry weight of plant material” However that would depend on which part you select for your “plant material”. Maybe the prohibitionists are just getting better at clipping for their sample. And how can they predict THC concentrations in the future? WTF
@MH:im sayin 1 hitter quitter! SHIT 30%THC id love 2 get my hands on that!
Wow! Look at the bright side… we can get “stoneder” for less.
In the end it’s all sound bites isn’t it.
..people will remember the words “marijuana potency rising steadily” and scream ‘we must NEVER legalize’!!!
It’s just too hard for them to think about why potency is increasing and whether the increase is a good thing or a bad thing. As my old marketing professor used to say “you either sell the steak or the sizzle”, in this case all that’s being sold is the sizzle.
Thank you Russ..
It takes sound thinking to debunk all these prohibition propaganda statements.
It is a shame that we here at norml wont get the same kind of coverage as these misleading statements by the prohibitionist people, unless it’s negative…
Your efforts are needed and recognized as top notch..Keep it up !!
Typical BS in the story about “treatment” and “potency” but the grow room in Mississippi looked like shit. The leaves looked unhealthy, the pots were too small, and the fucking strain, you could see it on one of the tags,”MX” 08? and then the barrels of “high grade marijuana”? OMG! The crap looked like my shit bag for making hash or shake that I’d normally just throw away. I can’t believe that a college that is teaching horticulture can’t grow a weed correctly.