Here’s an odd thing. While we have all this definitive proof about the strength of marijuana increasing over the years based on the detailed observations of stoners, nobody has mentioned that alcohol has decreased in potency. When I was in high school a 6 pack of beer would get me totally shit-faced. Now I can’t drink beer fast enough to get drunk, so I have to drink a lot of vodka to get pleasantly buzzed. And I have to drink a lot of vodka for a long time to get shit-faced. So maybe they’ve been taking something out of the ethanol and putting it in the THC. Also, the music used to be better too.
oops, see next
Spectre of Pithecanthropus, the MSDS didn’t describe how the LD50 was measured. It is probable that they used concentrated THC rather than just burning or grinding plants. They need to know the actual THC dosage, after all.
And you are correct, extracting from the LD50 what that means for an actual smoking session is going to be a bit of a gamble. Concentrations of THC and confounding effects of other chemicals, plus variations in the amount of absorbtion and such, is all going to affect how much the person actually gets.
But LD50 is a standard method of measuring toxicity, and these problems are always inherent in comparing the individual cases trying to guess dosage to the actual known test samples.
At best, if I know the LD50 for THC in humans is, say, 5 grams per Kg, that is going to mean there’s a lot more room for mega dosing than learning the LD50 on THC is 5 micrograms/kg.
Extrapolating from the numbers on the wiki link or MSDS is a bit sketchy. It doesn’t list an inhalation LD50 for dogs, only oral. The oral LD50 for dogs is 525 mg/kg, which compares lower than the oral LD50 for rats, 666 mg/kg. But that number is mysterious, because there is an oral LD50 for rats at 666 mg/kg, but then the oral LD50 for female rats is given as 730 mg/kg, and the oral LD50 for male rats is given as 1270 mg/kg. So how can the average LD50 be lower than both the female and male LD50 doses? 
Be that as it may, the LD50 for rats vs dogs appears to be similar range. The oral LD50 for mice is slightly lower, at 482 mg/kg. So the scale isn’t linear by size, there appear to be other confounding factors, but the range across those three suggests that they are more similar than different.
Then look at the inhalation LD50 for rats is 42 mg/kg. That puts it a factor of 10 smaller, at least.
Speculating that humans would be similar, that puts an approximate guess for back of envelope comparisons at around 50 mg/kg. For a 200 lb/90 kg adult male, that works out to 4500 milligrams of THC inhaled. That’s 4.5 grams of THC, not the plant matter that it comes from. I don’t know how many grams of THC are in the average joint, but I suspect one could smoke a block of pot the size of a couch before getting close to that limit.
That suggests that it is nearly impossible for someone to actually kill themselves smoking pot. You’d need to set up a bonfire in a confined space or something before getting enough.
Of course, if you start getting some of that superweed, that might cut the size of that block from couch to a loaf of bread. That might start to put it in the range of possibility.
And I realize there are so many SWAGs in there that the error bars on my BOE calc are wider than the Grand Canyon.
While there are many stoner reminiscences of dubious value ( 
), there is also a certain amount of harder evidence that pot has, overall, increased in potency.
And small wonder, considering the amount of effort - by pros and amateurs alike - to breed more potent strains, using all the technology available. It would be remarkable if pot did not tend to increase in potency!
Anecdotally, back in my irresponsible youth I was intrigued by assertions that THC was an “LSD-like hallucinogen” at very high doses, and so set about doing by level best to ingest as much as possible at one go. I made capsules of red oil, finger hash, and just enough pulverized bud to soak up mist of the oil.
Most of my friends complained that just one of these was too incapacitating, for too long. To get the “massive dose of THC effect” I was looking for, I took ten.
I wouldn’t recommend it. I was laid out like a lump, and couldn’t really focus enough to watch a movie or anything. There were some visual effects, but only closed-eye geometric patterns, not anything “LSD-like.” A little bit of stomach upset, but nothing terrible. Went to sleep listening to music in short order, and woke up the next day chirpy.
My impression is that even if you go to absurd lengths to try to get as much THC into you at once as you can, your main worry is falling asleep in the road.
So what does it mean to say marijuana has THC levels “as high as 40 percent”? Percentage of the original herb, by weight? By volume? Plants are mostly cellulose. It’s hard to believe that any plant could be 40% THC.
