A man and woman are sitting in a room, the woman playing the piano, while both take drags from a joint.
“Faster, play it faster!” the man demands, his face contorting from euphoric glee to something resembling extreme anguish. Another man, dressed in black, walks into the room. The music stops.
“I know what you want,” the first man says, a maniacal look in his eyes. “You wanna kill me.”
“You’re crazy,” the newcomer replies. “Take it easy, kid. I just wanna talk to you.”
The first man suddenly hits his new guest over the head with a stick, proceeding to savagely beat him to death.
So ends a scene in the 1936 anti-drug propaganda film Reefer Madness, in which a group of young friends’ pot-smoking habit ends in a spiral of insanity, depravity, and murder. Cannabis was outlawed in the United States the following year.
From baneful to cult classic
Nowadays, few Americans will take scenes like that seriously, and Reefer Madness has become somewhat of a cult classic for stoner movie marathons. In less than a hundred years, cannabis is now legal in some form across most of the US. And yet, weed still hasn’t quite shaken its reputation as the destroyer of minds.
“The drawbacks [to legalisation] have been significant,” notable cannabis critic and President of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) Kevin Sabet, told TalkingDrugs.
“Look at Colorado, where teen [Emergency Room] ER visits post-legalisation [tripled]. Worse, most of the kids going to the ER for weed ended up needing psychiatric treatment. In New York, where officials love to boast about the (minimal) tax revenues the drug brings in, daily use is up 34% since before legalisation. And the same story holds true in state after state, and city after city.”
While the perils of pot may have been exaggerated by anti-drug warriors, that doesn’t mean weed is for everyone. Current research suggests there may be a link between more frequent use of higher-potency cannabis and mental health conditions like schizophrenia – although the precise nature of this link is still unclear. Cannabis-related mental health risks have also been shown to increase with the rises in THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) potency.
As the potency of cannabis increases, this is a growing cause for concern. In 1994, the average cannabis nug contained no more than 4% THC content; by 2022, that figure has more than quadrupled.
Has cannabis gotten too strong?
Amber Senter is a cannabis business owner, or ‘ganjapreneur,’ based in Oakland, California, selling cannabis-infused drinks.
“I think people are looking for strong drinks,” she said.
“I make a 10-milligram beverage… I feel like a lot of people have tried the beverages, they like the beverages, and maybe they started out at like a 2.5 milligram or 5 milligram [drink]. And now they’ve gone up to 10s or even higher because they’ve tried them, they like them, they’ve gotten used to them, and their tolerance has gone up.”
In other words, the industry supply is responding to demand. It’s the customers seeking stronger highs that are driving greater THC doses.
“It’s called the Pareto Principle: that about 20% of cannabis users are responsible for purchasing 80% of cannabis products and these are what are, I think, generally considered to be ‘heavier’ users of high-THC products,” explained Cat Packer, a legal expert who helped put together a recent report on high THC cannabis products for the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). This principle is seen in action with alcohol, where the industry’s sales are driven by those consuming the largest amounts of liquor: about a fifth of adults account for 90% of alcohol sales.
“If businesses know that, then it’s more likely that they’re developing and marketing products to meet their largest consumer segment, which is those particular stakeholders… it’s not just flower, it’s not just edibles; folks have access to things like concentrates and dabs and these products can reach upwards of 99% THC,” Packer told TalkingDrugs.
Faith English and Meredith McGee, who recently carried out a survey of cannabis consumers for the Parabola Center (not published yet), came to similar conclusions, but noted how demand was shaped by the market itself.
“People who we talked to are rather price-sensitive,” McGee observed.
“[They’ll say] ‘I’ll buy a low potency product and smoke a lot of it’. Or ‘I’ll get a higher potency product, smoke a little bit at a time and get the most bang for my buck.’”
McGee added that customers are influenced by what’s actually available in front of them – so if only high-THC options are available, then that’s what they’ll buy.
DPA’s report called for THC-based pricing and required supply of low-THC options, and for better consumer education on the risks of high THC products.
Policy complications
In April, the attorney general’s office followed President Trump’s directive to reclassify cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, somewhat easing restrictions for the plant from a clinical standpoint. But cannabis is yet to be fully regulated at a federal level. As it stands, the patchy legality of cannabis fails to set clear boundaries for the industry; this creates a thriving illegal or pseudo-legal cannabis market, undermining licensed proprietors.
This too impacts what products are available on the shelves. For example, illicit dispensaries in California have been caught stocking bootleg THC vapes containing unacceptably high volumes of pesticides and other poisonous chemicals.
Further complicating matters is the new proliferation of hemp-derived cannabinoids. Alongside agricultural reforms, the 2018 Farm Bill legalised industrial hemp – meaning low-THC cannabis can be used for clothes, fibres, food and fuel. It also lifted virtually all restrictions on hemp products, creating a loophole for the chemical extraction of several other potentially psychoactive cannabinoids from hemp.
A cowboy industry of new products like delta-8-THC emerged from this loophole – a substance that, while seemingly less potent than the conventional and better studied delta-9-THC, offers an entirely different high. While these products are not necessarily more dangerous (indeed, by certain metrics, delta-8-THC may actually be safer), the lack of oversight in the industry means they may contain toxic leftovers, and, as the DPA notes in its report, are more easily accessed by children.
In November, a new law will come into effect closing this loophole and banning most hemp products – which the DPA opposes. Instead, they would prefer better oversight and regulation for both traditional cannabis and new hemp-derived products, without bringing in more criminalisation that characterised the plant’s decades-long prohibition.
“The definition of what hemp and legal hemp are is changing at the federal level, [which is] making cannabis and hemp policy a little bit more confusing and messy,” said Packer.
“In an ideal situation, we’d have a unified cannabinoid regulatory framework so that we’re not treating people or plants differently depending on whether or not they’re coming from marijuana or hemp or being produced for medical or adult use programmes, but that we recognize that we need to have parity in how we’re regulating these products.”
Addressing these new products
For Sabet, the liberalisation of cannabis was a mistake – but one that realistically cannot be undone.
“For states with legalisation, strict potency caps are needed on all THC products. So too are hard exclusion zones around churches, schools, and any other important community locations where retail dispensaries can’t operate, mandatory prevention and education campaigns to make sure kids don’t initiate use, and severe punishments for retailers of any size or scale who are found to be breaking or skirting even the smallest part of the applicable laws,” he proposed.
Restrictions on THC potency have also been mainstreamed in outlets like the New York Times in a recent op-ed titled: “Marijuana Is Everywhere. That’s a Problem.”
But researchers like McGee believe that a more grassroots approach to the problem would have more success in curbing the growing demand for stronger and stronger weed.
“I think that limiting potency through a top-down method isn’t going to really be effective because the consumers are still searching for high-potency products, especially when they’re price-sensitive,” said McGee.
“I personally, as a researcher, think the best way to go about it is through education and having individual consumers know their risks, what is out there and what fits for what they need.”
Lifting the ban on cannabis and other drugs is only one piece – the first step – in reforming drug laws and moving beyond criminalisation. As countries around the world, from the US to Thailand, are learning, getting the regulation right can actually be the trickier bit.
