CNN Rehashes the THC Potency Debate
May 19th, 2009 by RickIn an ongoing attempt to cover the explosive marijuana issue and the seemingly demise of the war on drugs, CNN’s Anderson Cooper talks about the supposed new THC potency, showing interview clips of Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project and John Walters, dinosaur former drug czar.
John Walters starts it off:
You have more people getting in trouble because there is a wolf in sheep’s clothing here.
This is probably the first honest answer that’s come out of this man’s mouth in a long time — although some people will keep it in the context of him referring to the higher potency of weed and others will know exactly what I am talking about when it comes to drug crusaders that need to take a long walk off a short pier.
The study that all this new information is originating from is through a Mississippi University that tested thousands of strains and have claimed that the THC level has risen to an all time 30 percent within marijuana. Just last year the THC level was supposedly 10.1 percent.
Bruce Mirken sees the new THC potency issue as more rhetoric from the government and opposition:
They’ve used these sorts statistics every year going back twenty or thirty years as an attempt to scare people. Oh my God, it’s a whole new marijuana, it’s way more potent, be afraid. It’s nonsense then and it’s nonsense now.
Mirken believes that if the claims were true, then a more potent marijuana would be a good thing:
THC is essentially non-toxic, so in some ways a higher potency marijuana is actually healthier because the main heath risk associated with marijuana is the respiratory harms of smoking and when it’s more potent people smoke less.
Walters, disagrees:
There’s no evidence of that, if anything the higher potency creates a greater risk of dependency.
Walters goes as far as saying that more and more people are winding up in the emergency rooms and that users may lose control, have trouble concentrating and sleeping — teenagers especially may feel suicidal. This, of course, is all bullshit, as the next day at the MPP website, Mirken commented on his interview at CNN and showed that Walters is a liar.
In a study entitled Vaporization as a Smokeless Cannabis Delivery System: A Pilot Study, published in the Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, researchers at University of California, used marijuana with THC levels of 1.7%, 3.4% and 6.8%. The study was to compare smoking and vaporization so the participants were taken through a “standardized puff procedure.”
Mirken writes:
Although the high-strength marijuana was four times as potent as the weakest, it produced a peak plasma THC level only about 20% higher, smoked or vaporized. This, the researchers wrote, suggests that either less is absorbed at the higher potency levels or there is “self-titration of THC intake,” meaning that “smokers adapt their smoking behavior to obtain desired levels of THC.”
Final note, Mirken brings another example to light of the mainstream news not telling the whole story:
I was disappointed that perhaps the most important thing I said to the interviewer didn’t get on the air. If potency is a concern, there is an obvious solution: Regulate marijuana as we do alcoholic beverages, and require the cannabinoid levels to be listed on the label. If consumers know what they’re getting — as they do now with beer, wine, or Bacardi 151 — they can adjust their behavior to avoid unpleasant surprises.
