a bit of sense from the uk

[tony2wheelsgood]

Cherry picking data to prove a point about cannabis

 

 

Ben Goldacre

Saturday March 24, 2007

The Guardian

 

The more I see of the world the more it strikes me that people want more science, rather than less, and that they want to use it in odd ways: to abrogate responsibility, validate a hunch, or render a political or cultural prejudice in deceptively objective terms. As long as you cherry pick the data and keep one eye half closed, you can prove anything with science.

 

Last week's Independent on Sunday splashed with the headline: Cannabis - An Apology. It went on: "In 1997 this newspaper launched a campaign to decriminalise the drug. If only we had known then what we can reveal today ... record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago."

 

Twice in this story cannabis is said to be 25 times stronger than it was a decade ago. For Rosie Boycott, in her melodramatic recantation, skunk is "30 times stronger". In one inside feature the strength issue is briefly downgraded to a "can". It's even referenced. "The Forensic Science Service says that in the early nineties cannabis would contain around 1% tetrahydrocannabidinol (THC), the mind-altering compound, but can now have up to 25%."

 

Well I've got the Forensic Science Service data right here, and the earlier data from the Laboratory of the Government Chemist, the UN Drug Control Programme, and the EU's Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. I think that people are well able to make their own minds up when given true facts.

 

The LGC data on mean potency goes from 1975 to 1989. Resin pootles around between 6% and 10% THC, herbal between 4% and 6%, with no clear trend. The Forensic Science Service data takes over to produce more modern figures, showing not much change in resin, and domestically produced indoor herbal cannabis doubling in strength to between 12% and 14%.

 

The rising trend of cannabis potency is gradual, and driven largely by the increased availability of intensively UK grown indoor herbal cannabis. You could argue that intensive indoor cultivation of a plant that is easy to cultivate outdoors is the cannabis industry's reaction to illegality. It is dangerous to import in large amounts, dangerous to be caught growing a field of it. So perhaps it makes more sense to grow it intensively indoors, producing a more concentrated product. There is little incentive to produce a perversely strong skunk product for the mass market, since most people tend not to pay any more for unusually strong skunk.

 

There is exceptionally strong cannabis to be found in some parts of the UK market today: but there always has been. The UN Drug Control Programme has detailed vintage data for the UK online. In 1975 the LGC analysed 50 seized samples of herbal cannabis: 10 were from Thailand, with an average potency of 7.8%, the highest 17%. In 1975 they analysed 11 samples of seized resin, six from Morocco, average strength 9%, with a range from 4% to 16%.

 

To get their scare figure, the Independent compared the worst cannabis from the past with the best cannabis of today. But you could have cooked the books the same way 30 years ago: in 1975 the weakest herbal cannabis analysed was 0.2%; in 1978 the strongest was 12%. Oh my god: in just three years herbal cannabis has become 60 times stronger. This scare isn't new. In the US, in the mid 1980s, during Reagan's "war on drugs", it was claimed that cannabis was 14 times stronger than in 1970.

 

· Please send your bad science to badscience@guardian.co.uk

[Jess Stone]

I'm glad you posted this Tony2wheelsgood(motor or pedal) That the Independent editorial was SHAMEFUL but its been quiet in here OzS lately and there hasn't been a lot of debate so I layed off posting stuff but I have lots to say on this BS. I myself have been smoking MJ on a daily basis during this whole period of "increase 30 times in potency period" Guess what ? Its a pack of bloody bullshit lies. Stronger than real original Thai Sticks eh? Bullshit,Stronger than Afghani hash before 30 years of war? Bullshit,Stronger than Maui Wowie? Bullshit etc

 

I refer to an article I posted on a different thread and its applicability on this you have posted

The Science of getting it wrong and its relevance to the cannabis propaganda prevalent at the moment.

 

The Myth of Potent PotThe drug czar's latest reefer madness: He claims that marijuana is 30 times more powerful than it used to be.

One reason for the ballot-box failure may have been the full-throttle, anti-marijuana campaign tour by White House Drug Czar John P. Walters. Walters, whose official title is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, inveighed against the demon weed in campaign swings through Ohio, Arizona, and Nevada (twice). At the heart of Walters' sermon: "It is not your father's marijuana." Today's users, he claims, confront pot that's up to 30 times stronger than what aging baby boomers smoked.... further

 

In an early September op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Walters wrote: "In 1974, the average THC content of marijuana was less than 1 percent. But by 1999, potency averaged 7 percent." This is plain wrong. According to the federal government's own Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi, 1999's average was 4.56 percent. Referring to Walters' 7 percent figure, Dr. Mahmoud A. ElSohly, who runs the project, says, "That's not correct for an overall average." (THC is tetra-hydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in pot.)... full article Slate

 

Cannabis potency in Europe

 

