Was Marijuana Really Less Potent in the 1960s?

Also considering the size of the community I believe we could conduct studies that would dwarf the usual local ones by submitting factual lab results from samples collected all over. As long as you can legally do so in your local.

i wasent around in the 60s 70s 80 barly didnt smoke tell the 90s soo limited but i have a thery

sorce when i was young there was 3 kinds stress mid and cromic

and depending on where it came from was everything

stress was mexican dirt weed mid was normaly calie mass crops and cronic was greenhouse or hydro

im positive they could grow cronic in the 60s its all in the care of how its grown

yea with selective breeding we got some that have the potental to be really strong

but i doubt its more than a fyew % change untell they gmo it we wont see a huge jump plants dont work like that

final thoughts wtf dose it matter high % means u smoke less or u like to wast money and sleep alot ether way
iv yet to see someone od on pot but iv had 4 frinds od on things the doc gave them and 1 die from alcohol posioning
1 more died from painkiller od

hmm dosent add up huh

u know god forbid we legalize something to replace alot of rx drugs with something thats safe stop making since

Yes it is true you are all smoking GMO pot.....

The MAN pulled one over on all of you, you hippy [email protected]

I'm with you guys all the way but isn't this the sort of thread that will cost ATS ad revenue? Was there a change in T&C I am unaware of?

originally posted by: Sremmos80

originally posted by: and14263
a reply to: Krazysh0t

A stressed plant produces more THC. The law of averages means more bad growers, more stressed plants and therefore much stronger weed.

Where did you get this from?!

Have you seen the grow rooms of today? I would say they are far from being stressed.

I can tell you that stressing the plant at the end of the growth cycle does increase the thc level,the reason being is that you freak the plant out and its natural response is to produce more thc in the form of resin,it is its survival mode...so in the same sense if you want to grow a plant to second generation it is a matter of leaving the buds on the plant so during the winter period the plant sustains itself until the growing season starts again...

Important to note that the plant has to be happy for 98% of the growth cycle before being stressed,a plant grown in stress will just fail miserably

H.E. Warmke 1940's All I am saying is, study his life. You'll find the answers.

This is a good point that I never thought of before. I wonder how good the stuff sold in medical marijuana dispensaries or legal pot stores can get.

Out on the street, you can get normal stuff, but sometimes people sell "medical" for a premium... I wonder if that is a lot better than in the 70's, or just a bit better or what. I never smoked dope in the 70's so I don't know how strong (or weak) it was back then.

I never thought of questioning the line of thinking that "weed is getting stronger" before. People make it sound like weed in the 70's got you about as high as slapping yourself across the face once or twice would, or maybe holding your breath for 60 seconds before a nice exhale.

But judging from the music in the 70's, they had some pretty nice highs.

I asked my pops and he laughed. He said there was always good pot around, if you knew where to get it, and the pot dealers used to save the best for themselves and their friends. He started smoking in the 60's. A lot of the crap back then was buds and leaf mixed, no one buys leaf these days, all pure bud. Good stuff is probably easier to find these days, but there is still plenty of crap mexican stick going around.

I think it is stronger than the nineties cos all we could get was rubbish so called afghan black.

In the 1960's most of our smoke came from mexico. It tasted like dirt. Maybe Europe got the good stuff back then.

a reply to: MOMof3

that's what we called it in the 70's, mexican dirt weed.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Was Marijuana Really Less Potent in the 1960s?

This is a claim that I see popping up over and over again on these boards and for the longest time I couldn't properly refute it even though I didn't fully believe it. My go to response has always been that yes, top end strains ARE getting better, but that doesn't necessarily mean that average weed is getting better. I also say that likely average weed has remained about the same. Top end strains cost more money. When you buy one, you know because you spent more money on it. There is no deception here. A seller isn't going to trick you into buying a top end strain for cheaper because he paid more money for it as well. What economic sense would it make to do that? If pot potency is increasing, it isn't as dramatic as fearmongers make it out to be.

So, I was perusing the internet and found this article that pretty much agrees with me above.

For years, people have talked about increasing marijuana potency. The idea that pot is getting stronger—much stronger than the stuff that got passed around at Woodstock, for instance—is treated like conventional wisdom these days. Maybe it shouldn't be.

Damn right it shouldn't. Where is the research to corroborate this claim? Well here is old research.

The federal government has been testing marijuana potency for more than 40 years, and has long acknowledged the limitations to its methodologies. Along with some of the issues with gas chromatography—which it was still using at least as recently as 2008—the National Institute on Drug Abuse potency testing has always depended on what researchers have been able to get their hands on. Since 1972, tens of thousands of test samples for the Potency Monitoring Program have come from law enforcement seizures, which have varied dramatically in scope and type. A drop in THC concentration in the early 1980s, for instance, was attributed to the fact that most of the marijuana researchers analyzed came from weaker domestic crops.

In National Institute on Drug Abuse studies over the past several decades, the age of samples has varied from a few weeks old to a few years old—and researchers made no attempt to compensate for the loss of THC during prolonged storage, according to a 1984 paper. They also get different results when taking into account how the potency of a particularly large seizure could skew the overall sample. For example, measured one way, researchers found what looked like a continuous and significant increase in potency in the late 1970s. But normalizing those findings showed there was "an increase up to 1977 with slight decline in 1978 and a significant decline in 1979," according to a 1984 paper in the Journal of Forensic Science.

