Posted on 07/29/2007 10:33:27 AM PDT by cryptical
Heard the latest buzz about cannabis? Word on the street is that today’s pot is exponentially more powerful, and thus more dangerous, than the marijuana available some 20, or even 10, years ago.
The nation’s drug czar says so. (“We’re no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s,” John P. Walters recently warned Reuters; “this is Pot 2.0.”) Law enforcement says so. (Speaking to the Associated Press in June, United States Drug Enforcement Agency special agent Mark R. Trouville, who heads the agency’s Miami office, said, “This ain’t your grandfather’s or your father’s marijuana. This will hurt you. This will addict you. This will kill you.”) Pot dealers say so. (Advertising to your clientele that you sell only the most potent weed is an effective marketing tool.) Even most pot smokers say so. (Admit it. Who among you is going to tell your friends that you smoke schwag?)
Of course, just because people say something often enough doesn’t make it so.
Truth is, much of the marijuana available on the market today – just as in past decades – is fairly low-strength, commercial-grade weed. But don’t take our word for it. Read what the DEA has to say.
According to the agency’s 2005 handbook, Drugs of Abuse (www.dea.gov/pubs/abuse/7-pot.htm), of the more than 4,600 domestic samples analyzed by the government between 1998 and 2002, fewer than 2 percent were found to contain THC levels above 20 percent. (THC, for those who don’t speak acronym, is short for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, the plant’s chief psychoactive ingredient.)
A more blunt assessment comes from the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center’s 2007 National Drug Threat Assessment (www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs21/21137/marijuana.htm#Start), which states, “Most of the marijuana available in the domestic drug markets is lower potency commercial-grade marijuana.”
Perhaps the most reliable source when it comes to the subject of marijuana potency is the University of Mississippi at Oxford, which has been randomly testing seized samples of cannabis for THC content for over two decades. According to the university, average pot potency has increased over the past decades to roughly 8 percent THC.
That said, there’s nothing remotely or uniquely dangerous to health about consuming weed that’s 8 percent THC.
Unlike alcohol – or even aspirin – today’s pot still poses no risk of fatal overdose, regardless of its THC potency. In fact, any physician can prescribe a pill that’s 100 percent THC and nobody at the drug czar’s office seems to mind. Moreover, cannabis consumers readily distinguish between low and high-potency marijuana and moderate their use accordingly.
In addition, despite claims that marijuana alters the brain, it is important to note that THC – regardless of its potency – is surprisingly nontoxic to the adult, as well as the teenage, mind. Recently, scientists at New York’s Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research reported in the Harm Reduction Journal that they could find “no … evidence of cerebral atrophy or loss of white matter integrity” attributable to cannabis use in the brains of frequent adolescent marijuana users (compared to non-using controls) after performing MRI scans and other advanced imaging technology. (Read the study here: www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/3/1/17.) Separate studies assessing the cognitive skills of long-term marijuana smokers have also reported no lingering deficits.
But what about the suggestion that today’s pot is so strong that taking just one puff is a one-way ticket to drug rehab? Predictably, the devil is in the details.
Data from the federal Drug and Alcohol Services Information System confirms that more individuals are now enrolled in drug treatment for pot than ever before. However, this increase is a direct result of the fact that more Americans are being arrested for pot (nearly 800,000 at last count) than ever before. In fact, a new study published in June in the online journal BMC Public Health reports among the 27,000-plus adults entered into Texas drug treatment clinics between 2000 and 2005, a whopping 70 percent of them were diverted to treatment as a condition of sentencing, parole or probation. Faced with the choice of jail or attending drug treatment, most minor pot offenders – understandably – choose treatment, whether they need it or not.
So if today’s pot is essentially the same plant it’s always been – with any marginal increase in potency akin to the difference between a cup of tea and an espresso – why is the government claiming otherwise? Mainly to scare parents, particularly those millions of parents who may have, without incident, experimented with marijuana in the 1970s, when they were about the same age as their children are today. Fortunately for them, while the feds’ latest “reefer rhetoric” may sound alarming, there’s little substance behind the hype.
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good lie. Read the linked article.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2267/print
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And let us not forget that tomatoes were once thought to be DEADLY a sure fire pizzen which would stop you ded in ur tracks.
Let me guess, the Orlando Weekly is a free paper filled with ads for escort services.
Hell I thought they were talking about guns, cuz guns got that evil demon in them you know that makes people go crazy and start shootin’ folks all wild and out of their mind and everything.
I can't stand "today's tomatoes". I grew up in Iowa in the 50's and we always had great tomatoes right out of the garden and the ones we didn't eat raw were put up in Mason jars for later.
Here in Florida, the soil isn't right to produce a decent tomato (and, believe me, I've tried)....and the ones you buy at the grocery store have been genetically 'adjusted' to have thicker skins, so they ship and keep better, but they are only slightly tastier than cardboard.
Heck, I thought George W Bush and McDonald's were the current 'demons of choice'.
If you ever make it to Fairhope AL (across Mobile Bay from Mobile) stop and see the 'Tomoato Lady' at the corner of Fairhope Ave and Church St (i think it is). She has a knack for finding the ones that taste like 'the old days'.
"If Johnny has three *joints and he smokes two of them, how many joints will he think he has left?
* Come on...it was the 80's and they still called them joints/doobies/numbers back then.
What part of Florida are you in? Each County has a cooperative extension office which should be able to tell you how do grow a decent tomatoe. It can be done but a lot of prep work is required. You might try container gardening at first so you don’t bust the bank buying soil.
If you give up on tomatoes you can always grow okra. Which will grow to the size of a Winnebago if left on the vine.
Do you suppose some fiend may come up with a ketchup gun???
With the notable exception of “the swimmer”, you’re dead on. A meme I can get behind.
It worked good and my tomato plants 'monstered out'. I had little green tomatoes growing all over the place and we even got to taste a few that ripened.
Within the span of just a few days, some kind of fungus/virus/who-knows-what hit my plants and they just wasted away.
The Bay County Ag Extension office person that I talked to said (paraphrasing) "Yeah, that happens in this area".
That sure solved my problem (in that same efficient manner in which government solves any problem)./sarc
Pot heads crack me up. The excuses these clowns come up with to be stoned and lazy are just as funny as those old propaganda movies.
Who lets these suits talk? Today’s pot is not different than your grandfather’s pot. It might be stronger — that’s what selective breeding is for. But No it will not addict you, harm you, cause you to go insane. That is what we used to call a Lie, back in the old days.
The only people who tell you this stuff are people who’ve gotten jobs enforcing pot laws. Fairly easy work, fairly good pay. They’re very interested in preserving the status quo, and who could blame them?
Obviously, busting pot smokers is way easier and safer than busting real drug users, just like writing traffic tickets is way easier and safer (and more lucrative) than catching real criminals.
Those "Pot smokers are terrorists" Superbowl commcercials were produced by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They also wrote the DARE program. For a clue about what's going on here, google "Robert Wood Johnson Foundation" + "Clinton Health Care Task Force", or "universal health care".
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