For years, many of today’s cannabis enthusiasts have argued that today’s marijuana is a lot stronger than it was back in the day, but there was never really any scientific evidence to back that up. Until now.
Christian Hopfer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus and one of the lead researchers on an ongoing $5.5-million cannabis study, recently told Business Insider that dispensaries in certain states are selling cannabis that is “at least five times as strong” as it was 40 years ago.
After visiting many of Colorado’s top dispensaries, Hopfer said that he’d discovered various strains of marijuana with a THC breakdown of around 25%. With THC being the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, that’s a pretty high number compared to where it was several decades ago.
“It used to be 2-5%,” said Hopfer, “so this stuff is potent.”
And Hopfer’s research isn’t the only kind to come across similar findings. Researchers at the University of Mississippi say they’ve discovered that the THC content of today’s cannabis has more than tripled since 1995. Using over 39,000 samples of cannabis confiscated by the DEA over the years, they discovered that THC levels, which hovered around 4% in 1995, had skyrocketed to roughly 12% in 2014!
Still, some of the findings can be a bit tricky to interpret. A 2012 review of several potency studies found that researchers didn’t properly describe how they went about storing the cannabis and what condition said cannabis was in, which in turn might have led to samples degrading over time, in effect making the cannabis seem less potent than it actually was.
Meanwhile, a 2014 study published in the journal Addiction found that even though THC levels may be increasing and making today’s marijuana stronger, regular users are naturally adjusting their consumption habits to make up for it, taking smaller hits and generally inhaling less when they know a certain strain is more powerful than others.
Nevertheless, it seems that most researchers today agree that marijuana appears to be getting progressively stronger, although by exactly how much is still up for debate. And while it has gotten stronger, perhaps those effects are minimized as we’ve also gotten smarter in how we go about consuming it. Sorta. Dab hit, anyone?
