Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 10:23 am | By: Radical Russ
Make it more potent for the taste of it! Yeah, that's it!
When it comes to the popular recreational relaxant that is non-toxic and cannot kill you, its increasing potency is a cause for alarm:
(TIME Magazine) 25% of BC Bud is made of the psychoactive drug tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). In contrast, the pot that the hippie generation smoked in the 1970s had only 2% THC content, and most pot consumed in the U.S. today averages about 7% THC.
(Chicago Tribune) One thing has changed: Pot packs a bigger wallop now than it did in the ’70s. Today’s leaves are up to five times as potent. So, says Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, still-developing brains, which are “more plastic, more sensitive to being modified,” are exposed to higher doses of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis.
(ABC News) With stronger pot, emergency rooms have reported more associated accidents. Just this week, seven people were killed when the driver — drove the wrong way on a New York highway and collided head on with a pickup truck. Although the drivers family has disputed the results, toxicology tests showed high levels of alcohol and marijuana.
(New York Times) “It’s like drinking beer versus drinking whiskey,” said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a government agency and a strong opponent of legalizing marijuana. “If you only have access to whiskey, your risk is going to be higher for addiction. Now that people have access to very high potency marijuana, the game is different.”
(Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics) The new marijuana in the market place is not the 1 percent to 2 percent THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), which is the psychoactive ingredient that produces the “high”. Today’s new cultivation methods are producing a drug with up to 30 percent THC, or 3,000 percent higher than the old 1960’s-1980’s available marijuana.
But if it is a popular recreational intoxicant that is toxic and can kill you, it’s increasing potency is a victory for connoisseurs and retailers:
(USA Today) A growing number of states are moving to allow higher alcohol content in beer, despite concerns from some substance-abuse experts.
Alabama and West Virginia have passed laws increasing the legal alcohol-by-volume cap for beer from 6% to as high as 13.9% this year. Similar efforts are underway in Iowa and Mississippi, two states with very restrictive limits on the sale of high-alcohol beer, said Sean Wilson, former president of Pop the Cap, North Carolina’s successful grass-roots effort that raised the state’s limit in 2005.
Vermont raised the cap to 16% and Montana to 14% last year.
The average alcohol content in beer is 4.65%, and in wine 11.45%, according to a 2002 study by the Alcohol Research Group in Emeryville, Calif.
Twenty states still place some kind of limit on the amount of alcohol in beer, Wilson said.
Paul Gatza, director of the national Brewers Association based in Boulder, Colo., said limiting alcohol content restricts flavors and styles because “you can’t put as much malt or other sugars in your beer as you may want to.”
Gatza said consumers of specialty or microbrewed beers, also known as craft beers, “don’t drink to get drunk. They drink to appreciate the flavors.”
Right… and I smoke pot because I appreciate the scents. This is a theme that goes back to the days of Nixon: the idea that people don’t drink to get drunk, they do it to socialize, but pot smokers are only smoking weed to get high. Tell you what, next time there’s a cocktail party, swap out all the beer for O’Doul’s, all the wine with grape juice, and all the cocktails with soft drinks, and let’s see how much the alcohol drinkers can socialize without getting a buzz on.
The reason alcohol drinkers can make this absurd statement is because they differentiate between the “socializing” (getting a buzz on) and the “getting drunk” (alcohol poisoning). They don’t conceive of a similar state for marijuana consumption. In their mind there’s “not smoking pot” and there’s “stoned out of your mind”, with no intermediate step. This is often because marijuana is illegal, so people who may have experimented a time or two did so under conditions that required smoking it all and smoking it quickly. They’ve never experienced an Amsterdam-like nice mellow joint followed by a productive day. So an increase in cannabis potency, to them, means the pot that used to get them “stoned out of your mind” will now get their kids “way stoned out of your mind”.
Meanwhile, having worked for fifteen years in bars every weekend, bars with parking lots full of cars that I can guarantee weren’t all driven by designated drivers, I can tell you that consumers of microbrews are doing it to get drunk. The guy who was pounding 4% beers at $2 a glass will be more than happy to pound 16% beers at $5 a glass, knowing that his $20 in beer money may only get him four microbrews compared to ten tap beers, but he can get drunker quicker and take fewer pee breaks for the effort, and the beer tastes better.
