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Axel:

It is difficult to know how potent the marijuana he smoked was. Here in the U.S. most of the marijuana on the streets comes from Mexico. Depending on which study you read it averages somewhere around 4 or 5% THC give or take a percent or two. The higher grade stuff is usually grown domestically, although an increasing amount comes from Canada. Sinsemilla (without seeds) averages around 12 or 13% depending on whose numbers you are looking at. In Britain it seems that they call all sinsemilla "skunk" and that their potency numbers are around the same as ours for the seedless stuff. Some samples have tested out around 30% THC, but marijuana that strong appears to be rare given that the average "skunk" tests out at around half that number.

It would probably be safe to say that the marijuana this guy was smoking was probably less than 15% THC. Now, there are a couple of caveats. First off people in England of often smoke hash mixed with tobacco and most, I believe, actually even mix their marijuana with tobacco. That's the way they all seemed to do it back when I lived in Europe in the mid eighties and I've heard that most still do it that way but things are slowly changing. Now, not only do people tend to mix their hash and loose marijuana with tobacco, but there is no uniform joint size. Some people roll them big such that they have a gram or more marijuana in them, others roll them much smaller than that.

So anyway, it's difficult to say how much THC this guy was ingesting in his six joints a day. If they were big fat joints with a gram each of pure marijuana in them that was strong 15% THC stuff, he'd be ingesting somewhere near .9 grams of pure THC per day (this does not account for the fact that a fair amount of THC would be contained in the smoke in the air that is never inhaled).

You asked if regular smokers smoke less than what this guy was smoking and I would say yes. First off, most pot smokers don't smoke pot everyday. According to SAMHSA, only around 10 or 11% of pot smokers report smoking on 300 or more days out of the year. More than half say they smoke on between 1 and 49 days out of the year. Not only do most not smoke the stuff everyday, but most don't smoke six joints a day either. Now, some people smoke much more than that. A few people apparently smoke ten or twenty joints a day or ten or fifteen grams, however you want to look at it. I've certainly known people who easily go through an ounce (28 grams) a week, although often the reason for this is that they tended to share with a lot of people. When I was really into smoking pot back in college and my roommate and I were smoking almost everyday, generally several times a day, we usually didn't smoke more than a quarter of an ounce (7 grams) between us every week. We usually smoked one "hit" at a time out of a small "one hitter" pipe but when I was rolling joints I usually got around a eleven or twelve joints out of a quarter ounce that were about as big around as a pencil in the middle and tapered at the ends. We weren't rich kids so we we're really sparing with it. We were also proficient at mooching off our friends and cleaning resin out of pipes whenever we ran out. We ran the dorm's free "bong cleaning service" and kept our nasty resin in a Parkey tub for the times when we were broke and bored.

So, the answer is that yes six joints a day is more than most people smoke but there are certainly people out there that smoke more than that, even twice that or more.