(And So Is Everyone Else) By Chris Roberts
Best Advice in MY Lifetime: You will be hated because you know something they don’t and won’t take the time to tell them….so they won’t have to take the time to read about it!
The Entourage Effect. – Bing images
There’s much more to cannabis than THC—for solid proof, look no further than the CBD boom—but when it comes to moving product on the legal recreational market, only two numbers matter: the list price, and the THC content.
Super-potent cannabis flowers, with THC percentages of 25 percent and up, dominate dispensary shelves. High-THC cannabis will sell out very quickly while lower-percentage weed gathers dust.
When cannabis tests at more than 25 percent THC, dispensaries can justify charging $75 or more for a store-bought eighth—because there’s a very good chance people will pay it, confident that they’re taking home the best and most potent weed available. If the weeds in the teens, well, it had better be cheap.
The problem is that this is all wrong. All of it.
Search Results for Cannabis Oil | Cancer Quick Facts (solitarius.org)
Dried flower buds of legal cannabis in Switzerland. CBD cannabis
like this may be excellent [+]AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
THC shopping is almost as bad and dumb as buying wine based
on how cool the label looks (which is also how some people buy weed).
Not only does THC content have nothing to do with how “good” the weed is,
as recent research conducted by the University of Colorado and published in
JAMA Psychiatry found; THC content is also a poor indicator of potency.
High-THC weed doesn’t even get you “more high”!
Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science documented the experiences of 121 cannabis users. Half the study participants were users of cannabis concentrates—very-high THC cannabis extracts—and the other half preferred cannabis flower.
Both groups received cannabis at varying “strengths”: flower users tried cannabis flower
at either 16 percent or 24 percent THC, and extract users received oil at either 70 percent or 90 percent THC. Researchers checked study participants’ blood and monitored their mood, cognitive function, and intoxication level before, immediately after, and one hour after use.
As the researchers expected, the concentrate users had very high levels of THC in their bodies after use. But they weren’t “higher.” In fact, every participant’s self-reported “highness” was about the same— “as were their measures of balance and cognitive impairment,” as CU noted in a news release. Medium THC flower, high-THC flower—
all the same high! This was not what the researchers were expecting.
“People in the high concentration group were much less compromised than we thought they would be,” said coauthor Kent Hutchinson, a professor of psychology who studies addiction, in a CU news release. “If we gave people that high a concentration of alcohol
it would have been a different story.”
Consider the cannabis flower users. Sixteen percent THC compared to 24 percent THC
is a big difference—50 percent “stronger.” How can users of such different “strength”
products report such similar psychoactive effects?
The short answer is a theory that cannabis connoisseurs and cannabis scientists have
been saying for years: There are many more factors at play than THC. Put slightly longer: Judging a cannabis strain on its THC content is not unlike judging a film based on the lead actor. The THC number isn’t going to be an indicator of the performance.
(One very large exception to this: edibles. If one edible says it has 100 milligrams of THC, and another says it has 10 milligrams, and you eat the 100, you will absolutely be higher, longer, than if you ate the 10.) There are a host of cannabinoids, including CBD as well as more than 100 others—most of which aren’t even tested for.
(Even if they were, would the average buyer know what to do?)
There are also aromatic compounds called terpenes that dictate how cannabis affects
the mind and body. All of these work in concert, a phenomenon known as “the entourage effect.” This is why synthetic THC simply didn’t have the same medical effects as smoking weed.
A good way—maybe the best way—to determine if cannabis will be good, or at least
good for you, is to smell it. But in legal markets like California, that’s now impossible.
Pot is sold in prepackaged containers. And the coronavirus pandemic eliminated what limited opportunities there were to smell cannabis. Some shops let you wave under your nose a designated “smell jar”—a few buds in a container with a perforated lid. No longer.
But back to THC numbers. Cannabis researchers know it’s not an indicator.
Cannabis growers and sellers know it’s bogus. And yet, here we are. The market simply hasn’t caught on—and merchants, by putting high-THC cannabis out on the shelves to satisfy the misdirected market demand, are ensuring that the misunderstanding continues.
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“It’s a shame,” said Neil Dellacava, the co-founder of Gold Seal, a San Francisco-based cannabis brand that specializes in high-end flowers. “I find stuff that’s absolutely amazing that I have to throw in the trash because it tests at 18 or 19 percent.”