Isn’t it amazing? Here we have a drug we know kills 35,000 people a year directly from ingestion and another 40,000 due to its effects, a drug that is proven to cause serious harm to every organ in the body, a drug at the heart of a vast majority of domestic abuse cases, crimes, and assaults, and not only are states deciding to allow it to be up to four times more potent, but the marketers of the drug are boasting that it also tastes better and the increased potency doesn’t matter. But marijuana that kills no one, is non-toxic to cells and organs, and brings people together in peace and communion, when that becomes up to four times more potent it is serious cause for alarm.
I guess we better not tell them that the marijuana tastes better these days.
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 5:11 pm | By: Radical Russ
Via Twitter I received the plea from a reader named “LindseyDiane” that pointed to this newly released article in the Chicago Tribune entitled “What Parents Need to Know About Pot”. She wrote “This article is full of blatant lies. Please email to set them straight!”
Marijuana packs a bigger wallop now than it did in the ’70s.
Parents may just want to listen up: The most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that among marijuana users over age 12, almost 35 percent used marijuana 20 or more days in the past month.
Ah, statistics. What stood out to you in that sentence? Did you get “age 12″, “35%”, and “20 days a month”? Preceded by a call to parents, right? Oh my god, one third of our kids are getting stoned two-thirds of the time!
But here’s the thing – that’s all marijuana users over age 12, even the ones age 18 to 100 who are long past needing their parents’ guidance on adult decisions.
Now, indeed, the statistic is true. Nice thing about the intertubes is you can check their math. Visit the Substance Abuse Mental Health Data Archive (SAMHDA) and you can run something called Quick Tables. You can choose four different “Measures of Marijuana Use”, like “Number of Days Used Marijuana in the Past Twelve Months”. You can choose eight different “Respondent Characteristics”, like “Age Group”. Then it will build you the table and even a bar graph if you like.
There are about 248 million Americans aged 12 and older. For the 25 million people age 12 and older who will smoke marijuana this year, it is true that 35.6% will smoke 100 days or more in the past year (so, not exactly “20 or more days a month”, more like “8 or more days a month”). But for the 12-17 age group, the number is actually 28%.
Now, that still sounds scary, huh? But this is just the numbers of the kids who do smoke pot. There are 25 million kids aged 12-17 and 880,000 of them are smoking pot “8 or more times a month”. That’s 3.5% of all kids. Think of it as 7 out of 200 getting stoned one-fourth of the time; not 1 out of three getting stoned two-thirds of the time.
As the medical marijuana articles continue to appear in newsprint, I think two points need to be made:
One, a warning to all recreational and medical marijuana smokers: Eagle County Sheriff’s office and State Highway Patrol have trained officers to look for not only DWI alcohol drivers but also DUI marijuana users. The THC chemical making up 60% of each marijuana plant (recreational or medical marijuana) is 10 times stronger since the 1970s per the June 2009 United Nations World Health Report.
Where do I get me some of that 60% THC pot? Most good bud is around 7%-10% THC with exceptions found as high as 35%. Even seized hash has been averaging only around 20% THC. Plus, high-quality pot has always been available, even in the 1970s. I mean, look at the hairstyles and the clothes; do you think those people were smoking weak marijuana?
THC can stay in your blood for up to 56 days. Guess what that means?
No, THC metabolites can stay in your urine up to 56 (more or less) days. Guess what that means?
If a cop thinks you’re drug impaired or asks you to take a drug test and you test positive for marijuana, the current state and federal laws say that is a crime.
Yes, they do. What they don’t say is that you’re impaired. They say you’re guilty of the crime of driving while impaired, but they do not actually serve to prove any impairment.
Remember if you have an accident and your brain has slowed down due to marijuana use — you are on the way to court and possibly jail.
Brain is slowed down? Name the game, mister, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Boggle, Scrabble, logic problems, New York Times crossword, and I’ll give you a good run for your money even while pulling bong rips off a Roor.
Two, recreational or medical marijuana is grown by unregulated medical warehouses in America or in Mexico that have no oversight, quality control, testing, or inspection by the FDA or any other state or U.S. government agency. So to anyone smoking, inhaling, eating brownies, etc., the THC goes to your blood and directly to your brain.
Yes, the THC goes to the blood and the brain; as our president once remarked, that’s the point.
