[TKDietz]

I am not an advocate for the use of marijuana. It's an unhealthy habit.

Look, when you write and publish an article titled "The Truth About Marijuana," you are holding yourself out as an authority on the topic and you need to be prepared to defend the claims you make. The claim that the average THC content of marijuana on the streets in this country today is 15% is patently false. I called you on that and you got defensive and surly and cut and ran without addressing or even acknowledging the proof I presented that you were wrong. The fact of the matter is that even if you had looked into it you would not have found anything even approaching proof that the average marijuana on the street in the country is 15% THC, because there have been very few studies where representative samples of marijuana from across the country have been collected and analyzed to determine average THC content. The only long running study of that type is the government funded Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project. They've been testing samples provided by law enforcement from all over the country for thirty years or so and and the average THC content of all of the marijuana they test hasn't been anywhere close to what you claim it is.

The claim you posted has its roots in what I can only think of as a dishonest spin people like John Walters of the ONDCP are fond of employing where they mention a low THC percentage from the past like that of commercial grade marijuana from 1970's and then talk about the new "crack cocaine" of marijuana today that is up to 25% in THC content. What they are hoping for is that the masses will take from that that all of today's marijuana is that strong, even though the fact is that buried in their web pages even the ONDCP admits that the average of all marijuana being sold on the streets in this country, including the strong stuff, is actually less than 6% THC.

When I saw that you were making the 15% claim, I thought you might be intentionally trying to mislead people, but I suspected the more likely scenario was that you fell for the spin being pushed out there on "today's new super weed." Since I suspected the latter, naturally I concluded that there was a high likelihood that you didn't do much if any background research on any of the "scientific" claims you seemed to be just parroting in your article. Instead you just did like perhaps an eighth grader writing a research paper might have done and spent a few minutes looking for articles similar to what you wanted to write and paraphrased a bit from this one and a bit from that one, without doing any in depth research, or any fact checking.

You have to admit, you barely did any research. If you did, you wouldn't have made simple mistakes like claiming that "In 2001, 12 million Americans aged 12 and older used marijuana at least once in the month prior to being surveyed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in its 2001 Monitoring the Future Surveys." The Monitoring the Future Surveys do not survey a cross section of Americans twelve and older. They survey 8th graders, 10th graders, and 12th graders, and they do some follow up surveys on college age people. It's the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) who does the surveys on Americans twelve and older. Their annual survey is called the National Survey on Drug Use & Health (NHSDA), which up to a couple of years ago was called the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA).

You say we need to "discourage vulnerable young people from using marijuana." I agree with that sentiment. But if you really want to do that, the next time you hold yourself out as an authority on the "truth about marijuana" you need to do your homework and actually tell the truth. Young people are more clever than you think. When they see supposed authority figures making glaring mistakes and false claims about marijuana, many of them write off what that authority figure said as scare tactic propaganda and they use it to show their less astute friends that what the authority figures say about marijuana is a bunch of hooey. Then they are more likely to buy into the hooey from the opposite end of the spectrum where people are claiming that marijuana is harmless or even good for you. Whether their parents give them your article to read so they'll know the real "truth" about marijuana or if their parents just parrot your claims, the message that marijuana is not good for people and the authority figures who deliver it end up losing credibility because you didn't check your facts before you took on the responsibility of being an authority on the truth about marijuana.

[april15Bendovr]

  http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/intel/02058/02058.html#6

MARIJUANA
  1998 - 2001 PRICE AND POTENCY DATA
  National Average in US Dollars



  1998 1999 2000 2001
Commercial Grade
  Pound $250 - $3,200 $100 - $6,000 $100 - $4,000 $70 - $1,200
  Ounce 30 - 450 35 - 750 50 - 650 25 - 600
  THC Content 4.21% 4.19% 4.68% 4.72%
         
Sinsemilla
  Pound $850 - $6,000 $500 - $7,000 $900 - $8,000 $600 - $4,000
  Ounce 160 - 600 160 - 600 100 - 600 80 - 1,200
  THC Content 12.33% 13.38% 12.82% 9.03%
         
Source: The potency data for both commercial grade and sinsemilla marijuana are provided by the Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project, conducted by the University of Mississippi, and sponsored by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:8XWyuOiNC1kJ:www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/intel/01001-intellbrief.pdf+BC+Bud+The+U.S.+Drug+Enforcement+Administration+Intelligence+Division+December+Report+2000&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

1
Introduction
Marijuana and other cannabis
products are the most widely
abused and readily available illicit
drugs in Canada. Canadian law
enforcement intelligence indicates
that marijuana traffickers there
increasingly are cultivating
cannabis indoors. Such indoor
grow operations have become an
enormous and lucrative illicit
industry, producing a potent form of
marijuana that has come to be
commonly known as “BC Bud.”
Canadian officials estimate that
cannabis cultivation in British
Columbia is a billion-dollar industry and that traffickers smuggle a significant portion of the Canadian
harvest into the United States.
Indoor Cannabis Cultivation Rises in Canada
Canadian growers produce cannabis plants with powerful buds, often using sophisticated hydroponic
cultivation techniques. While the term “BC Bud” literally refers to the bud of the female cannabis plant
grown in British Columbia, the term has become synonymous in the popular media for high-potency
Canadian-grown marijuana. Such marijuana has a THC
1
content ranging from 15 percent to as much as
25 percent, far more potent than the naturally grown cannabis plants of the 1970s, which had a THC
content of only 2 percent.
Marijuana traffickers in Canada employ the most current methods of growing cannabis. Growers isolate
and clone selected female plants for sinsemilla production, and they use high-tech equipment to
electronically regulate temperature, light, and nutrients in hydroponic greenhouses that enable them to
grow up to six marijuana crops per year. According to the Canadian Government, a cannabis grower
operating a 50-plant hydroponic operation that harvests three crops of 15-percent potency can realize an
annual profit of Can$225,000.

[lugsoul]

"Young people are more clever than you think. When they see supposed authority figures making glaring mistakes and false claims about marijuana, many of them write off what that authority figure said as scare tactic propaganda and they use it to show their less astute friends that what the authority figures say about marijuana is a bunch of hooey."

Bears repeating. Hyperbole in support of the WOsD is counterproductive.