Extra-high cannabis theory goes up in smoke

[emad]

Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Saturday June 26, 2004
The Guardian

Snip

The effective strength of cannabis consumed in Britain has remained stable for the past 30 years, according to a European Union study published today.

The research says there is no evidence for claims that most cannabis consumed in Britain and the rest of Europe is now 10 times or more stronger than it was in the 70s.

The US drugs "tsar" John Walters and toxicologist John Henry of St Mary's hospital in Paddington, west London, are among those who have warned that the cannabis available now bears little resemblance to that on the market 30 years ago, with serious health dangers for regular users.

The EU study says that the strength of the active ingredient - THC - has remained unchanged at about 6% for most of the cannabis smoked in Britain. It says the amount of cannabis put in the typical British joint has also remained constant for 20 years at about 200mg for marijuana and 150mg for resin.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,2763,1247693,00.html

[bitchkitty]

1. Huh.

I don't believe it. There are plenty of knowledgeable growers in England who are part of the medical marijuana movement. I am a long-time pot smoker (25 years with occasional timeouts) and I can tell you without a doubt that there are strains that will knock you down and slap you around, they are so potent.

Ain't nature wonderful?

But strength does not equal bad, healthwise. It takes a lot less now, so the stronger the better. Vaporizers eliminate many of the carcinogens in pot, and can be bought cheaply or even built at home.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. They're talking averages...

and there was stuff like Maui Wowie back in the 70's that knocked you on your ass, so I suppose the best stuff now is even better. Progress.

But, perhaps the real story is that there isn't so much shit out there as there was back then. We used to get robbed all the time with lousy weed.

Improvement in overall quality. Capitalist theory proven once again.

[emad]

6. The worst was always the week between Xmas and New Year

when all the dealers tried to dump their three year old homegrown that had been mouldering under the floorboards for months on end, waiting for a desperate captive clientele that would pay over the odds for anything just to have something to puff on at New yYear's Eve.....

Sometimes they even tried to dump male homegrown plants because they smelled like dope even tho they had zero high....

[ShaneGR]

2. My theory....

Old hippy used to smoke a ton of pot in the 60s. Now he hasn't smoked in months or years. He gets some pot. He smokes it. His body isn't used to THC like it was back back then. Conditioned. So he gets REALLY high.

Stoned old hippy screams, "It's ten times stronger!" Well, you used to smoke ten times as much.

[Warpy]

13. Nah, you don't build up a tolerance

There is no physical addiction.

There are no withdrawal symptoms when a heavy user stops suddenly.

The psychological addiction may be real for a tiny minority, but it's overplayed.

Heavy use over a very long period of time does slightly fog your memory. Slightly. Temporarily.

It's the closest thing to a benign drug we have.

And it's illegal.

[CaptainClark23]

17. no tolerance build-up?

I have trouble with that one. Perhaps you've not experienced such due to your individual metabolism. But I certainly know from experience that when my consumption has been stopped or curtailed for an apreciable amount of time, my reaction (or high) is much more accute with a lesser amount actually consumed. Similarly, when I have had a goodly quantity of a specific strain fro a period of time, I have noted that it takes more and more of that particular strain to achieve the intended results, but if I switch to another strain, it takes less.

This is the first time I've heard anyone deny the notion of increased tolerance, please elaborate your own experience if you can.

[mdmc]

27. There is a tolerance build up and pot is more powerful

or my connections got better. Either way, back in 92 the kind was few and far between. Now, it is MO.

[ShaneGR]

26. lol, no tolerance....

I can tell you, from personal experience, that you are wrong. As for the addiction part, its real for the majority of avid pot smokers. Again, I know this from personal experience.

[emad]

3. "Extra high strength" was just an excuse to put up the price of an oz

UK price has trebled in last thirty years.

However, homegrown IS getting better in the UK all the time, maybe because of better/hotter/longer summers producing more thc in the plants.

Memory can also play havoc....remember all those joints years ago and how they knocked everybody out? THC has an effect on that.

[JohnnyRingo]

5. Ive been conducting "research" on marijuana for 35 years

I believe, overall, It's much improved from the 60's.

[gpandas]

8. my research of thirty five years agrees with yours...

just does not seem likely that quality (thc) of grass would remain the same considering new methods of growing, cloning, hydro,..etc. maybe these eu researchers can't get any good shit. sure, i had some great grass in the seventies, but also a lot more of inferior quality. maybe those brits need a little northern lights.