Checks the statute of limitations
Friend of mine once made an acetone extract of marijuana*, resulting in this black tarlike substance (is that hash oil? I have no idea; I don’t think they usually use acetone to make hash oil) that we mixed with powdered sugar and rolled into little balls. 5ml of this goo made over 30 little balls, each a dose that would last about 8-10 hours. I loved the stuff! Definitely some very, very potent shit, and while I never had a problem with it, my husband at the time had a very bad “trip” from just one little THC ball. He started speaking in tongues, became completely and utterly disoriented, and paranoid like you wouldn’t believe. (Didn’t help that the police chose that night to walk through the campground and do their obligatory, “oh, sure, we’re watching the hippies” to keep the townfolk happy. Hubby was certain we were going to jail for our powdered sugar residue.)
I’ve only had maybe-it’s-LSD once, so I can’t compare, but I did get these little checkerboard pixels that made moving pictures and fractals when I closed my eyes with the THC balls. I suppose those are “visuals”, but they weren’t terribly exciting.
*Like, at work (he’s a chemist) with a hood and everything, so it was fairly safe, as acetone extracts go.
So long as THC is soluble in the solvent, it’s hash oil. I usually think of black oil as lower quality but most black oil is produced with alcohol (or worse, alcohol and water) My oil was an alcohol extract, washed with water and naphtha, filtered through activated charcoal.
Sounds like his was not as pretty, but more potent. Sometimes I wish I was still young and irresponsible. 
Yes, I’m quite serious. I live in Chattanooga,TN. As far as pot prices go, there are at least two things in our favor:
- Weed grows well around here and there are plenty of places to do it. Folks have been cultivating killer weed here since the mid-seventies.
- We are on I-75 just north of Atlanta, a major artery for all kinds of drugs coming from Miami. Chattanooga is kind of a fork in the road (to NE and NW), and there seems to be some “spillage” here.
That said, I have definitely seen quarters here going for $100. It’s just that for $50, you can get quarters *almost *as good. Anybody that knows anybody ain’t gonna pay 60 bucks for an eighth, I don’t care how good it is.
Very good points.
Especially about the music.
I shall study on these theories tonight.
For those people trying to compare the cost of marijuana today with the cost forty years ago, remember that the cost of everything has done up by a factor of about five and a half. So if marijuana costs less than five and a half times what it cost forty years ago, its price has gone up less than the average inflation rate. In particular, if a quarter-ounce now costs what an ounce cost forty years ago, the price has gone down relative to inflation.
I saw an advertisement for keef (the crystalline residue sticking to high-grade weed) which claimed it was 43% THC. That’s the highest I’ve seen outside of a synthetic product.
Copy-pasted from near identical thread today.
Cannabis sativa as a species is no stronger than it was 50 years ago. For example, native cannabis from Thailand (“Thai weed”) is among the most revered by cannabis connoiseurs. Thai pot is not bred for potency, it just grows naturally with an extremely solid sativa effect.
Pot is not stronger than it was in the past, though you are more likely to find potent cannabis nowadays then you would back then. Make no mistake about it, weed with low amounts of THC (stereotypically associated with the 60s-70s) is still around, tons and tons of it, and people are consuming it with just as much zeal as the new pot. The people smoking more potent cannabis just make up more of the population nowadays, because more is available. This fact makes the typical generalization (“Todays pot is XXX stronger than yesteryear”…) fairly foolish. Pot with low amounts of THC is still prevalent absolutely everywhere. High potency hybrids are everywhere too now though, and that wasn’t so 50 years ago.
Answering your 2nd question: For clarity, potency isnt affected by whether the plant was hybridized. The Thai pot I mention earlier didn’t earn its revered potent due to selective human breeding; it’s grown unchanged for thousands of years. You can selectively breed 2 “brand name” strains from todays era (Skunk and Kush, terms you may have heard for example) for years and never end up with results quite like Thai potency. Selective breeding in and of itself does not create stronger pot, though it is a technique one can use to strengthen plants over generations.
And growing technique advancements are a factor, but they certainly wont make or break the strain. If you start out with an excellent variety like Thai, and grow it with dated horticultural techniques from the 60s, you’re still going to end up with excellent pot. You started out with Thai genetics after all. Conversely, you could apply todays cutting edge hydroponic advances, lighting techniques, etc, to a subpar variety and still end up with disappointing results. All of todays technology, worthless, if you don’t apply it to the right varieties.
