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by canucker2016 752 days ago
inserting myself into this thread...

from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312155/:

"Many people who have voted for legalization thought they were talking about the marijuana of the 1960s to 1980s when the THC content was less than 2%. ...

Prior to the 1990s it was less than 2%. In the 1990s it grew to 4%, and between 1995 and 2015 there has been a 212% increase in THC content in the marijuana flower. In 2017 the most popular strains found in dispensaries in Colorado had a range of THC content from 17–28% such as found in the popular strain named “Girl Scout Cookie.”2 Sadly these plants producing high levels of THC are incapable of producing much CBD, the protective component of the plant so these strains have minimal CBD. For example the Girl Scout Cookie strain has only 0.09–0.2% CBD."

from https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/not-your-grandmothers...:

"... In 1995, the average THC content in cannabis seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was about 4%. By 2017, it had risen to 17% and continues to increase. Beyond the plant, a staggering array of other cannabis products with an even higher THC content like dabs, oils, and edibles are readily available—some as high as 90%."

2 comments

None of those links give actual references for the percents (unless I missed it).

As an anecdote, in the late 90s and early 00s, the higher potency stuff was quite prevalent in my circles. The low potency dirt weed was was basically worthless and we would only get it if we were desperate, but it was readily available.

You have to follow the links for a couple of hops.

The key article reference is "Sevigny, E. L. (January 01, 2013). “Is today’s marijuana more potent simply because it’s fresher?”. Drug Testing and Analysis, 5, 1, 62-7."

Well good for you, but some people couldn't get the fancy stuff and didn't mind and actually liked the "dirt weed" and are sad it can no longer be gotten for love or money. You can't even grow your own either because in many of the legal states, it's still illegal to grow but legal to buy from a large cannabis corporation. What a boring dystopia and not at all what the punky hippy "LEGALIZE IT" types of yore can possibly have had in mind!
Yeah, as a Canadian who grew up in this time, it's comical to hear people talk about 5% THC levels in weed. The only time I've experienced something like that was down in Arcata when someone gave me some Mexican brick weed.
> Sadly these plants producing high levels of THC are incapable of producing much CBD, the protective component of the plant so these strains have minimal CBD

What does that mean “the protective component of the plant”?

I see CBD as the governor of THC.

High THC and low CBD you'll going to be higher off the ground than say a strain with equal or more CBD.

from later in that article:

"Human studies have shown that long-term (>10 years) and heavy (>5 joints per day) cannabis use compared with age matched non-using controls resulted in bilaterally reduced hippocampal and amygdala volumes (p=.001) and significantly worse performance on measures of verbal learning (p<.001).14 There is evidence that recovery is possible in humans as well. ... They found that cannabis users had smaller hippocampal volumes compared to controls but the users not exposed to CBD had an even greater (11%) reduced volumes (CBD appears to be somewhat protective). In the former users the hippocampal integrity was comparable to controls. ..."

summary: THC-only users had smaller hippocampal and amygdala volumes (HAV) than THC+CBD users, while former users had HAV similar to control subjects.