Why would our citizens use a product that has no testing or quality control and could be poisoned?
Well, many of our citizens are growing it themselves or know their grower and know it isn’t being poisoned. Last time I recall anyone being poisoned by weed, it was the US government spraying Mexican marijuana fields with toxic paraquat in the 1970s.
But there is a point that unregulated marijuana can have molds, fungi, or pesticides, which is exactly why we’re lobbying for legalization.
There are 400 different chemicals in each marijuana plant. Marijuana smokers are actually “rolling the dice” each time they use it. I wonder where the new store owners buy their marijuana and who guarantees its purity for you to use safely.
Eek! Chemicals! Over 400 of them! Uh, just like nearly every plant on earth.
Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 1:16 pm | By: Radical Russ
(TIME Magazine) California may be the center of the marijuana trade and the controversies over its legalization. But Florida has surpassed it in one important category: the Sunshine State is now the country’s leader in indoor marijuana cultivation. It is a potent distinction because most of the marijuana grown this way is cultured hydroponically — that is, mostly without soil and with a carefully calibrated cocktail of chemicals and lighting — to create some of the highest level of highs on the market.
In 2006, Florida law enforcement here discovered 480 homes growing marijuana indoors. Last year, 1,022 grow houses were busted. “This isn’t your grandma’s marijuana,” quipped a Miami-Dade narcotics officer at one bust as he tossed garbage bags stuffed with confiscated marijuana into an unmarked police truck. Levels of THC — the agent in marijuana that produces feelings of euphoria, and in some users mild hallucinations and paranoia — have risen dramatically because of indoor techniques. Thirty years ago, most marijuana contained about 7% THC. Today, indoor growers boast THC levels of 25% or higher thanks to the additional care that indoor plants receive.
Ah, yes, “Pot 2.0: Not Your Father’s Woodstock Weed!” raises its ugly head. Except the weed from 30 years ago was supposed to be only 2% THC… at least according to the TIME Magazine story in 2004 about the previous super-pot hot-spot, Vancouver, British Columbia:
(TIME Magazine 2004) Although the actual potency of BC Bud varies from batch to batch, depending on how it’s grown, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says that as much as 25% of BC Bud is made of the psychoactive drug tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). In contrast, the pot that the hippie generation smoked in the 1970s had only 2% THC content, and most pot consumed in the U.S. today averages about 7% THC.
So five years ago TIME warned the smokers of 7% weed about the 25% BC Bud that wasn’t like the 2% weed of the 1970s, and today TIME warns the smokers about Florida’s 25% hydro-bud that’s not like the 7% weed of the 1970s that we were apparently smoking all the way up to 2004. Let’s look back farther, to a 2000 TIME story on Marc Emery:
A newly released report about marijuana potency undermines previous claims by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that the drug’s potency has hit record highs.
“According to the latest data on marijuana samples analyzed to date, the average amount of THC in seized samples has reached a new high of 10.1 percent,” reads the announcement by Gil Kerlikowske, the Drug Czar.
But the full report is now available and it shows that the 10-percent bar is only crossed by throwing hash into the equation. Without hash, the average potency was 8.52 percent. The average potency of hash was 20.76 percent.
I’m not personally suprised to hear that Gil was given some bad information by the ONDCP. They give out bad information all the time to keep their funding and the war on pot going. But I am always suprised when they manufacture half truths from a study that will eventually find the light of day and expose them for being the deceitful liars they are. ONDCP works on a shock therapy meme that will only work as long as the media and the public swallows the disinformation first and forgets the whole thing before the facts come out.
I fully encourage you to read the full report (a scant 21 pages) and draw your own conclusions. I was personally thrilled to see that “Ditch Weed” is an official term, and that hash oil is pretty potent stuff at an average 87% THC. Enjoy!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 10:00 am | By: Radical Russ
More typical Reefer Madness in this article from Alabama, repeating the story of the Potency Monitoring Project’s findings that seized marijuana potency has risen to 9.6%. But there were a few tasty morsels of cannabis control craziness that I thought deserved special attention:
“You’re not dealing with people who are just trying to get people high,” he said. “You can charge more when you have a higher THC count.”
This just in from the Department of No Duh! – people will pay more for good weed. However, it is the prohibition that causes the most potent weed to be the most desirable.