Hash has been around as long as the 60-70s certainly, right? Hash is made by compressing and heating the kief you speak of. Afghani, Moroccan, Charas, revered hash among connoiseurs. Those roots dig way back to the 70s at least. I guarantee you at least the Charas of yore was comprised of kief more potent than the run of the mill kief youll see advertised nowadays.
Also, would you be surprised to learn that pure THC alone, without the presence of the cannabinoids and cannabidiols in the plant, only gets one “high” for about 15 minutes? Your average pothead is expecting to get stoned for an hour or more when smoked. Don’t let a high percentage figure impress you, even 100% THC only lasts 15 minutes. Look for CBD and CBN as well, these constituents are just as important as cannabis. They are just now starting testing and labeling some of the medical stuff nowadays with these designations.
You could get just as “stoned” 40-50 years ago as you can nowadays. They had hash back then too. The exception, oil and wax concentrated products exist today that would be impossible to produce with 70s technology. But wax and oil certainly aren’t cannabis, and couldnt be applied to a “pot stronger nowadays” argument.
This post from someone earlier is very important here. Everyone please re-read this post, the truth here mist be stressed. If you dont smoke pot, you must understand this tidbit.
“The fact of the matter is: You can only get so high from smoking pot. I imagine Cecil didn’t address this because there’s no way to quantify it scientifically, but it is true. Stronger pot just means you get high faster and longer.”
All these elaborate arguments aside, in the end, it’s just a pot high. YOU CAN ONLY GET SO HIGH FROM POT. This is quite disappointing to the youngsters trying to get blasted when they smoke the most expensive “superweed” trying to attain the strongest pot high possible. It’s good, but even the best of the best is just pot. Congrats kid, you smoked the strongest pot in existence; you’re still just high on pot. Even the strongest weed is just weed. Youll have to get your hands on some hallucinogens or opium if you want anything more than that.
Over the weekend I was at a gathering and asked this question of with 2 guys with considerable experience. Tho their responses/opinions not scientific, one of these guys was a major dealer at a Big 10 campus in the late-70s mid-80s, and another is a longtime grower for the medical (and recreational) industries.
Both of them immediately said, pot today is no stronger. They said you could always get the good stuff if you went to the effort and paid the price, but commented that the Jamaican and Acapaulco Gold that was readily available and cheap back then was pretty good in itself.
The issue is not whether it was possible to get pot as potent today as in yesteryear, but whether the average potency overall has increased. The generalization isn’t foolish because it is in fact true - if you are going out to smoke you are more likely, on average, to smoke high potency stuff today than in yesteryear.
What has happened is that the breeds of plant producing higher potency have spread throughout North American grow-ops. This has lead to the average person buying average pot experiencing an increase in potency.
There is no reason to suspect that pot is immune to the selection pressure that all other agricultural products are subject to - the “unnatural selection” that has lead to cows producing large quantities of milk and corn cobs increasing fron an inch to over a foot. In modern times, the pace of such selection has increased - with modern techniques, and lots of money at stake, selection pressure moves much faster, no longer taking thousands of years to make significant changes. Naturally, being illegal, this is going to be hard to document when it comes to pot.
Modern growers are more likely to have access to seeds from very productive varieties, and cross-breed them for desirable characteristics - production and potency. Over time, you’d expect the average potency to increase. And lo and behold, both anecdote (and what limited scientific surveys exist) supports that it has.
I’m not so sure that is the issue - at least as far as I am concerned. Because, as others have noted, even the best pot is still pot. And a pot high is still just a pot high.
As someone who always made an effort to obtain decent smoke, I was dubious of claims that smoke today was way stronger or different than what I had smoked then. So a bunch of folk who smoked ditchweed in the past are now able to smoke some decent weed? Good for them!
BTW - it was amusing and refreshing how matter-of-factly these 2 guys I spoke with stated that legalization, regulation, and taxation is a no-brainer. They make tons of money as is, with next to no risk. But it seems absolutely crazy, in today’s economic climate, that more folk are not demanding legalization as both a way to reduce expenditures as well as increase revenues, and spur development andf investment.
I agree that those who are arguing that the increase in potency means more danger have no case, if that is what the concern is.
Personally, I prefer the mellower stuff. The primo stuff I find sometimes has a different effect - it makes me anxious rather than mellow.
Well, yes. Obviously legalization is the way to go.