Average Pot Potency No Stronger, Study Says

July 1, 2004 - Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon, Portugal: The overall strength of marijuana available in Europe has remained stable despite claims from US officials and others that it has increased significantly in recent years, according to a study released this week by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

The study, which analyzed the potency of marijuana seized by police between 1995 and 2002, is the first-ever European review of cannabis potency.

"There is no evidence of a significant increase in potency," authors determined. "Today's report shows that effective potency of cannabis in nearly all EU countries has remained quite stable for many years, at around 6-8 percent THC."

Average pot potency in the Netherlands was higher than the EU average, authors noted, because domestically-produced, indoor cannabis is more widely available there than in other European nations.

Average potency of US pot is between 4 and 5 percent THC, according to federal statistics.

In recent years, US Drug Czar John Walters and other anti-drug officials have alleged that today's marijuana is, on average, some "30 times" more potent than the pot available in the 1960s and 1970s.

I can't tell what the policies on marijuana are in any of the three states I know best (Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio). I encounter marijuana smokers once or twice every week - - they are on the maternity units of hospitals having babies, and often times they have positive urine drug tests, recurrently over the course of their pregnancies. Women also deliver nicotine, alcohol and cocaine directly into the bloodstream of their unborn babies.

I wish it were not true, but I am almost never evangelical about what action ought to be taken. I can tell you that the representatives of local government who see these women and their families (i.e., family and child welfare agency staff people) will not go see a judge when mothers smoke marijuana, nor when they drink (way) too much beer. They (the case workers) are, after all, hired to be helpers, and they are not (directly) in the business of law enforcement.

I'm not opposed to decriminalization of marijuana; it ought to be like a parking ticket, it seems to me. So should walking down the street drunk on malt liquor, after the bars close.

Neither substance has any business in the direct bloodstream connection which binds an unborn baby to its mother (fathers are just as guilty, but the consequences are rather dissimilar). And I do not believe that decriminalization will do anything to reduce this problem.

I didn't read the Rick Steves speech, cited above - - and essentially nothing that I have posted here has anything to do with my knowledge of Europe travel.

Best wishes,

Rex

I'm w/Rex. I can't believe the Gov't doesn't legalize it & then, of course, tax it. Then the dope smokers are paying for it, rather than me paying for the police to try & stop it.

"The news is not news. Reality tv is not reality. When you see steroids on TV, and Michael Jackson and Terry Schiavo and so on, nobody's talking about the big issues. I mean every day, if you care about people if you're into sanctity of life, every day three times as many people who died on 9/11 die in Africa. Every day because of AIDs. That's a real problem that can be dealt with. We hear about the tsunami, and then it's gone out of the news. And nobody tells us that every week there's a tsunami worth of innocent children that die of starvation on this planet. It's just structural poverty, and America is the flagbearer of this structural poverty around the planet. As good people we can encourage our neighbors and so on to become a little more progressive."

America is the "flagbearer" of "structural poverty?" "The news is not news?"

I guess one result of Steves' pot-smoking is the utter incoherency evident in his speech. God help the AIDS movement if he decides to "help" them as a spokesperson. He's done nothing helpful with this nonsense to promote the (debatable) benefits of legalized drug use.

Medical pot is legal here in Northern Nevada. I'm not sure if that was voted in state wide or not. My brother was a police office for almost 30 years and is EXTREMELY conservative, and has said that drugs should be legalized. I was kind of surprised, but his having to deal with it for so many years and seeing the "War on Drugs" as pretty much a failure, that was his opinion later on in his career. I tried pot in my wayward youth and it was disgusting..the smell and the taste!!! YUK!!!!

OK, three points:

1. Rick Steves makes several good points in that speech.

2. WRT the pot potency issue, it is a well-established fact that the strength of the more-expensive stuff here in the states increased dramatically, but it wasn't "in recent years" that this happened. It was back in the 80s.

3. I never touch the stuff. Not anymore, anyway. Makes me paranoid.

Anyway, this entire thread makes me want to dim the lights and put on a Yes album.

If potency has increased due to hydroponic cultivation, etc., this is a direct outcome of the stuff being criminalised in the first place. Allow people to grow a few plants in their backyards and the current industry virtually disappears.

Of course pot used to excess can be harmful. So can half the items on sale in your local supermarket, not to mention fast food outlet. If my taxes are to be spent on a war against drugs, I'd prefer them to be directed at heroin, thanks.

I'd prefer to deprive our police forces of the pretence that they're winning the drugs battle by posing against a backdrop of burning dope plantations on the nightly TV news while hundreds of kilos of smack slip into the country in uninspected cargo containers.

It is always easier to "go by the book" than to really look at the issue objectively to see what make sense.

To me, some big corporations are just as bad pushing high fat diets, or smoking as being "cool". How many people die from heart diseases from high fat intake, or lung cancer, versus from drug use? I don't have the statistics but am interested in finding out.

It's rather ironic, kswl, that the passage you quote and suggest is incoherent was the one I thought most thoughtful and cogent. I have long ranted to family and friends how Americans, in general, are left in the dark concerning news that relates an objective global view. [even subjective is OK if it exposes a topic] US news sources are <i>so</i> near-sighted that it shocks me, and to compound that - they count on us having the memory skills of a gnat.

Well, Nimrod, if Americans are in the dark about global issues it is because they themselves have turned out the light. There has not been a television in our house for seven years, and I can't imagine anyone attempting to get much actual news or useful information from one. The New York Times does a pretty good job of covering international news. And information, including news, almost always makes more sense if you read it than watch it.

As to Rick Steves . . . &quot;thoughtful&quot; and &quot;cogent?&quot; Not by most standards, I don't think.