At that level, despite “an amazing terpene profile, the best smoke I’ve ever had”
simply will not sell, he said. “People just don’t understand,” he added. “When people go shopping, they look for two things: they’re looking for price, and they’re looking for THC percentage.” Making A Batch of Cannabis Oil – Bing video
The THC fallacy persists despite everyone’s best efforts. Both Instagram influencers as well as cannabis entrepreneurs and advocates have tried to explain that the THC number is, at best, a rough estimate (and a number that, depending on the lab that came up with it, might be inflated or suspect).
With this much momentum, it’s unlikely science will change anything. It will take a long time for buyers to adjust their habits and realize THC content isn’t like alcohol by volume on a beer label after all. Until they do, connoisseurs can take advantage of the market inefficiency, and take-home superior pot with lower THC levels at a reduced price.
It will just require a little more work on the consumer’s end. But it will also require cultivators of lower THC, higher-high weed to have demand high enough to keep
them in business, and that’s far from guaranteed.
The Danger of Synthetic Cannabis
Without drug-testing, there wouldn’t be dangerous and deadly synthetic weed,
which has killed dozens. On the potentially lethal subject of synthetic weed, the news,
since legalization, is better, but still not great.
Though not wholly harmless, cannabis itself hasn’t killed anyone through overdose or misadventure. But cannabis prohibition absolutely has a body count. Between 2016 and 2019, at least 61 Americans died after exposure to synthetic cannabinoids, according to recent research conducted by scientists at Washington State University and published in the journal Clinical Toxicology.
Many more have become violently ill or wracked with disturbing mental or psychological trauma after using synthetic cannabis, with more than 64 percent of 7,600 documented exposures over that time frame requiring medical attention, the study found. (These figures don’t capture the full scope of the problem; synthetic cannabinoids are difficult to detect and use is often only detected after the user is in the hospital or the morgue.)
A broad term used generally to describe a range of potent chemicals,
intended to mimic natural plant-based cannabinoids and to bind to many of the same receptors—but in some cases, up to 100 times more powerful; the difference in impact comparable “to the difference between a hose hooked up to a fire hydrant versus a faucet with a slow drip,” in the words of Dr. Patricia Frye, a Maryland-based physician and cannabis expert. “Synthetic cannabis” is banned under federal and state law. (Plant-derived cannabis products created via chemical synthesis, including Delta-8 THC and Delta-10 THC, aren’t in this product category.)
Though not a priority for law enforcement, who still arrested hundreds of thousands
of Americans for marijuana possession in 2020, synthetic cannabis is notorious stuff.
Most often appearing in large cities, fake weed was the ultimate culprit behind a so-called “zombie outbreak” in 2016 in New York City, after several dozen people exhibited the same troubling dis-associative symptoms after smoking a particularly nasty “incense” product called “AK-47” Karat Gold.
Why would anyone use such dangerous and toxic stuff? And how can policymakers discourage such self-harm and solve what researchers described to Cannabis
Now as a “serious health threat”? The obvious answer will not shock you.
Nobody Really Likes Synthetic Weed, But…
Initially created in labs to understand how cannabinoid receptors work,
synthetic cannabis was never intended for use in humans. And perhaps owing
to the nasty side effects, synthetic cannabis use isn’t widespread.
Natural cannabis is far more popular. Even the estimated 0.2 to 0.4 percent of the population who do admit to using synthetic weed say they’d prefer natural cannabis.
However, there’s some societal “encouragement” for synthetic cannabis use: synthetic weed prohibition turns out to be difficult to enforce.
Synthetic cannabis doesn’t contain THC. Users won’t show THC metabolites on a urine screening, and so drug tests can’t detect synthetic cannabis, the study noted. Thus, anyone in a position to want a buzz and avoid punishment for weed, including US service members, may decide that fake cannabis is worth the risk.
Users profiled in another recent study, from researchers based in Spain, confirm this ready common-sense explanation: Because drug tests don’t search for synthetic cannabinoids, meaning people worried about losing employment, housing, or other opportunities for a positive drug test are willing to risk serious consequences to achieve something like a weed-like buzz.
In other words, drug laws encourage drug users to risk great bodily and mental harm they wouldn’t otherwise risk. They say so themselves. Synthetic cannabinoids “exist as a by-product of prohibition,” said Dr. Ethan Russo, a physician, neurologist and prominent researcher and author.
“Following the law of unintended consequences, the continued pervasiveness of urine drug screening for employment has stimulated the popular appeal of synthetic cannabinoids, which are not detectable on routine laboratory tests,” Russo told Cannabis Now. “The result is considerable attendant morbidity and mortality.”
In some places, this situation is getting worse.
