'Pot 2.0': Where Can I Get Some?

from AlterNet:



'Pot 2.0': Where Can I Get Some?

By Paul Armentano, AlterNet. Posted October 20, 2007.


The feds have started issuing dire warnings about the potency of today's marijuana, calling it "Pot 2.0." Will it backfire and tempt more to toke?


Heard the latest from the Feds regarding their multi-billion dollar war on weed? According to warnings posted on the DEA's new website JustThinkTwice.com, today's cannabis is nearly twice as strong as the pot available in the 1970s and 80s. Sounds like its time for the Drug Enforcement Administration to don some new duds. How about t-shirts saying: "I've arrested millions, and all I got was stronger pot?"

Naturally, law enforcement and federal bureaucrats have little sense of humor when it comes to these matters. "We're no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s," Drug Czar John Walters told Reuters News Wire. (The Czar failed to explain why if previous decades' pot was innocuous police still arrested you for it.) "This is Pot 2.0."

Speaking recently to the Associated Press, DEA chief Mark R. Trouville, who heads the agency's Miami office, took an even more dire tone. "This ain't your grandfather's or your father's marijuana," he said. "This will hurt you. This will addict you. This will kill you."

For our friends at the DEA, here's a news flash. Unlike booze, sleeping pills, or even aspirin, pot poses no risk of fatal overdose, regardless of its THC content. (In fact, my physician can prescribe me a pill called Marinol that's 100 percent THC and nobody at the Drug Czar's office seems to mind.) Moreover, cannabis consumers readily distinguish between low potency and high potency marijuana and moderate their use accordingly -- taking smaller and fewer puffs of the "good stuff" than they do the "shwag."

Besides, isn't variety the spice of life? Last time I visited my local, state-sanctioned liquor store I had my choice of a head-spinning variety of alcoholic beverages, all of various strengths and sizes. I passed on the Bacardi 151, picked up a pint of vodka (80 proof) and then went next door to the supermarket to buy a six-pack of beer (7 percent alcohol by volume). Other customers made similar purchases. Nobody from the White House seemed terribly concerned. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/65594/

The fact is that, due to the breeding of high-strength variants like skunk and sensimelia and it's cross-breeding back into the original plant, the average THC content of today's cannabis is 40-60% higher than it was during the sixties and seventies.

The result is that it IS possible to be addicted to pot (or rather, it always was but the THC content was so low that no-one noticed). That said, you have to smoke large amounts for a reasonable time and withdrawal is only equivelant to a bout of flu anyway.

Of course, none of that means pot should be illegal. I've been part of the legalisation campaign for fifteen years and I don't even smoke the stuff. I just feel it should be regulated as an adult pleasure like booze is.

I smoked pot in the 60s and 70s that was equal to or better than some of the high dollar stuff today. Or what about hashish? Ever notice how the only people that talk about "marijuana addiction" are the ones badmouthing it. Withdrawal equivalent to a bout of flu is how I would describe the physical withdrawal symptoms of opiate addiction. I have NEVER experienced or heard of anyone else that experienced this with pot. I know what I'm talking about. I started doing acid while it was still legal and have at least tried practically every mind-altering substance known to man.

I'm pulling this from the UK's legalise campaign literature.

...was not pollinated by a male, thus it produces no seeds. "sin semillia" means without seeds. because the plant did not have to exert the energy to produce seeds, more thc is present in the flower. sinsemillia is usually obtained by growing the plants in a controlled environment where there are no male plants present and no chance of pollination. so you can't really cross breed sinsemillia with other varieties since sinsemillia is not pollinated and produces no seeds.

skunk is a term that has been used for decades to describe weed that had a strong pungent odor.

all that said, there certainly are varieties that have been developed by crossing strains that had characteristics that were intended to be propagated through selective breeding. i believe the trick is to get the right ratio of thc to canabinoids to create a strain that has the desired characteristics. different ratios can yield a different type of "high". this ratio is often achieved by breeding strains derived from C.sativa with those derived from C.indica.

... that eliminates male plants before they release their pollen, thus allowing the female plants to grow larger, more potent flowers. This method of production has been around for at least four decades.

Most researchers (including ones at the governnment's own pot farm at the U. Mississippi) have noted a slow and steady increase in pot potency (it has about doubled over the past four decades), though nothing that would change the dynamics of addiction with this substance. As others have pointed out, smoking is the best way to titrate any drug and pot smokers who have access to more potent cannabis smoke less of it to obtain the same (desired) effect. In fact, ingesting too much THC is not pleasant (ever eaten one too many pot brownies?) and that also helps users keep their dosage down.

Finally, really potent cannabis has its own immediate protection against "overdose" -- coughing. Pot smokers, even experienced ones, who inhale too much potent weed cough it out almost immediately. That is because THC and other psychoactive and nonpsychoactive (but medically beneficial) substances in cannabis are vaso-dilators, expanding the bronchioli rapidly. Thus the cough.