[immoderate]

7. It's bullshit

I've heard the number 30 times batted about a bit.

First, the best I ever had was and remains the mountain grown Columbian Cheeba-cheeba from about 1970.

Second, try a little logic. If old pot was say, 5% THC, and the new stuff is 20 times better, that would make it 100% THC!!!

All this improvement in just 30 years. And not by university botanists, but by hippies in the woods. Maybe our horticultural experts could take a lesson from these stoners. What other agricultural advance can compare to something being made 20-30 times more effective by a bunch of what, outlaws?

Who could fall for this crap?

--IMM

[JohnnyRingo]

11. Maybe I was just young and easily swindled in '66

but we never got "2 hit" weed back then. It was common to smoke an entire joint to get a buzz. *cough*
Since then we've seen hydroponic alchemists work the science to an art. *cough* An example of "building a better mousetrap" ?
Of course, I'm talking domestic. *cough* If one lived near a border town, and had access to Mex smoke, the quality may have been more consistent over the years. *cough cough*

[immoderate]

18. Oh there was Acapulco gold

and Panamanian red, and Jamaican black goonji, and Alaskan thunderfuck and Kona gold. And of course the above mentioned Columbian. My experience is that there is nothing to compare with what was then.

I believe the best of it is grown in high altitude dry climates, and out in the open, not in vats. But I'm ready to try what you think might be better.

Too bad that you got ripped in the 60s.

And there is no hashish around today that compares to what I saw regularly in the 60s and 70s.

--IMM

[onethatcares]

30. and there was, Maui Wowie, and Mexitaltan(?)

and a bunch of other good earth products that had no added ingredients.
Panama Red, Panama Red, what happened to Panama Red?

[gpandas]

16. agree number is bullshit , but...

why exaggerate the posted number of 10%? 20% and 30% originated with you. believe me, pot is not being grown by hippies in the woods. in some counties in the south marijuana is the leading cash crop, and i don't think there are many hippies involved. how long have you been away from the culture?

[immoderate]

19. The number 30 times came from a gummint speaker.

It might have been Hutchinson. I don't know if the people in the woods are hippies. I've met several, shall we say, entrepreneurs, that have grown stuff in N. California and in Colorado. They could be called hippies by some. They did produce some good product. But nothing rivaled the stashes I mentioned above.

My point was that scientists, with government and private research funding, toil long and hard in well equpped university laboratories, to create improvements in crops and only occasionally achieve an incremental breakthrough. Compare this to the claims of geometric scale the are made for pot with a decidedly less professional environment.

Who says I've been away from the culture? I AM the culture!

On edit: The posted number is 10 TIMES, not 10%.

--IMM

[gpandas]

22. if the pot you had from columbia..

was so much better than any you have smoked since, how did the columbians, who, imo, had little access to the laboratories and funds mentioned, grow it? there is probably no disagreement here, and i think people who say that the pot is stronger are talking about the pot that is available to them. not all were exposed to the cheeba in the seventies. i smoked sensemelia(sp?) in jamaica in '72 and it remains my gold standard. at this moment i am smoking mountain grown (west virginia) northern lights, and, i must say, it is doing the job. i guess we're both the culture. good eye on the per cent thing, guess i'm a little high!

[immoderate]

24. Indeed you are my brother.

In reality, I wasn't in Columbia to witness the growing, so I only know what I am told. But that wave has become my, as you say, gold standard.

I think it like the wine vintage, the right combination of weather and soil and location that made for that outrageous crop. And perhaps it is the subsequent commercialization that has led to the deterioration in quality.

What I am saying is that the so-called innovations of contemporary weed are illusary. They (the DEA, et. al.) are comparing today's hydroponic primo crop, which sure ain't bad, to run of the mill dirt they presume was prevalent in the 60s. Sure it is many times better.

They are ignoring the real good stuff from the past. Hence their outrageous claims. They compare today's apples to yesterday's oranges. I don't know if the same stuff is still grown. I imagine that since the horticulture advanced so much here it is too difficult or dangerous, or too expensive to get the great vintages of old, if it is grown there at all. I can imagine that some of the best fields have been wiped out entirely.