During alcohol prohibition, consumption of beer and wine dropped and consumption of more-potent liquor increased. When a product is outlawed, the risk of being caught requires the sellers of the product to produce it in smaller quantities to maximize profits. Why would you smuggle a trunk full of 3.2 beer when you can make ten or twenty times the profit with the same trunk full of 150-proof rum?
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 1:46 pm | By: Radical Russ
Pushing Back : ONDCP Releases 2008 Marijuana Sourcebook
(Washington, D.C.) – Today, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) released its largest-ever compilation of data relating to marijuana. The 2008 Marijuana Sourcebook contains important data on marijuana in the United States including the latest use patterns and trends, health effects, criminal justice aspects, supply sources, and information regarding so-called “medical marijuana.” The publication draws from a wide variety of national scientific and research-based data sources.
The Sourcebook also contains data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics that reveals that less than one half of one percent of inmates in state prisons are serving time for marijuana possession only. Additionally, the Sourcebook contains the latest analysis from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) which reveals that levels of THC – the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – have reached the highest-ever amounts since scientific analysis of the drug began in the late 1970s. The average amount of THC in the most recently seized samples of marijuana has reached a new high of 9.6 percent. This compares to an average of just under 4 percent reported in 1983 and represents more than a doubling in the potency of the drug since that time.
It’s no surprise that this latest propaganda salvo from the Drug Czar would be released one day in advance of a press conference announcing the first rational federal marijuana policy proposal in thirty years.
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I think I may be coming down with a little somethin’-somethin’, so forgive me if my voice isn’t its usual strong manly baritone that makes stoner hearts melt and prohibitionists quiver. Ha! That’s the cough syrup talking; hard drugs make me crazy.
Today I’m breaking out some great interviews from the vault. First you’ll hear Paul Armentano and I discuss the potency study that claims pot is twice as “deadly” today compared to “Woodstock Weed”. Then you’ll get Kevin Booth, the writer/director of “American Drug War” discussing his hard-hitting documentary.
WakeUpDead: @Russ, I dont think that wireless is going to work out for the show, it was choppy and studdered just like last week. Hardline may be the only way. Puff [...]
WakeUpDead: A MINI Spof, Lock up your Weed, in 18 years that is. Really Man congrats! Greatest days of my life when my kids were born, hell yeh, great news [...]
BenJaMin: Late night Stash!!!
SneakerPimp: heres a bong rip for spof
RevRayGreen: errr test over....
RevRayGreen: on hold..
RevRayGreen: @RR I'll try and lob a call to you.....
SneakerPimp: where is the first field of cannabis gonna be?
SneakerPimp: !
Radical Russ: Breaking News: MrSpof's wife's water just broke! A MiniSpof is imminent!
SneakerPimp: oh russ its not my fault that i dont understand choppy word:stoned:
SneakerPimp: @Mrspof congratulations tell us all about it tommrow
Radical Russ: OK, test over. Sorry. Only needed a half hour. Be back tomorrow afternoon.
slash5city: don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west
thaistik: Local Crime Stoppers notice.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pot shop burglars sought
Crime Stoppers is looking for information on the suspects who police say burglarized a medical marijuana dispensary and stole cash, drugs [...]
Marijuana-Related Health Costs Minimal Compared To Those Of Alcohol, Tobacco; California Medical Association Says Pot Prohibition Is A "Failed Public Health Policy"; Oregon: State NORML Affiliate Opens First 'Cannabis Café'. […]
American Medical Association Calls For Scientific Review Of Marijuana's Prohibitive Status; Dutch Marijuana Use Lower Than European Average, Study Says […]
"Truth In Trials Act" Reintroduced In Congress; Maine: Voters Approve Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Measure; Colorado: Breckenridge Voters Overwhelmingly Decide To End Pot Penalties. […]
Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
Cannabis Law Reform's Missing Link: Law Enforcement Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper; LEAP and NORML Advisory Board; Author of Breaking Rank Putting the Mexican Cartels Out of Business Mexican drug cartels now employ over 100,000 soldiers and are responsible for nearly ten thousand deaths per year. Their largest source of income is marijuana. […]
Not Your Father’s Woodstock Booze: States push for higher potency beer
don't forget to watch CCS live on u-stream 8 pm west 
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