MARIJUANA POTENCY HAS INCREASED SUBSTANTIALLY
The claim that there has been a 10-, 20- or 30-fold increase in marijuana potency since the 1970s is used to discredit previous studies that showed minimal harm caused by the drug and convince users from earlier eras that today's marijuana is much more dangerous.
THE FACTS
For more than 20 years the government-funded Potency Monitoring Project (PMP) at the University of Mississippi has been analyzing samples of marijuana submitted by U.S. law enforcement officials. At no time have police seizures reflected the marijuana generally available to users around the country and, in the 1970s, they were over- represented by large-volume low-potency Mexican kilobricks. 8
During the 1970s, the PMP regularly reported potency averages of under 1%, with a low of 0.4% in 1974. Quite clearly, these averages underestimate the THC content of marijuana smoked during this period.
Marijuana of under 0.5% potency has almost no psychoactivity. While it is possible that people sometimes obtained marijuana of such low potency, for the drug to have become popular in the 1960s and 1970s, most people must have regularly obtained marijuana with higher THC content.
Until the late 1970s, PMP samples included none of the traditionally higher-potency cannabis products, such as buds and sinsemilla, even though these products were available on the retail market. When changes in police practices resulted in their seizure, PMP potency averages increased.
Every independent analysis of potency in the 1970s found higher THC averages than the PMP For example, the 59 samples submitted to PharmChem Laboratories in 1973 averaged 1.62%; only 16 (27%) contained less than 1% THC, more than half were over 2% and about one-fifth were over 4%. In 1975, PharmChem samples anged from 2 to 5%, with some as high as 14% - nearly 30 times the .71 average reported by the PMP 9
After 1980, both the number and variety of official seizures increased dramatically, improving the validity of the PMP's reported averages, although they continue to be based on "convenience" rather than "representative" samples.
8. ElSohly, M.A. et al, "Constituents of Cannabis Sativa L XXIV: The Potency of Confiscated Marijuana, Hashish, and Hash Oil Over a Ten-year Period," Journal of Forensic Sciences 29:500-14 (1984).
9. Perry, D., "Street Drug Analysis and Drug Use Trends, Part II, 1969-1976," PharmChem Newsletter 6 (1977).
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