3 ms·

Is anyone controlling for how much people smoke today vs in the 70s, quantity-wise? Strength is relatively meaningless on its own, except for first timers who m

Is anyone controlling for how much people smoke today vs in the 70s, quantity-wise? Strength is relatively meaningless on its own, except for first timers who might get caught out. Our baseline genetic tolerance hasn't changed since the 70s. People generally take/drink/smoke as much as it takes to get to where they want to be. I might drink a 0.5L of beer, or I might have a shot of liquor, but I won't have 0.5L of vodka because I'm a thinking human being who realizes that vodka is much stronger than beer. Ditto for low potency 70s cannabis vs fancy 90% extracts today.

NopeNoWay 3y ago
How would anyone control it? That's more than kinda Big Brother. And the inverse issue with legalization, or even just legalization for medical use, is that it drives down the price, thus increasing the accessibility of the product still being sold illegally...you know, the totally unregulated stuff.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  I meant "control" in a scientific sense, it's the second most important variable that these articles never mention. Dosage of actives = Potency x Quantity. If you say that potency of cannabis is 3x higher than it used to be, that's significant, but you need to qualify that by saying how much a typical user would consume in 1 sitting. 1) If people smoke as much as they did in the 70s then they're ingesting 3x as much THC. I believe that this can cause more mental health issues, but it has everything to do with the total consumption of THC, not potency of the product. 2) If they're smoking 1/3rd as much as they did in the 70s then their total THC intake hasn't changed and there must be other explanations for increased mental health issues. Perhaps most notably, severe mental health issues have been on the rise since the dawn of social media. This lack of nuance makes the article alarmist rather than genuinely informative. It only serves to further perpetuate myths and simplistic takes like "cannabis is unsafe because it's too strong".

NopeNoWay 3y ago

How would anyone control it? That's more than kinda Big Brother. And the inverse issue with legalization, or even just legalization for medical use, is that it drives down the price, thus increasing the accessibility of the product still being sold illegally...you know, the totally unregulated stuff.

dns_snek 3y ago
I meant "control" in a scientific sense, it's the second most important variable that these articles never mention. Dosage of actives = Potency x Quantity. If you say that potency of cannabis is 3x higher than it used to be, that's significant, but you need to qualify that by saying how much a typical user would consume in 1 sitting. 1) If people smoke as much as they did in the 70s then they're ingesting 3x as much THC. I believe that this can cause more mental health issues, but it has everything to do with the total consumption of THC, not potency of the product. 2) If they're smoking 1/3rd as much as they did in the 70s then their total THC intake hasn't changed and there must be other explanations for increased mental health issues. Perhaps most notably, severe mental health issues have been on the rise since the dawn of social media. This lack of nuance makes the article alarmist rather than genuinely informative. It only serves to further perpetuate myths and simplistic takes like "cannabis is unsafe because it's too strong".