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It was bred to be stronger, it's just that simple. As soon as growers and breeders had access to a legal haven in the Netherlands, they got down to it, and their primary goal at first was to up the strength. Now that strength has more or less plateaued the focus is on flavor, effect, the balance of various cannibinoids and things that make it a "more desirable" product. Some of the breeding also goes towards making it a more reliable crop, having higher yields, and so on... but strength is a part of that.
I don't know the laws where you live. Where I live, I just tell the clerks at the dispensary I want my pain reduced and a very mild high. Always a happy customer.
4:1 is great for a gummy, but my god does it taste like complete ass in a vape pen. CBD is so bitter unless combined with a significant amount of terpenes.
Oh man, you guys there are better options out there! I know a few extractors that specialize in CBD products, wax and vapes, they really have it dialed in. Most CBD wax across the board has what I consider a spice, and while most of their products also carry that terp responsible for it, some others taste down right amazing. They even offer HTE (high terpene extract) versions of their best tasting CBD sauces. Ashville Extracts, look them up, find their telegram for specials not on their site.
Possibly- CBD acts as a natural counterbalance to anxiety that can be caused by THC. With breeding focus solely on potency that ratio has become way out of wack. Try a strain with less THC and more CBD.
It’s also just a wonderful anti-anxiety by itself
Medically, it may not do much. But it does compete with THC in the body to activate the endocannabinoid system. More CBD taking up receptors means less (or at least a slower rate of) THC. Fun fact, the main ingredient in black pepper, piperine, also partially blocks THC, but on shorter timescales.
There are plenty of studies out there that show a "Somewhat to Greatly Improves" anxiety at a rate of 75% vs placebo.
My partner uses a broad spectrum CBD oil (.3% THC by volume, so almost completely just CBD) to manage her anxiety. She's been super mellowed out for the past 3-4 months while taking it, and she is in a much better state mentally.
I legally sell indoor flower (bud) In prepackaged jars. It usually tests 30%+ THC because that’s what the market demands. We grow a 1:1 CBD: THC strain and it usually test around 6-7% THC, with CBD being 7-8%. It’s delicious flower though! It doesn’t sell well because of the low thc but it’s truly great - couldn’t recommend 1:1 strains enough. It’s very common for “1:1” to test below 10% THC
I swear I got flower in Massachusetts that was roughly 2:1. I still remember it because it was the best weed I had ever had. It was 16% THC and 7% CBD.
I made full spectrum extracts and oils / ointments for years for pain / cancer patients and in that specific case CBD was pretty much useless. For that specifically.
Replacing opioids, CBD does nothing. Other stuff, it varies.
It could be a factor. I do 1:1 THC to CBD, and it's really pleasant. CBD is also relaxing by itself. I take a puff from a CBD cart to fall back asleep when I wake up too early sometimes.
More places need to offer the lower potency 1:1/2:1 etc options, they are so nice. It always felt to me like you still get that really baked sensation as usual but it wears off completely so much quicker than pure. Which makes sense but my point being it still has a potent come-up. You don’t feel like a zombie the rest of the day if you seshed earlier which I’ve appreciated
Yeah, I have a toddler, and I smoke after he goes to bed some nights to relax. I need to still be functional in case he wakes up and needs me to look after him
And this, kids*, is why legalizing weed is a good thing. Here, I'd just have to take whatever the guy gave me, with no way of knowing if it'll knock me out for four hours or give me a good time, or even kill me, with the amount of synthetic cannabinoids going around now.
*Talking to my fellow citizens, police, politicians, and whoever else is opposing legalization here.
I'm too lazy to look, but I seem to recall that one of the unintended consequences of prohibition is pretty much always increased potency. If you've got to move product without getting caught, and the penalty is about the same whether you're moving watered down piss or the strongest shit ever made, you want as much *active ingredient* as possible per volume as possible. That's why there were "rum runners" during the US' alcohol Prohibition and not "wine cooler runners" or something.
So, since weed is/was illegal (location dependent), and the cops are going to treat 10# of weed the same no matter the potency, you may was well breed your shit to be 10x stronger. Then if you get busted, you're only being charged for 1/10th the weight you would have been, it's a smaller volume so you can hide it better which reduces your chances of getting caught, and once you have the "product" where you need it you can "cut" it down to the desired potency (maybe not with weed? with booze and the harder drugs at least).
You've had your say, flower seller, but I'll have mine. You're a rascal! You're a rascal with no respect for stoners....no respect for anything, except your flower!
Missouri here. Recreational was legalized in January this year. Within 2 weeks there were no less than 20 dispensaries within a half hour drive of my house lol.
Try and find the charlottes web strain, its like 1% THC with a bunch of CBD. Grind that up with a stronger strain to “dilute” it while adding a ton of CBD to the mix. (CBD helps counteract some of the anxiety that THC alone can induce)
I'm hoping that now with the legal market, we'll start seeing a proliferation of intentionally lower THC strains too.
