Finally good arguments to tell someone who blindly maintains that "today's marijuana is more powerful"
A really interesting text that I found in a vice article, which while not intended to talk about how potent marijuana was, did finally cast doubt on the belief that potency has been increasing:
By 1995, politics and culture had changed radically, and the war on drugs was inescapable. That year, Bill Clinton’s drug czar Lee Brown was making a similar—but even more explosive—claim. "Marijuana is 40 times more potent today… than 10, 15, 20 years ago."
The following year, current Democratic presidential candidate and pot legalization foe Joe Biden argued that comparing 1990s weed to that from the 60s was like "comparing buckshot in a shotgun shell to a laser-guided missile." By 2002, a new drug czar, John Walters, was warning, "It is not your father's marijuana," and claiming a 30-fold recent increase in weed strength.
Of course, any argument that weed has become more potent (and, by implication, more dangerous) assumes we actually know how strong it was in decades past. But most of the hard numbers on changes in cannabis potency come from the government's Potency Monitoring Program, which has been run by the University of Mississippi since 1971 and is the only major lab focused on studying how it has changed historically. Their data relies on samples seized by law enforcement, which introduces variables that make accurate comparison over time—particularly in the early years—difficult.
For one, the researchers only had access to about 150-200 samples per year in the early 1970s. With so few samples, the data could be based on unrepresentative ditchweed—not what most people were actually smoking. To wit, in yet another potency scare story, this one from 1986, the Times reported on data from the project finding that in 1974, the average percent of THC—the active ingredient that causes the high—was just .5 percent. That is basically a placebo. Indeed, it is legal now to sell hemp that contains just a tad less—.3 percent—because it is so difficult to get high on something with so little punch. Clearly, there was some sort of error.
Fascinatingly, the government actually tracks how high people say they get from taking drugs. If titration weren't occurring, this data should show a rise that corresponds with the true increase of potency over time. But, in reality, pot smokers titrate: while there was an upward trend for some years in the 1990s, the proportion of high school seniors who blazed and said they got "very high" when they smoked pot is virtually the same as it was in 1975. The number for 1975 was 25.5 percent; for 2018, it was 25.4.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa7anb/why-weed-should-be-legal-its-getting-stronger-more-potent
A really interesting text that I found in a vice article, which while not intended to talk about how potent marijuana was, did finally cast doubt on the belief that potency has been increasing:
By 1995, politics and culture had changed radically, and the war on drugs was inescapable. That year, Bill Clinton’s drug czar Lee Brown was making a similar—but even more explosive—claim. "Marijuana is 40 times more potent today… than 10, 15, 20 years ago."
The following year, current Democratic presidential candidate and pot legalization foe Joe Biden argued that comparing 1990s weed to that from the 60s was like "comparing buckshot in a shotgun shell to a laser-guided missile." By 2002, a new drug czar, John Walters, was warning, "It is not your father's marijuana," and claiming a 30-fold recent increase in weed strength.
Of course, any argument that weed has become more potent (and, by implication, more dangerous) assumes we actually know how strong it was in decades past. But most of the hard numbers on changes in cannabis potency come from the government's Potency Monitoring Program, which has been run by the University of Mississippi since 1971 and is the only major lab focused on studying how it has changed historically. Their data relies on samples seized by law enforcement, which introduces variables that make accurate comparison over time—particularly in the early years—difficult.
For one, the researchers only had access to about 150-200 samples per year in the early 1970s. With so few samples, the data could be based on unrepresentative ditchweed—not what most people were actually smoking. To wit, in yet another potency scare story, this one from 1986, the Times reported on data from the project finding that in 1974, the average percent of THC—the active ingredient that causes the high—was just .5 percent. That is basically a placebo. Indeed, it is legal now to sell hemp that contains just a tad less—.3 percent—because it is so difficult to get high on something with so little punch. Clearly, there was some sort of error.
Fascinatingly, the government actually tracks how high people say they get from taking drugs. If titration weren't occurring, this data should show a rise that corresponds with the true increase of potency over time. But, in reality, pot smokers titrate: while there was an upward trend for some years in the 1990s, the proportion of high school seniors who blazed and said they got "very high" when they smoked pot is virtually the same as it was in 1975. The number for 1975 was 25.5 percent; for 2018, it was 25.4.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pa7anb/why-weed-should-be-legal-its-getting-stronger-more-potent
