THREAD ON THE MYTH OF CANNABIS POTENCY

US Surgeon General says cannabis is 3x stronger now than in the 90s.

"This ain't your mother's marijuana. Not enough people know that today's marijuana is far more potent than in days' past."

-US Surgeon General Dr Jerome Adams.
2. Sounds like the weed they smoked back in the 1990s must have been pretty weak. Let's see what they were saying about marijuana potency at the time.

In 1995, US "Drug Czar" Lee Brown told media that "Marijuana is 40 times more potent today than 10, 15, 20 years ago."
3. Here's what Joe Biden, then Senate Judiciary Committee chair, had to say in 1996 about how strong marijuana had become.

"It’s like comparing buckshot in a shotgun shell to a laser-guided missile." - Joe Biden
4.
So the 1980s cannabis must have been pretty weak then? Let's see...

"The potency of marijuana has increased sevenfold in the past 11 years. Smoking 1 marijuana cigarette now is equivalent to smoking 7 cigarettes 9 or 10 years ago." - National Institute of Drug Abuse, 1986
5.
So if the cannabis now is 3x stronger than the stuff in the 90s, which was 40x times stronger than the stuff in the 80s, which was 7x stronger than the stuff in 1975, then we can only assume that the weed in the 70s was pretty weak...?
6.
In 1975 they said weed was 20x stronger than in the 60s!

"The grass kids are buying in the schoolyard parking lot for $10 a 'lid' is not what it used to be. The potency of the Jamaican Colombian variety is 15 to 20x stronger than our 1960s variety." - Paul Harvey, columnist
8. If we take all this at face value, then compared to the cannabis of the 1960s, our modern weed is about 3 x 40 x 7 x 15 times stronger, which makes one modern joint equivalent to 12,600 joints of the 1960s variety!
9. Meanwhile in the 1950s they were reporting that a puff from a cannabis cigarette could drive people to insanity and murder, and often compared cannabis to heroin in its potency.

Is our modern marijuana really 12,600 times stronger than that?
10. Also, if cannabis was all bunkweed until fairly recently, then I wonder what these guys were smoking 2500 years ago...?
11. Here's an article from 1967 warning about a "more potent strain of marijuana... capable of addicting those who use it."

Experts warned against legalization because this new stuff was so strong! Unlike the weak weed from the '50s...

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/77415418/the-sacramento-bee/
12. I guess the cannabis in the 1950s must have been pretty weak? Well here's an article from 1947 warning about the "stronger marijuana weed recently developed in Mexico."

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/77415487/st-louis-globe-democrat/
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