Myth Builders: Skunk
If you've been following the marijuana legalization movement you have heard of Skunk marijuana, or more general claim that pot today is more powerful then in the past. It is the myth that supposedly prompted the UK to reclassify marijuana to a Class B controlled substance. I doubt the threat of "skunk" really had anything to do with the reclassification, but rather it was political pressure from the US, but lets ignore that and take a look at the myth itself.
I am sure a few people are reading this going, "it's not a myth I've smoked skunk!" Well no, you've smoked marijuana of a strain which your dealer called skunk, skunk does not now, and never has existed as a separate strain. Skunk in drug parlance simply means a batch of particularly strong weed. It is not a strain all its own. Marijuana has an odour that resembles skunk musk, this odour is more prevalent in higher potency batches, the specific strain is irrelevant. Skunk essentially refers to properly grown marijuana rather then the ditchweed you often can find cheap on the street.
The claim is made by reporters and politicians alike trying to bolster the support of a demographic of people who grew up in the 60's and 70's experimenting with Marijuana and having no lasting effects. The government had to come up with a way to get these people to see marijuana as an evil drug worse then what they remember, the only way to do this was to take a term potheads are used to and turn it against them. Make wild unsupported claims of increasing potency of marijuana and state how dangerous pot is getting, while no showing any evidence of the increase, or even that more potent pot is more dangerous.
If marijuana were legalized the potency of pot would increase dramatically over all because it could be grown in a controlled environment under ideal conditions, this can be seen in the Netherlands where THC average content in Sinsemilla can be as high as 20.4 percent vs this North American average only reaches up to 8.4 percent.
The problem with the skunk myth is that no one has demonstrated that there is any risk of greater intoxication with high potency marijuana. Sure it is stronger stuff so you get the effects quicker, but because of the immediate results in smoking it is easier to properly dose the marijuana for maximum effect with minimal risk of overdose. Oh and there's the simple fact that an overdose of marijuana means it is nap time, where any other drug overdose means serious medical side effects or death.
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You're correct that the use of the word 'skunk' in the British media has little or no meaning, but you're wrong to state that "skunk does not now, and never has existed as a separate strain".
ReplyDeleteSkunk most definitely exists as a distinct strain, it has a long and quite well-documented breeding history. The first Skunk was a hybrid of South American, Mexican and Afghani genotypes that was bred in the US in the late Seventies.
In 1980, Skunk #1 - a stable, true-breeding hybrid - became one of the first commercially available cannabis seed-strains.
Since then, dozens of variations on the Skunk genotype have appeared (most adding more Afghani/Indica to the mix).
The term is over-used and misapplied in many countries, none more so than the UK, but cannabis enthusiasts can reliably spot a Skunk or a Skunk descendant by structure and aroma alone.
Thankyou for your clear and fresh writing on the "skunk" FNORD!
ReplyDelete...and all of the media sources that perpetuated the SKUNK FNORD are shown to be mostly dumb and mostly ignorant .
You however, seem to me to have shown that you can think for yourself. And have communicated this - savage attack - on cannabis culture and the UK .GOV's insult to some very basic principles of science and language.