God made weed. George Washington, the father of our country, grew and probably smoked it. The Chinese have been using it for millennia to treat a variety of conditions. Cannabis grows naturally and that’s a good thing. I love having conversations with people who point out these facts because they are true. Finding things to agree on with the pro-weed crowd is refreshing, even if it does little to advance their position that THC should be commercialized. We can agree that Genesis 1:12 says, “And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seeds according to its kind . . .” That our first president did most likely grow, and at times, smoke “hemp.” Marijuana is listed as one of the fifty fundamental herbs of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). We can agree on those things. We agree that the fibers of the plant were a valuable cash crop giving us textiles galore—and hanging rope—back when our founding fathers did their thing and needed that stuff.
We can also agree that it was a plant/drug that was demonized, and much of that demonization clearly had origins inside the deep-rooted and institutionalized racism that defined many of our laws in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. The way “the man” hated and persecuted weed undoubtedly had much to do with the hatred and desire to persecute people of color and other immigrants in this country.
What the pro-weed lobby has done masterfully is take up these centuries-old uses and decades-past injustices to peddle their THC. They have convinced much of this country that to hate racism and embrace old-timey ways is to consume genetically modified, mass produced, pesticide-ridden, energy-hungry weed being sold by corporate interests and private equity money. The alternative we are presented with is sold as social justice when, in fact, it is just another money grab; capitalism rather than altruism.
In this chapter we will take a closer look at how this plant has evolved and what the reality is today.
If I read the closed eyes and unenthusiastic faces correctly in the audiences to which I often present on this subject, the historical significance of hemp isn’t what people are interested in hearing about. They want to know how this changing landscape affects their lives today, and how 40-plus percent THC, potent weed changes things. In many ways what was going on around marijuana even five years ago is antiquated information. We want current information. To understand that current information one needs a little bit of history, so bear with me!
We first need to realize that while there are hundreds of chemicals found inside the cannabis plant, two are by far the most interesting: THC and CBD. THC is what gets a person high; CBD is another type of cannabinoid naturally occurring in the marijuana plant, and is where we find the most interesting potential medicinal benefits. While we can’t be sure exactly what is naturally occurring inside the plant (it’s been selectively bred for too long to increase the high) we do know that the natural levels of THC and CBD are under 1 percent. We also know that, in one of nature’s little miracles, CBD counteracts the psychedelic effects of THC. In other words, if the quantities of CBD and THC are equal you will have a hell of a hard time getting high by smoking/ingesting the plant. So nature gave us a plant with potential medicinal benefits that have very subtle intoxicating effects.
For fifty years we have been collecting samples of marijuana from all over the country and analyzing them in a lab at the University of Mississippi. What we have learned as shown in the graph below is that we have become better botanists over the years.
We have learned how to breed marijuana into what we want: a drug that gets us higher. As CBD has stayed the same, under 1 percent, THC content has risen to average over 12 percent nationwide back in 2014 resulting in a much more potent drug. In Colorado, a 12 percent sample would be very hard to find, we are seeing plants pushing past 40 percent today.
When I stopped getting high in the summer of 1996, the national average of THC found inside marijuana was under 5 percent. Back then we got our weed out of Southeast DC, and it was arguably some of the best on earth. Our stuff came into the nation’s capital through direct channels and was sold to us by kids, grandmothers, and serious gangbangers on 203rd Street right after coming in from Galveston and off the wharf. Our bud was world class. It was also likely around or under 10 percent THC.
I remember smoking once with a dedicated stoner in rural North Carolina; let’s call him “B.” B got high daily and assured us that he could out-smoke anyone we knew back home and that we didn’t know anything about weed because we weren’t smoking good ol’ Smoky Mountain homegrown. Being a rather accomplished cannabis consumer myself, I warned B that DC weed was as wicked a thing as there was out there and that he would do well to take it easy. I was assured that his tolerance was super high from his daily use and that he could take what we had without breaking a sweat. Thirty minutes and one joint later, B was passed out on the ground unable to say his name while we giggled and rolled up another. We ended up leaving that poor kid on his own in a field, no doubt wondering what train hit him. It was the chronic train straight outta DC! By today’s standards that would hardly even be “ditch” weed. It sure as heck wouldn’t pass for anything here in Colorado where we regularly see weed advertised as containing over 30 percent THC and where much of that weed is “infused,” meaning it’s sprayed with concentrated THC and then sold. The percentage of THC that stuff contains is anybody’s guess.
Let’s let that sink in for a minute. Thirty-plus percent THC is the norm now in Colorado, post-industrialization, and often that is just the starting point!
Recently, we have seen a few very credible studies that tell us why we should be concerned with higher potency weed. It turns out that more THC is likely very bad for one’s brain. While we have yet to study anything stronger than 16 percent weed officially, what we have learned from the studies is that the higher the THC the higher the likelihood of psychosis and the lower the function of the corpus callosum, a part of the brain that consists of nerve fibers responsible for communicating between the two halves of the brain. More THC not only reduces the brain function of very healthy areas, it likely promotes dysfunction in areas that lead to severe mental illness. While The Lobby scrambles to cover these studies up and question the sound science behind them, our kids keep getting the message that weed is a natural and safe substance that should be used to promote good mental and physical health. While these claims can be easily refuted scientifically, the message that weed is safe and natural has had its desired effect; more and more kids are getting high and the business owners are raking in the money with no thought to the long-term effects of what they are promoting.