There has been much recent interest in the possibility that the concentration of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active principle in cannabis, is now greater than it was. If pronouncements in the popular media are to be believed, the THC content (potency) is 10 or 20 times the levels of only a generation ago, giving apparent cause for concern about increased problems. The more cynical might comment that this is also a convenient rallying cry for those against an increasingly permissive attitude to cannabis use. But to what extent do the available data justify this fear? If one begins to explore the issue in more detail, it becomes evident that concerns about high potency cannabis are by no means new, and the reality appears both less alarming and more complex.A recent study [1] found that data overall were weak, but the evidence available suggested that the potencies of resin and herbal cannabis that have been imported into Europe have shown little or no change, at least over the past 10 years or so. This is hardly surprising, as these products have been made by traditional methods that have probably remained the same for generations. In Europe, average potencies of imported resin and herbal cannabis are typically between 2% and 8%. Cannabis (hash) oil is uncommon in Europe, but its THC content has also shown no clear trend over many years. What has changed throughout Europe and elsewhere is the appearance, from the early 1990s, of herbal cannabis grown from selected seeds by intensive indoor methods. This material, best described as domestically produced 'sinsemilla' (from the Spanish sin semilla—without seeds), is also known as 'skunk', 'buds' or 'nederwiet'. Its hydroponic cultivation, with artificial control of 'daylight' length, propagation of female cuttings and prevention of fertilization certainly does produce cannabis with a higher potency; on average it may be twice as high as imported herbal cannabis, although the two potency distributions overlap and some samples of imported cannabis are, and have always been, of high potency [2]. The increased THC content of herbal cannabis produced by indoor methods is a consequence of both genetic and environmental factors as well as freshness (i.e. production sites are close to the consumer and storage degradation of THC is thus avoided). There is some evidence that the potency of domestically produced sinsemilla is gradually increasing, perhaps as a result of continual improvements in technique. This product is distributed through the same networks as other cannabis products but, as indicated by the presence of home-grow shops in some European countries, consumers are also producing the drug at home.... full article Blackwell Synergy

 

Yet idiot newspapers like the Independent(after a previous good track record for MJ) and this STUPID article from Liverpool UK (plenty of anti-canna idiots here in Oz as well Tony2)

 

SUPER-strength cannabis so potent that just one puff can cause schizophrenia is being grown by Merseyside drug gangs.

 

Cannabis resin, usually smuggled in from Morocco, has been replaced by home-grown super skunk as the drug of choice for sale by criminal gangs on Merseyside.

Experts warn this new strain of cannabis is so incredibly strong it can bring on the early signs of schizophrenia from a single puff.

Today Merseyside’s police chief has warned that organised gangs are moving into the production of the drug as a quick way of making cash.Cultivated in houses rigged with professional heating, lighting and feeding equipment, the crushed cannabis leaves are thought to be up to 25 times more potent than that smoked in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Instead they have been replaced by a mental health timebomb waiting to explode.

Merseyside’s chief constable, Bernard Hogan-Howe said: “Cannabis is not the harmless substance some people believe it to be.

“This new super-strength cannabis is here on Merseyside and is creating problems now.

“The legacy of people taking this drug today could well be felt for generations to come.”

 

"article" from here

accompanied by this charming photo

http://images.icnetwork.co.uk/upl/icliverpool/mar2007/1/0/6F131158-C3FA-19D7-997DC5F81DE05EB6.jpg

Must be frightened he'll get stoned from the ... er... aroma?

 

These idiots never cease, despite so much proof there WRONG , if the consequences for us MJ users wasn't so serious you would by ROTFL at this stuff , one puff schizophrenia sure ! ...Jess

Edited March 25, 2007 by Jess Stone

[Dave The Nefarious]

record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago

That's gold - the crap I smoke is only ~20% THC ... I can only imagine how awesome this "skunk" stuff must be, dripping in resin at 500%

[jimbojones5678]

WOW! Am I ever lucky that I saw that picture!

 

I was about to look in on my babies without any protection! I could have died from the chemicals soaking into my skin!!!!

 

Jimbo

[freddie]

"30 times stronger".

 

Not this crap again. I'm getting so sick of hearing this. Cannabis isn't stronger now than it used to be when i started 30 years ago. The only difference is that consumers are more fussy and dont buy weak pot anymore. Leaf used to be smoked when desperate ffs! Same old genetics just getting hybridised and spread around. I agree with this quote.

 

Stronger than real original Thai Sticks eh? Bullshit,Stronger than Afghani hash before 30 years of war? Bullshit,Stronger than Maui Wowie? Bullshit etc

 

SUPER-strength cannabis so potent that just one puff can cause schizophrenia is being grown by Merseyside drug gangs.

 

Mental health time bomb eh. How come schizophrenia rates don't increase? How come we haven't had 40 years of crazy stoned people roaming the streets?

Edited March 26, 2007 by freddie

[thc24]

well im with you on this one weed on average is no stronger today than it was in the 80s (yep im still a youngbo).

 

the strongest weed doesnt always come from holland but maby bred and crossed there to bring out the max thc level in any given strain...

 

Ive come to the realisation the that the public dont really care about weed or weed smokers as long as it doeesnt affect them directly. So there not about to vote one way or the other simply happy being force fed spoon fulls of shite time and time again and when the government it proven wrong they just find another angle to run in the papers....

 

 

 

i think mental disease speaks for itself has been no increase in 70 years, if anything weed helps a few of my mates with mild problems beats zanax or antidepressant in these few..

 

 

 

 

 

any one need a laugh youtube reagans on drugs

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOsnlVEanxk

[Demon Seeds]

Typicall scare mongering of the less informed....

by the less intelligent..

so the less than polite...

can rely on the less than loyal grasses....

who will be scared your a nut job axe wielding pysco...

because you smoke a less than normal substance...

inform the less than human police who will bust your ass!

 

 

oh life is joy!

 

If these claims were accurate how is it that Holland / netherlands

have one of the lowest rates of mental illness in Europe?

Cannabis only negatively affects those with problems already, in

the same way they would react with alchohol or any drug.

 

Weed is not much stronger today its just they can now test it accurately

wheras in the 60s/70s/80s, weed wasnt being tested widely nor were tests reliable

 

headlines like these are designed by politicians to win support for regressive

campaigns, publicised by rag tablid newspapers...

 

Just light up, sit back & laugh!

 

Happy Days!

 

Bill

Edited September 19, 2010 by DemonSeeds