More recently.

More recently, researchers found a THC concentration that "gradually increase[d]" from 1993 to 2008, according to a 2010 paper in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. And despite testing limitations, researchers have always maintained potency is likely trending upward. But they've also always been upfront about the limitations to their findings: "The change in cannabis potency over the past 40 years has been the subject of much debate and controversy... The [Potency Monitoring] program has strived to answer this cannabis potency question, while realizing that the data collected in this and other programs have some scientific and statistical shortcomings."

Ultimately, researchers have found a "large variation within categories and over time," they wrote. That's in part because sample sizes have fluctuated. (In the 1970s, researchers assessed anywhere from three to 18 seizures a year. In 2000, they analyzed more than 1,000 seizures.)

In other words, it's difficult if not impossible to classify average potency in a way that can be tracked meaningfully over time. So while there's almost certainly more super-strong pot available today—if only by the fact that it's now legal to buy in multiple states—it doesn't mean that all marijuana is ultra-potent today, which is how the narrative about potency is often framed. There's also a point at which most strains can't get much stronger. "Anyone getting a reading over 25, it's really hard to do," said Murray of CannLabs. "And then it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to quote-unquote get higher. There's a lot of things that go into the plant—over 500 constituents of the plant that play into this."

So possibly a small increase over time.

Federal researchers, too, have characterized marijuana strains with THC concentrations above around 15 percent as unusual. "The question over the increase in potency of cannabis is complex and has evoked many opinions," researchers at the University of Mississippi wrote in a National Institute on Drug Abuse analysis of marijuana potency between 1993 and 2008. "It is however clear that cannabis has changed during the past four decades. It is now possible to mass produce plants with potencies inconceivable when concerted monitoring efforts started 40 years ago."

Obviously, the question isn't fully answered yet, but anyone fearing pot because they are afraid they may be accidentally sold some super strain of marijuana is fooling themselves. You'd know before even paying for it that you were getting some really good stuff. The article makes mention of mislabeled labels, but again, the process to make super strains is VERY involved and costs more money. It makes economic sense that a seller would have these strains properly marked just for the sole fact that he has to know which ones he has to sell at a higher cost.

Not surprisingly another prohibitionist claim turns out to be baseless rhetoric.

First, i am not a prohibitionist. By any stretch.

Second, from what I've read over the years, the percentage of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, has increased by something like 5X.

The reasons are quite simply that people starting using advanced horticulture and scientific agriculture techniques on marijuana to create strains that were much more potent.

Having said that, marijuana continues to be scientifically and medically one of the safest drugs out there, period. This is demonstrable via all manners of medical data and evidence.

originally posted by: darkbake
This is a good point that I never thought of before. I wonder how good the stuff sold in medical marijuana dispensaries or legal pot stores can get.

Out on the street, you can get normal stuff, but sometimes people sell "medical" for a premium... I wonder if that is a lot better than in the 70's, or just a bit better or what. I never smoked dope in the 70's so I don't know how strong (or weak) it was back then.

I never thought of questioning the line of thinking that "weed is getting stronger" before. People make it sound like weed in the 70's got you about as high as slapping yourself across the face once or twice would, or maybe holding your breath for 60 seconds before a nice exhale.

But judging from the music in the 70's, they had some pretty nice highs.

It's been studied that it has become stronger.

I can say that even in the 90's California had extremely high quality marijuana but if one went to let's say Minnesota it was dirt, complete dirt in comparison.

Then, slowly, in the 2000's, good marijuana spread even to the center of the country.

It's quite simple: if you apply agriculture and horticulture science to marijuana, through breeding, hydroponics, etc etc, you will create products that are specifically bred for higher potency, just like you can do with any other plant or crop. That's what has been done since the 70's.

So yes, on average it is better now.

a reply to: Krazysh0t


Ummm...I can say through "independent testing" from the 60's until now...it has definitely increased in potency...

At least according to my...ummm...sources...




YouSir

Any real, regular smoker who has smoked over the decades can clearly see that today's marijuna is far superior in regards to potency. Anyone who denies this obvious fact is clinging to "the good old days".

I've got a friend just like this.

a reply to: VoidHawk

I doubt the Nepalese and Afghan's had hydroponic systems like we do today.

In their defense, I do thanks them for their strains which are precursors to many of my favorite strains.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: ItCameFromOuterSpace

I have yet to meet a single person who has "freaked out" on marijuana regardless of the potency and let's say I've met quite a few people who use.

Hashish once gave me a bad reaction. I was stretching and yawning then a rain drop hit my hand and I screamed like a girl then ran. I was in a panick for about three minutes. Now it's funny when I look back but I was freaked the heck out at the time. No one else had ill effects that day, and I've never had a bad reaction since.

My point is that freak outs do happen, but of course some of them are usually related to pre-existing conditions.

a reply to: pl3bscheese

local and imported sensi

Just for those who are unaware of different strains, it's "Sinsemilla" - 'without seed'. So technically it would be "Sinse" for short - but, that's neither here nor there.

Anyway - yeah - today's stuff is stronger.

a reply to: BuzzyWigs

Buzzy :O
For some reason I'm shocked you know lol.

a reply to: boymonkey74

really? Wellllll - yeah, I know lots of stuff. I'm a Baby Boomer - born in 58. Lived through those times.