That's always been a pretty sure-fire quality control test for a new batch of cannabis --
you don't "get off" unless you cough.

When it comes to cannabis, there is always one sure-fire way to know when the government toadies are lying to us -- their mouths are moving.

My credentials: www.saveberniesfarm.com
www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Cover_Story/2007/04/26/Marijuana_Martyr/index.shtml

...it's a canard. The purity of marijuana just simply does not matter. Smokers smoke as much as they need to get high, and then stop. It doesn't matter whether that takes 10 tokes or 2. In fact, the purer the better -- less smoke damage to the lungs. Anyone looking for a "rush" rather than just to get stoned has plenty of options for doing it with even the crappiest weed -- milkshakes, gravity bongs, extracts, etc. The only people I've ever seen smoke like that, though, are frat boys who are just trying to impress themselves. The vast majority of smokers take a small hit to gauge the strength of the weed, and then adjust, because it isn't about a "rush" it's about the hours after that.

It's like saying a lazyman's lobster is going to make you fatter than a lobster in the shell. No it ain't. If you are determined to have lobster for dinner, you're going to eat as many lobsters as you need to feel full, whether you have to take them out of the shell yourself, or not.

different strains of cannabis have different percentages of thc and other cannabinoids and depending on the strain the strength and effects can vary dramatically.

to say that one can acheive the same high from a weak strain as they can from a potent strain by smoking more is like saying that you can make your food just as spicy with mild sauce as you can with hot habanero sauce just by using a whole bunch.

If you have any doubt that you can get very, very high off run of the mill weed by smoking enough of it, ask a stoner.

hemp has a low amount of THC. how much hemp do you think you'd have to smoke to get "high"? you'd get a headache and stop trying long before you'd catch a buzz.

you can smoke an ounce of schwag and you still won't get the effects you'd get from one or two hits of some of the newer incredibly strong strains. you couldn't smoke enough of the schwag to get there...you'd get dizzy, a headache or fall asleep trying.

You're talking about hemp and schwag, stuff that people generally do not try to smoke (only ignorant college kids will pay money for schwag.) That's a red herring. We're supposed to believe all the weed in the 60s was schwag? Not by a long shot.

A factor of 2 is not going to make the difference between getting a headache or not -- that takes an order of magnitude difference. Any commercial quality weed will get you high.




http://www.badscience.net/?p=389

You've given me a lot of anecdotal stuff here but no actual evidence. Show me some evidence that shows it is impossible to become addicted to cannabis and I'll willingly, happily retract that part of what I said.

...but since you mention it, that's a matter of how strictly you choose to interpret the word "addiction."

Marijuana is not considered to be "physically addictive" or cause a "physical dependency"-- that's a fact that you can easily find academic material about with a google.

Marijuana can definitely cause <i>psychological</i> "addiction." All you need to know that is to have seen one of the worse cases of it, but if you want backup for that, see the Institute of Medicine's "Marijuana and Medicine: Understanding the Science Base"

The hair-splitting occurs when you consider the lay-definition of "addiction." Certainly severe marijuana abuse qualifies as an "addiction" to your average non-doctor. Whether the use of the word by joe six pack for this reason is especially important, well I don't know about that... it may be in the respect that it tends to lay the focus on the drug, when in the case of marijuana, really that can distract attention from the core psychological problems causing the behavior. However, that's a question for a long time down the road, after legalization. Trying to run a public education campaign in that vein in the middle of prohibition would be an exercise in futility -- the drug warriors would go apeshit.

Where the hair-splitting really matters, though, is in determining proper treatment. There is a pushback from treatment professionals who get marijuana users -- many of which are not exactly abusing it -- court-assigned to their programs. They want them out, in their own programs, because the challenges facing their patients with serious physical addictions to meth, heroin, and coke really are a separate set of problems from the more psychologically oriented counseling needed to fight marijuana addiction -- even in the case of the real addiction not just the casual smoker who got busted and is trying to stay out of jail. There are only so many "slots" in these programs to go around. The courts shove them out to treatment to ease the load on the criminal justice system dockets/parole offices/prisons, at least where they now have that leeway. However, there are not that many drug treatment programs designed for marijuana -- there hadn't been much demand for them until the courts started to do this.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/393/mjtreatment.shtml

...but that's the kind of disaster we get when we move from "all use is abuse is a crime" to "all use is abuse needs treatment." Obviously the "all use is abuse" mentality is causing most of the problems here, and all we've done is mitigate the damage by preventing the victims of the law from being exposed to the the harms of a prison environment. Getting past that has to take top priority as a next step in drug policy reform if we are to fix this mess.

Anyway, the hair-splitting can really get quite academically arduous and also covers the word "dependence."

http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/11/2014-a

THC is a low-grade hallucinogen, hence more closely related to something like mushrooms, than poppies, in this regard. That is, pot is NOT an opiate.

