Is It Just Me?

I get Google Alerts for stories about marijuana, and it seems of late there has been an increased number of stories on the increasing potency of marijuana. I have dealt with this issue in several past articles, most recently Myth Builders: Skunk, but with the increase in reports about this such as the CASA study recently published. I thought I'd address it yet again.

This CASA study is downright ridiculous, they claim that in the 70's the average THC content of marijuana was under 1%, this is ditchweed territory bordering on industrial hemp. It's likely to make you more sick then high.

The study completely ignores the fact that even this "drastic increase" in potency still means that North American cannabis is still not as potent as the minimum acceptable THC content for medicinal marijuana in the Netherlands, which if my memory serves me is around 14%.

Even assuming there data is even remotely accurate there is still the problem of the data is meaningless. The data does not demonstrate that a marijuana user gets more intoxicated off the more potent pot. I know some of you out there might say, "well stronger pot means bigger high right", wrong, you see pot is easy to self regulate, especially when using a vaporizer or smoking it, as such once a user gets that high they usually stop.

Now lets assume that users do indeed get more of a high. Does this mean increased danger to health? Actually if anything it is decreased danger, since higher concentration of THC automatically means lower concentration of other chemicals in theory there is a reduced risk of other health issues.

These clowns keep publishing these reports in attempt to scare the public, and yet the public isn't buying it, so why do they keep at it? The definition of insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing expecting different results. Is it just me or does this not fit the definition to a Tee?

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.