I don't think the 'Lumbians did anything so special, except to manage a superior crop. The growing conditions just favored it. Simlar to the way coffee and bananas grow best only in certain climates.

To sum up, I don't believe it is science that gives you the best crop. What science has done is made it possible to get something acceptable to pretty darn good in an environment that doesn't favor the production of primo weed at all.

Cheers!

--IMM

[immoderate]

25. And another thing...

Inspired from a post below. Consider not just the quantity of THC, but the quality.

THC is a class of chemicals, isomers, that have the same chemical formula. The geometry of the molecule determines the kind of effect. Some can put you to sleep, while others can give you the psychedelic, and other gives you the body high.

Again I think it is soil and climate that makes the difference. and the artificial conditions cannot (yet) mimic the great grass of old.

--IMM

[gpandas]

28. wonder why there is ...

so little hash on the market? we used to get dark brown hash with white lines in it. not available, or am i just old and out of the loop?

[immoderate]

29. I really don't know

I suspect it's got to do with geo-politics and economics. What little I've seen in the past few years wasn't worth smoking. What you are speaking of was always call Afghani. So that might explain it.

Again, I have some fond memories of the blonde stuff (called Morrocan) I had with me at the (original) Woodstock Festival. One-poke hash.

Who knows where it really came from.

--IMM

[jmowreader]

32. What those hippies really did

I did a little searching for the names of the psychoactive cannabinoids and what they do. This will get a touch technical, so I apologize in advance.

Cannabis contains 300 unique compounds called "cannabinoids." Most of them don't do a thing to you. The important ones, in order of potency, are:

delta-6-3,4 trans tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the most potent of the three primary cannabinoids. It was once the minority cannabinoid.

delta-9-THC is the one everyone knows about. This is the one that's primarily responsible for getting you fucked up.

propyl-THC is less potent than delta-9-THC.

The first metabolite of delta-9-THC is 11-hydroxy-THC. It has a greater psychological effect than delta-9-THC.

When THC enters the body, it attaches itself to two receptors in the brain: CB1 and CB2. The CB1 receptor is responsible for getting you fucked up. The CB2 receptor is responsible for all the therapeutic qualities of marijuana. (Marinol, the synthetic weed Nancy Reagan had when she received chemo, is designed to avoid CB1.)

Here's the trick y'all aren't getting: because the three active ingredients in grass are all tetrahydrocannabinols, the government tends to lump all three together in their measurements. You can't do that.

Say we've got two weed strains--Wisconsin ditch weed and Maui Wowie. If Wisconsin ditch weed contains mostly propyl-THC and Maui Wowie is really high in delta-THCs, ditch weed's gonna be a whole-joint (or whole-bag, depending on how bad it is) strain and Maui Wowie will be a two-hitter.

What the hippies did was classic Darwinian selection: if you just cleaned a lid, smoked half a joint and got a good high, you're going to retain the seeds for later planting. OTOH, if you just smoked the whole lid and didn't feel a damn thing, those seeds are going in the trash--or you'll gather them up and sell 'em to someone stupid enough to believe someone is gonna sell the seeds from the good weed. And eventually someone's going to think, what happens if I cross the good weed I smoked six months ago with the good weed I smoked three months ago? There are a few plants that make these experiments easy--marijuana is one of them.

[bitchkitty]

34. Hippies in the woods -

that's a stereotype that just doesn't apply anymore. I'm no hippie, and I'm a new grower (legally, in Oregon). At our (the MMJ group that I'm a part of) meetings we get all kinds of people. Many of the people in the movement survived the 60s, and I guess you could call them hippies, but they don't just sit around and get high while watching Cheech and Chong - they are activists, and the ones I know are wonderful, caring people who are trying to help the sick and dying.

[immoderate]

35. Point well taken.

I use a broad definition of hippie that more accurately reflects reality. I don't restrict it to ne'er do wells.

In a way, anybody who tolerates the smoking of weed and is generally tolerant falls under my loose definition. You don't have to smoke it yourself, or even love rock and roll.

The hippies I hung with from the sixties on were all active people. I think the idea of hippies as lazy slobs etc. is a myth. They had jobs, or businesses, or were creative people; some were in med or law school.

So I think we have no dispute over whom we are referring to.

--IMM

[CaptainClark23]

9. Availability & tolerance

I concur that there has not been much change in the actual potency, but the availability of the jucier strains is much higher now due to distribution techniques and hydroponics.