Hallucinogens are distinctly non-physically addicting, however they are psychologically addicting. Psychological addiction, however, is not classic addiction.

So please don't spread rumors about pot being addictive. It isn't, nor will it ever be, no matter how choice the bud.

This is propaganda, pure and simple.

Give me a link or a source saying that and I'll be more than happy to retract that part of what I said.

One more thing: There is a difference between having out of date or imcomplete data and mouthing propoganda.

me to disprove what you said.

Where did you get that information?

"One more thing: There is a difference between having out of date or imcomplete data and mouthing propoganda."

Give me a link that shows this to be the case.

but smoking pot seems to be a self-regulating activity. When the smoker realizes that he/she is really stoned, there's no desire to keep smoking.

Contrast that with alcohol consumption - a subject with which I have some familiarity. How many times has a drinker gone beyond the amount of alcohol he/she intended to consume? When a certain point is reached on the intoxication scale, many drinkers lose all restraint and proceed to drink to the point of unconsciousness. I've never seen anything resembling that tendency among pot smokers.

Hell, I heard its at least 5 times a strong and I haven't smoked anything since the early 80's.. I bet today's shit would knock my socks off..

getting high. Keep in mind the strongest opponents of legalizing it are...
Tobacco industry
Alcohol Industry
Oil Industry
Cotton Industry
Police Industry
Yes I said the Police industry. those cops that make a living busting Pot smokers. they have the cushiest job around. as pot smokers don't pose a violent threat. thus are an easy bust. not nearly as violent as alcohol users, or rapists, murderers. embezzlers or say Diamond smugglers.
Pot heads are an easy paycheck.

nt

I haddent had enough of my columbian caffeine yet.

Wish I could get my hands on some of the stuf I was getting in the sixties. This is just advertising to justify the ridiculous pricing.

--IMM

THAT shit kills people, fast and slow.

For that matter, salt and aspirin would also be illegal since they kill more people than pot ever has.

Cannabis makes you talk too much, eat too much and laugh too loud. I don't want children using it, but I don't condemn a plant with a multitude of medicinal and industrial uses because some kids might get ahold of it.

The federal government classifies cannabis on a par with heroin and considers it more hazardous than cocaine, methamphetamine and ALL pharmaceuticals. Just how fucked is that.

Narcotic pain killers are some of the most effective pain meds known to science. There are obvious problems associated with opiates of course, but for patients dealing with excruciating pain they are very helpful.

I can think of no better way for the feds to completely blow their credibility by parroting the warning that pot will kill you. i. e. you can actually OD on the stuff. There has been no documented case... ZERO... where an otherwise healthy teen or adult bought the farm while smoking the (admittedly) stronger pot that's available today.

Let's step ino the wayback machine, to the late '60s or early 70s when hashish (from Lebanon's Bekka Valley, the rugged hills of Afghanistan, the lawless mountains of Pakistan) was far more common in the US than it is today. Let's face it, good hashish is WAY stronger than any hydroponic sinsimella you can geet on US streets today.

And how many otherwise healthy Americans died after smoking that Lebanese blond or that gummy (sometimes with opium) Pakistani tar??

None.

By embracing this long discredited "Reefer Madness" approach, the DEA is, if anything ENCOURAGING the use of cannabis and it's derivatives. People smoke it, logically conclude that it's not physically addictive or an inevitable precursor to "meth mouth", etc., and users are hardly in danger (think "munchies") of suffering from maltruition. Pot is not without it's health consequences. Smoking it does damage the lungs, although unless you're smoking 20 joints a day, it's hard to believe you'll end up with the respratory problems that your 2 pack a day Marlboro smoker can face.

It's a big lie, and like all big lies, it can be quickly and effectively discredited, and actually leaves the recipient of this propaganda attracted to that first hit. How the DEA can expect this campaign to discourage cannabis consumption baffles and enrages me.

For the record, I smoked pot from the late 60s to the mid '90s. As far as I can tell, the beer I drank did me more harm (beer belly), and the main reason I ended my cannabis habit was because it was getting too darned expensive. Remember, I'm old enough to remember when good Mexican weed cost about $170 a pound. Not an ounce, a pound. And a fine, full gram of hash was $7/gram. If it weren't for the economics, I wouldn't have quit smoking the stuff 10 years ago. And contrary to myth, I suffered no withdrawl symptoms. The shakes or the urge to rip off my parents or rob a 7-11 to feed my "habit" never crossed my mind. I just settled for Bass, the occasional bottle of Zinfandel (RED, not that undrinkable white stuff) and on rare occasions, a shot of Wild Turkey. And as far as that "gateway" drug is concerned, I've never done smack, coke or meth, and I never will. It just costs too much, money-wise and health-wise.

Why not just legalize pot, regulate, tax it, and accept for the relatively harmless vice that it is?

He said bureaucrats... heh heh heh...
Damn, this is some strong shit. Heh heh heh...