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.
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
If the police don't seize marijuana available to the public, wtf are they seizing? If they are seizing it, isn't it likely that it was on it's way to the street, or already there? Also...so what if the marijuana of the 1970's was represented by "low-potency Mexican kilobricks?" Doesn't matter...if what is on the streets now is stronger than what was on the streets then, the potency has still increased...
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.
What? No source, no study, no experiment to back this up?
Code:
Mean Percentage THC of Seized Marijuana, 1981-1993
1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993
2.28 3.05 3.23 2.39 2.82 2.30 2.93 3.29 3.06 3.36 3.36 3.00 3.32
Okay, that table looks bad on the message board...but anyway, doing a linear regression on the information given in this table (I'm using the linear regression feature on a TI-82, I'm not doing it by hand, but go ahead and check my math if you want...)
potency=.0598(year) - 115.939
That may not mean a lot to some of you...but according to that, the potency would now be 3.85%...and it is increasing every year. Also, the table doesn't include the data from the 1970s, which the site stated was of a lower potency than the later dope.
Oral THC circulates in the body longer at effective concentrations, and more of it is metabolized to an active compound; thus, it more frequently yields unpleasant psychoactive effects.
I didn't put the other quote in here, because it was a couple pages back, but it said that in order for marijuana to have become popular in the 1960s and 1970s, it would have had to have a higher THC content than the government was reporting in order to cause psychoactive effects...but if the psychoactive effects are unpleasant, why would anyone want them? Talk about being inconsistent...
Under the heading "Marijuana causes lung cancer"
Except for their psychoactive ingredients, marijuana and tobacco smoke are nearly identical. 21 Because most marijuana smokers inhale more deeply and hold the smoke in their lungs, more dangerous material may be consumed per cigarette. However, it is the total volume of irritant inhalation - not the amount in each cigarette - that matters.
Yes, while it may be true that you will get cancer faster if you smoke more cigarrettes, it doesn't change the fact that the smoking is what is causing it...and a few sentences later...
Frequent marijuana smokers experience adverse respiratory symptoms from smoking, including chronic cough, chronic phlegm, and wheezing.
Sounds like lung disease to me, I don't have any of those symptoms...and I don't have lung disease, either.
And they admit it!
>...an increased risk of cancer among frequent marijuana smokers is possible.
It is now often claimed that marijuana use during pregnancy causes childhood leukemia. The basis for this claim is one study, in which . 5% of the mothers of leukemic children admitted to using marijuana prior to or during pregnancy. A "control group" of mothers with normal children was then created and questioned by telephone about previous drug use. Their reported .5 % marijuana use-rate was used to calculate a 10-fold greater risk of leukemia for children born to marijuana users. 46 Given national surveys showing marijuana prevalence rates of at least 10%, these "control group" mothers almost certainly under-reported their drug use to strangers on the telephone.
Under reporting the drug use would actually skew the results THE OTHER WAY, in favor of marijuana...because it would mean that cases of childhood lukemia would show up in people who didn't report using the drug...and if you want to be completely objective, it doesn't actually make a difference one way or the other when you are dealing with PERCENTAGES.
Okay, that's enough debunking for that site...except that I challenge you to go look at the names of the sources they used...many of them have a clear bias, just from the titles.
http://www.marijuana.com/Exposing_no...95.html#note10
I'm never drinking (by myself) before a game again. And at least this time I'll avoid my teachers and uncle...oy...
I probably had a tally up in the hundreds for that movie. Alcohol's more the thing that I want to kill myself with - "I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then again I'm in no hurry"
