In 2022, the federal government reported that, in samples seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration, average levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the psychoactive compound in weed that makes you feel high—had more than tripled compared with 25 years earlier, from 5 to 16 percent. That may understate how strong weed has gotten. Walk into any dispensary in the country, legal or not, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single product advertising such a low THC level. Most strains claim to be at least 20 to 30 percent THC by weight; concentrated weed products designed for vaping can be labeled as up to 90 percent.
The high that most adult weed smokers remember from their teenage years is most likely one produced by “mids,” as in, middle-tier weed. In the pre-legalization era, unless you had a connection with access to top-shelf strains such as Purple Haze and Sour Diesel, you probably had to settle for mids (or, one step down, “reggie,” as in regular weed) most of the time. Today, mids are hard to come by.
The simplest explanation for this is that the casual smokers who pine for the mids and reggies of their youth aren’t the industry’s top customers. Serious stoners are. According to research by Jonathan P. Caulkins, a public-policy professor at Carnegie Mellon, people who report smoking more than 25 times a month make up about a third of marijuana users but account for about two-thirds of all marijuana consumption. Such regular users tend to develop a high tolerance, and their tastes drive the industry’s cultivation decisions.
It’s really not. Most strains you get, even ones claiming to be landrace strains ARE NO LONG what they claim to be.
Most stains are hybrids, focusing on high THC and because of this, they don’t work on as wide a spectrum of receptors.
You, and all weed users should be worried about the homogenization of weed strains. It comes from commercialization and Capitalism. Capitalism aims for fast growth and high THC claims, rather than quality of the character or purity of heritage. It’s not good, because we lose out on less well studied effects, and weed that works with specific states and conditions.
You’re being scammed out of the variety of highs your parents and ancestors had access to (it’s all focused on getting a high THC stat now). We need to protect the landrace stains against Capitalism and the homogenization and false advertising Capitalism is doing.
It’s destroying the traditional strains.
I’m pretty strongly anti-capitalist and have talked many times about how commodification is ruining cannabis. Saying that today weed is worse because it’s stronger is asinine though. It sounds like the ramblings of someone that got way too high with too little tolerance and wants to ruin it for everyone.
Nobody said you can’t have 1billion stoner scoville units if you want it. The issue is that its increasingly the only option. Some people want lower THC weed, for any number of reasons.
The breeding and hybridization programs aimed at high THC and fast growth is exactly what’s damaging to traditional strains purity.
I heard it on a podcast from a guy who just made a show interviewing farmers, and it’s one thing a lot of them said. Dudes a comedian, Billy Wayne Davis, and it was just at the end of a Behind The Bastards episode.