Also, there used to be so much brown seedy stuff around that most anything of genuinely higher quality was uniformyl regarded as "killer". To the point that one was unable to appreciate the finer distinctions in type of high a given strain induced (i.e. clean high, dopey high, sleepy high, drunk high, etc.). With the availability of higher quality strains, the consumer has become more discerning, and can really tell the difference between simple high quality, and sit-down-don't-make-any-plans-for-the-evening quality.

And so creating the impression that overall quality is more prevalent.

Just my toke, er, take....(bubble-bubble-woosh-cough cough)

[Warpy]

10. Gee, the government is lying about pot

What a terrible shock.

[JohnnyRingo]

14. Yeah...who knew they were telling the truth about crack

[AlecBGreen]

12. I smell BULLSHIT

200 mg in a joint? Thats 1/5th of a gram. That would be the thinnest joint on earth. They need to come over to my house and see how its done :smoke:

[drdigi420]

15. Stronger is better and safer

less plant material has to be smoked for the same effect

of course, the most dangerous thing that can happen to you as a result of pot use is being arrested

jail is MUCH more harmful than pot

the drug war causes MUCH more damage than the drugs do

[Bridget Burke]

20. "Big Taste" was always more prestigious....

And I salute the efforts of today's high-end hydroponic growers.

But here in Texas, Mexican pot has always far been more available. Most of it will do the job more economically. The price has gone up considerably since the old days, but that's just inflation.

Or, so I'm told.

[Nikia]

21. If it were stronger, people would just smoke less

It is just like if you used alcohol, you would not drink the same amount of Everclear as you drink of beer in one sitting.

[dutchdemocrat]

23. The fact is... it is stronger

But that does not mean better. THC levels have gone through the roof mainly due to cloning techniques and the emergence of skunk in the Netherlands and the Pacific Northwest (British Columbia especially). It is too strong now. I know - I live here - in the Netherlands. I would much rather smoke something grown outside in St. Vincent than the pumped up Skunk brain rot... it's too much. I choose not to smoke anymore.

-----------

<SNIP>

The names and addresses of 50 Dutch coffeeshops were randomly selected. For the purpose of this study, 119 samples of nederwiet, 42 samples of foreign marihuana, 24 samples of Dutch hash and 106 samples of hash prepared from foreign hemp were anonymously bought in the selected coffeeshops. In addition, 97 samples of the most potent marihuana product that were sold in the coffeeshop, were bought. As a rule samples of 1 gram were bought.

The average THC content of the marihuana samples was 14,6% and that of the hash-samples 20,6%. The average THC content of nederwiet (15,2%) was significantly higher than that of foreign marihuana (6,6%). Hash derived from Dutch hemp contained more THC (33,0%) than hash originating from foreign hemp (17,8%). The average THC percentage of nederwiet and of hash made from nederwiet was significantly higher than in previous years. The THC-percentage in foreign marihuana did not differ from the previous samplings. The average THC-percentage of the marihuana samples that were bought as most potent (17,2%) did not differ from the average percentage of nederwiet and was also significantly higher than previous years.

The price that had to be paid for foreign marihuana was lower than the price for any of the other cannabisproducts. Prices in Amsterdam were somewhat higher than those in the rest of the country. The THC-content of nederwiet seems to become higher every year. However, more samplings have to be done to give a final conclusion.

<SNIP>

http://www.minjust.nl:8080/b_organ/wodc/summaries/ewb02thc.htm

[mitchtv]

31. thanks Dutch Dem, I agree

I prefer the cheap Mex imports here in CA where all the Hi tech varieties are available. They cost four-five times more. I have smoked it all, Acapulco gold, Thai stick, Panama red, Lebanese blonde, nepalese temple balls-Mendocino red hair. I am happywith anything reasonable .
And remember kiddies...."Dope will get you through times of no money, better than money will get you though times of no dope".

[Ezlivin]

33. Opiated Thai Stick - 1977

They had to call it "opiated" because USians would not believe it was that strong without some sort of additive.

Plain Thai stick was the strongest pot I've ever sampled. One hit and five hours later you're still at altitude.

I've sampled many of the current strains (NL, AK47, White Widow, Jack Herer, Mazir e Sharif, Bubblegum) and none of them hit me like that Thai stick did.

Over and out...