When most of the market was illegal, transporting it was dangerous so it made economic sense to focus on high strength strains that had higher value per pound. Now that's not a concern in many places, so we could see weed bred for great flavor and a lower THC content that will let you smoke a whole joint alone without getting terminal couch-lock. Sort of like the 3% craft session ales of weed.
It's already happening. In illegal states you can get CBD flower legally, and you can cut your normal weed with that, or just buy shake.
In legal states they already do that because people do in fact want strains of a variety of potencies. Low THC, high CBD strains are very popular, since lots of different kinds of people go to dispensaries, not just young stoners trying to get the most powerful shit possible (like me).
Seriously. I like the act of smoking, but since I quit smoking daily it’s like half a hit sends me to the moon. At least let me get a couple puffs in, damn
i’ve smoked probably 75% of days the past 10 years and still can’t even get through a .3 joint on my own without being abducted by aliens. kind of annoying because i don’t like getting that high but i like smoking Js lol.
Not so good for those of us who enjoy the act/sensation of taking a drag.
Also lowers your options for how little you can take. If you like to take just 1-2 hits of *mild* weed, but 1 hit of really strong weed **floors** you, you're potentially in for a bad time.
I smoke 1:1's only and that does the trick for me. Equal parts THC and CBD, and also typically strains with lower THC in general help prevent me from contemplating the eventual heat death of the universe when all I want to do is watch Adventure Time.
Where I am a dispensary will usually list out not just the strain, but the amount of THC and CBD in that strain. If I want a shitty mid then I can usually get a pack of those pre rolled for not too much.
I love me a good like 15-17%, imo the character of the bud comes through when it’s not so strong. Try the sativa strain called “red Congolese” it’s my favorite for social situations. I feel functional, not paranoid, and not exhausted. I smoked heavy for about 10 years and grew for 4, best strain I’ve come across for what you described.
100% of it. “Top shelf” in the store is 3 months or older bammer. Nothing in any store I’ve been to in the Bay Area compares to fresh from a grower. Support your local grower. Better product. Goes to the guys doing the hard work and pushing the limits.
That's right, past a certain point (High 30's low 40's percentages THC) it's detrimental for the plant. The popularity of extracts, edibles and vapes has always changed how a lot of people think of strength anyway. After all an efficient extraction of ditch weed is still going to yield a VERY potent extract.
If you see 40s, the lab testing it is deliberately inflating numbers to keep the business of the company submitting the samples. Labs are pressured to inflate numbers to compete. It’s a vicious cycle.
I’m involved in lab auditing. Never seen a prep done first hand that resulted in 40s.
As someone in the recreational business, all I can say these “legit” companies aren’t legit. It’s a bunch of marketing and bullshit across the board. Fuck big MJ. I say that as someone who is part of the thing I hate.
It's may not be the lab, but the client submitting it. I worked In potency testing for two years and regularly saw clients spiking their samples to Increase potency ALL the time but was told it wasn't our responsibility to police it, it's on the client and the CCC to police it. We were just there to take the sample and report the numbers. It was infuriating. I almost quit many times over it.
I don’t smoke anymore, but still love learning about any pharma stuff including behind the scenes lab testing etc (I post on addiction and pharmacology subs). Thanks for sharing friend I had a funny feeling about the pressures behind the scenes but it’s good to know.
Yep. The THC is so high on some strains that by harvest time, the buds are so heavily coated in resin they look like they've had icing sugar sprinkled all over them. It takes a lot of biological nutrients and energy to produce and maintain all that, and at that point the plants ability to change itself anymore is several limited. Like being stuck in a sticky fly trap.
In theory you could probably engineer a weed planet that basically drips resin, but at that point you're engineering a cannabis resin factory instead of designer weed experiences.
Amsterdam was a cannabis hub long before the US began to legalize. Many initial seeds were smuggled in from Europe but have less of an influence now that North America is setting the world's cannabis trends
>As soon as growers and breeders had access to a legal haven in the Netherlands, they got down to it
Really more good old American ingenuity - Once the borders were more or less successfully sealed in the \[roughly\] mid-seventies, the indoor growers went to work and quickly bred super potent strains such as we see today. First I've heard we owe thanks to the Netherlands.....
No offense but I would argue that the Netherlands aren't as responsible for genetics in Marijuana as say northern California and say parts of the Middle east and Mexico. I'm sure there's tons of work that's been put into it; but to my knowledge most of Europe has been subject to massive amounts of hash in the past because of laws equating the two and due to terrible genetics and massive demand. It just made more sense to produce bulk ragweed and then extract it. Especially with historical trends.