Ten years ago, the idea of 20 percent THC in weed was a pipe dream. If somebody said they had something that potent, the editors at High Times would have laughed them out of the room and asked for some of what they were smoking. We didn’t think that much THC could be crammed into marijuana. This lack of foresight didn’t take into account a virtually unregulated commercial market and the power that money has to drive innovation. We therefore didn’t start any long-term studies on the effects of real-world weed, so the science is way behind The Industry.
The reason why studies need to be longitudinal (long term) lies in the very nature of marijuana as a drug. It is not something that devastates the user right away; it’s a slow burn, so to speak. Weed takes a while to have negative effects on users, it doesn’t typically happen overnight. This is one of the reasons why marijuana addiction is so hard to treat. By the time people recognize they have a problem and seek help for it, they have typically been going down that road for many years.
To better illustrate what I mean, if you were to put down this book and start smoking meth a few times a week we would see the negative effects on your life pretty quickly. You would become physically dependent on the drug and would likely do all kinds of stuff that would be huge warning signs to those who loved you. They would know pretty quickly that you were on a pathway to destruction and would pull out all the stops to get you help.
On the other hand, were you to put this book down and decide to make THC a regular part of your life, it wouldn’t be as noticeable to your friends and family right away. They might laugh about it with you and talk behind your back about subtle changes they noticed, but for the most part you wouldn’t have them calling an interventionist to get you into treatment right away. We might check back in a year or two later to find that you still had a job, didn’t have multiple driving-under-the-influence charges, and were doing okay. We might also find that you had moved back in with your parents and gotten really good at “Call of Duty” (that’s a popular video game, old people). In my field, we don’t typically see someone who has had the wheels come completely off within a short time of starting to smoke weed. While this isn’t the case with other forms of THC, for example, concentrates, it makes early intervention much harder and therefore treatment more difficult. It also drives home the importance of long-term studies.
To understand the negative effect that THC is having on a person’s life, it takes time, sometimes several years. Furthermore, studies looking at the effects of THC take time to produce. That doesn’t mean we can’t make some pretty solid guesses about what we will see with a higher potency weed, but we can’t say empirically. As potency has increased so has the need for credible long-term studies on its effect but rather than wait for the results our federal government has decided to allow The Industry to drive the market and make super-high-potency weed the norm. Unfortunately, that genie can’t be put back into the bottle. Crazy strong weed is here to stay. To me, that means that we had better start to change the narrative around marijuana in this country.
As I write this, a Colorado-based nonprofit group called “Smart Colorado,” has begun a billboard campaign aimed at changing the dialogue. Their mission is to: “protect the public health and safety,” especially for Colorado youth as marijuana becomes commercialized and increasingly available. The billboards are simple but profound. Over the face of a child covered in the Colorado state flag it asks the question, “Dad, is today’s pot a hard drug?”
Not only do we need to ask this question, we need to demand that our politicians answer it, especially those enjoying huge campaign contributions from The Industry. What the generations before us smoked isn’t what kids today are using. The 2 percent THC weed of the Woodstock era is gone; it has been replaced by something with a potency unimaginable a few years ago and consumable in forms that we never thought possible. Passing a joint while listening to Joe Walsh is a different experience than popping a handful of gummy bears, each containing ten times the legal limit of THC per serving, and then hitting a 90 percent THC dab on a super-heated needle because the high hasn’t kicked in from the candy yet. Eating a brownie baked with weed inside isn’t the same as drinking a sugary soda with 350 milligrams of THC flavored like sour apples and clearly packaged to be consumed in one sitting. We have little idea what those more potent forms of THC are doing to the brains and bodies of their users, but The Industry doesn’t seem to care as long as there’s a dollar to be made.
Let’s get back to the question, “Is today’s pot a hard drug?” Any “no” argument to this question will have to find roots in the historical use of marijuana, not in the reality of today. Today’s pot is not what your grandfather smoked, it’s not what your father consumed, heck it isn’t even what I smoked! It has been specifically bred, modified, and manufactured to pack the strongest punch it can possibly hold. This is not an argument about marijuana or cannabis, it’s about THC. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can start making laws that reflect the true nature of today’s situation. What we are dealing with today is an industry promoted by a lobby hell-bent on getting people to ingest THC any way they can. If that means they put it into a cookie then so be it. “Repurposed” candies? You bet. Concentrates? Even better.
You might be surprised by this list of THC-infused products:
|
Coffee |
Breath spray |
|
Ice cream |
Intimate oils |
|
Frosting |
Pills |
|
Baked goods |
Toffee |
|
Suckers |
Granola |
|
Cotton candy |
Caramels |
|
Soda |
Gum |
|
Tea |
Marinara sauce |
|
Hot cocoa |
Baklava |
|
Breath mints |
. . . and the list grows every day. |
People today are not just smoking weed, they are popping it between classes, sucking on it while driving, drinking it before work, chewing on it while talking to you, and eating it as dessert. THC is not only stronger than ever before, it’s increasingly in everything you could ever desire and we are gobbling it up with no thought to the consequences. We can’t just talk about weed, we need to understand and talk about THC and the consequences of ingesting this kind of THC in these new kinds of ways. There is nothing counter-culture about consuming THC, nothing historically relevant, nothing promoting healing. Today’s THC is mass produced to be as strong as possible and mass marketed to get into the bodies of as many people as possible. When today’s consumers hear “weed” they are thinking about THC in all its ever-evolving forms, not a plant found in nature—are you?