Guy Does Math On How Strong Officials Say Weed Is Now

Author image for Eric Lund
Eric Lund
Sep 20, 2019 12:00 AM EDT

Every few years, government officials and experts come out and try to say how weed is 10 or 20 times stronger than it was a few years ago. Even using some grade school math, we're left with pretty astronomical figures on how potent weed is supposed to be. Activist and author  Dana Larsen put together a short thread on how strong it would have to be today if everyone had been telling the truth.

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    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen THREAD ON THE MYTH OF CANNABIS POTENCY US Surgeon General says cannabis is 3x stronger now than in the 90s. "This ain't your mother's marijuana. Not enough people know that today's marijuana is far more potent than in days' past." -US Surgeon General Dr Jerome Adams.
    via DanaLarsen
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    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen 2. Sounds like the weed they smoked back in the 1990s must have been pretty weak. Let's see what they were saying about marijuana potency at the time. In 1995, US "Drug Czar" Lee Brown told media that "Marijuana is 40 times more potent today than 10, 15, 20 years ago." II
    via DanaLarsen
  • 03
    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen 3. Here's what Joe Biden, then Senate Judiciary Committee chair, had to say in 1996 about how strong marijuana had become. "It's like comparing buckshot in a shotgun shell to a laser-guided missile." - Joe Biden
    via DanaLarsen
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    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen 4. So the 1980s cannabis must have been pretty weak then? Let's see... "The potency of marijuana has increased sevenfold in the past 11 years. Smoking 1 marijuana cigarette now is equivalent to smoking 7 cigarettes 9 or 10 years ago." - National Institute of Drug Abuse, 1986
    via DanaLarsen
  • 05
    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen 5. So if the cannabis now is 3x stronger than the stuff in the 90s, which was 40x times stronger than the stuff in the 80s, which was 7x stronger than the stuff in 1975, then we can only assume that the weed in the 70s was pretty weak...?
    via DanaLarsen
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    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen 6. In 1975 they said weed was 20x stronger than in the 60s! "The grass kids are buying in the schoolyard parking lot for $10 a 'lid' is not what it used to be. The potency of the Jamaican Colombian variety is 15 to 20x stronger than our 1960s variety." - Paul Harvey, columnist
    via DanaLarsen
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    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen 7. Here's the link to the article from 1975 saying that marijuana was 20x stronger than it used to be in the 1960s. in this country; its THC (tetrahydro cannabinol) content was less than one fifth of 1 percent, probably not seri- ously damaging. By 1970 Mexican marijuana began misled lawmakers concerning the re- coming into the United States in such quantity that it monopolized the mar- ket. This Mexican variety's potency lombian variety is 15 to 20 times gr
    via DanaLarsen
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    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen 8. If we take all this at face value, then compared to the cannabis of the 1960s, our modern weed is about 3 x 40 x 7 x 15 times stronger, which makes one modern joint equivalent to 12,600 joints of the 1960s variety!
    via DanaLarsen
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    Text - Dana Larsen Follow @DanaLarsen 9. Meanwhile in the 1950s they were reporting that a puff from a cannabis cigarette could drive people to insanity and murder, and often compared cannabis to heroin in its potency. Is our modern marijuana really 12,600 times stronger than that?
    via DanaLarsen

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