According to the researchers’ findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, “synthetic cannabinoids are increasingly gaining popularity and replacing traditional cannabis.” However, that’s not the case in the US, where a simple and popular policy intervention leads to a decline in synthetic cannabinoid exposure (and related deaths and hospitalizations) of more than 37%. Only 5.5% of the synthetic cannabinoid poisonings tracked in the study occurred in states with legalization laws. This magic public-health solution is allowing people to use cannabis safely and legally.
With Synthetic Cannabis, Legalization Saves Lives
As the Washington state researchers noted, synthetic cannabinoid exposures declined in the US starting in 2016—the same year that four states (California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada) legalized adult-use cannabis for adults 18 and over.
Of the exposures that were recorded, most–-56%–-occurred in states “with restrictive cannabis policies at the time of the exposure,” the researchers wrote. When a state passed a law with a more “permissive cannabis policy,” synthetic cannabinoid exposures reduced by 37%, they added.
This amounted to an “association” between “liberal policies (legalization) for natural cannabis and declines in reported synthetic cannabinoid poisonings,” they concluded. “This finding suggests a potential effect of policy change on substance use behaviors that may have long-term public health implications.”
Tracy Klein, the lead researcher and a professor in Washington State University’s College of Nursing, didn’t respond to a request for comment. But other experts, including Frye and Russo and Peter Grinspoon, a Boston-based physician and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, accepted the findings as a strong endorsement for cannabis legalization as a public-health intervention.
Synthetic cannabis harms people, but people don’t want to use it when natural cannabis is available. When natural cannabis is available, people don’t use it. Legalization saves lives. Could there be a simpler proposition?
“The rules of society have created this problem,” Russo said, “one that should no longer exist once a legal and regulated market for cannabis is established.”
“Legalizing cannabis, in the adult-use market, would certainly eliminate the need for experimenting with these potentially deadly chemicals,” Frye said.
Chris Roberts Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Chris Roberts, Author at Marijuana Moment
The Truth about THC – Bing video
I’m an award-winning investigative reporter and I have covered the legalization –
and the cannabis industry with a political economy lens for more than a decade.
I launched northern California’s first cannabis-centric print vertical and founded
San Francisco’s first dedicated drug-policy column. My work’s been featured in VICE,
The Daily Beast, The Guardian, Deadspin, Observer, Curbed, Leafly News, High Times,
SF Weekly, and many other places. I hold a master’s degree in politics from Columbia
Journalism School.
So Forth: I wanted to find out for myself firsthand:
which nute company dominates in 4 key areas that are most important to me:
– stability/ nute cooperation (I don’t want to have a drop of sweat fall in the reservoir and throw off the ph) I also want the EC to be on point to the companies’ provided guidelines, especially if I’m following the instructions properly.
– yield (obviously)
– growth rate (I want to see you stretch, baby)
– root density and health (should look like a healthy mess of tiny tentacles)
I accept.
It’s not much of a comparison if you’re using completely different seeds.
Your results could be purely genetic, and you would never know.
Nutrients for plants are a lot like gasoline.
It’s All About the Differences in Gas Blends?
It really only matters if it’s so bad the car/plant can’t use it. That’s not to say all fertilizers are the same but if you’re running a lineup that’s marketed towards Cannabis, you’re going to have the stuff you need to feed your plants. Growing is all about balance, because something works once for someone does not mean it will always work for everyone.
The most important part is finding what works best for you, there is no one size fits
all best answer for any questions related to growing.
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CBD (Cannabidiol)
Analgesic
Anti-Inflammatory
Anti-Ischemic
Antibacterial
Anticancer
Antidiabetic
Antiemetic
Antiepelitic
Antiproliferative
Antipsychotic
Antispasmodic
Antopsoriatic
Anxiolytic
Bone-Stimulant
Immunosuppressive
Intestinal Anti-Prokinetic
Neoroprotective
Vasorelaxant
THCV (Tetrahydrocannabivarin)
Anorectic
Antiepileptic
Bone-Stimulant
CBG (Cannabigerol)
Antibacterial
Antiproliferative
Bone-Stimulant
CBC (Cannabichromene)
Analgesic
Anti-Inflammatory
Antimicrobial
Antiproliferative
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THCA (Tetrahydrocannabinolic Acid)
Antiproliferative
Antispasmodic
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Sian Ferguson is a freelance health and cannabis writer based in Cape Town,
South Africa. She’s passionate about empowering readers to take care of their mental and physical health through science-based, empathetically delivered information.
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