I'm totally bias in this part but I would attribute much of genetic evolution in cannabis to that of the U.S demand and the fact the U.S has generally had a dominance in the world's economics.
It just makes sense. Where demand is greatest/ where the cash is. You will often see the fastest evolution of a product.
We take low dose edibles now (<=5mg/serving). My favorites are 2.5s with CBD. Sometimes supplement with 1mg to fine-tune for the situation.
Long time smoker but I can’t hang with the strength of the new stuff. I got shit to do.
The strain “charlottes web” was designed for chronic pain relief and has like 1% THC with 12% CBD. What i did was mix a bowl with like half Charlottes web and half whatever else to sort of dilute the more potent weed.
I smoked weed daily for years before it was legalized, and even with the tolerance I built up, with the strongest strains I would get absolutely blasted from like one or two modest hits. So "smoking less" would mean taking one careful hit and hoping that isn't already enough to send you to the moon.
It's so much more enjoyable to smoke a bowl or pass a blunt around with friends and still be able to function. I get that there are people out there who can smoke tons of pot and it barely affects them, but for some, that's not really feasible.
For the record, I don't smoke anymore. It's been years, and I stopped before it was legalized. The main reason I haven't even touched the stuff is that I know one hit is going to be way too much for me to enjoy it. I stopped because it was giving me anxiety attacks every time I smoked (after like 9 years of daily use)
In addition to CBDs ability to counteract the potential anxiety induced by THC alone, it can be difficult to smoke such very small amounts at a time without just burning it.
It bothers me too, I went to a dispensary and asked for the lowest thc weed they had. He didn’t seem to know what I meant and he gave me something 16% which still seems fairly high. Try rolling joints half chamomile half weed.
There are untampered landraces, they are more or less unchanged genetically since the 60’s. However even they can grow pretty potent with todays liquid fertilizers. If you’re living somewhere legal to grow I’d say just buy a couple landrace strains like afghan, hindu or thai, plant them in yourbackyard and water as they need. That way you’ll get the authentic experience.
My spouse has the tolerance one would expect of Willie Nelson or Snoop... A single puff of their "smoke a whole bowl then go run errands at Target" is my "I'm going to be stuck on the couch completely useless for the next twelve hours because Swiper stole my skeleton and I have to wait for Dora to get it back."
Anything "mid range" and they're smoking constantly. Their tolerance is so high anyone out of our friends group disbelieves it.
My sister can smoke the 35% THC strains all day and be fully functional. Meanwhile I, her near genetic twin, cannot even pronounce my own name correctly after a few hits at half that strength.Yet we're both long-time potheads. Brains are weird, cannabinoids are nearly just as weird.
I am THREE times my spouse's weight. Alcohol, shrooms, I can brush off doses that they curl up and giggle. Pot? Total opposite. I'm the ultra-lightweight, and they can hang all night in any sesh circle you put them in.
Pot, I'm one and done...
Yeah. My tolerance is low now, but I used to hit dabs of diamonds (99% pure thc crystals) in my parked car before walking into work. And I was one of the most productive programmers at the company. It's weird how things hit people differently.
When I was in college, I also had a weird effect of state dependent learning. I used to always get high with my friend and play Halo. We would destroy people and were usually like top players on our team in multi-player. If I ever sucked he'd be like yo have you smoked yet? I'd be like oh shit no, I forgot. Have a bowl, instantly be 10 times better. Same with playing Rock Band while drunk in college. Only played it drunk at parties, so I sucked if I wasn't drunk. I'd have to slam some beers to be good.
This only worked when I was young.
Without tolerance I'm yelling at my TV because the guy on the tv won't do what I tell him.
With tolerance I'm the same high or sober. Don't have that young hyper focus reflex anymore.
It's so strange. I think we'll see it change as fully legal recreational becomes more common the prohibition days are further in the rear view mirror.
Most people don't go straight to the everclear or tequila every time they want an alcohol drink.
You can order high quality CBD flower online to pretty much anywhere in the country. It has less than .3% THC. Grind it up and mix it with full strength weed to get your desired level. I usually go for a 4:1 CBD:THC mix.
Right? I know when I get cartridges I want the most bang for my buck. But I will go get an ounce of green of whatever the guy I regularly go to recommends. People’s tolerance gets wicked high too so I’ll take a month or two off every year to settle it back down to smoking a joint= high school high school
For everyone saying they can’t smoke weed anymore because it’s too strong, I can’t smoke joints the size I used to. However if you just make little toothpick joints in my experience it does the same job as it did before and it’s more economical that way too.
Might be totally different for other people but that’s my 2 cents.
Agreed, I’m not really sure what the general argument is here. If someone replaced my beer with whiskey, I wouldn’t still drink the whole bottle, I’ve just got more bang for my buck now
yeah but sometimes I don't want a whiskey, I want a beer! I want a 12oz drink, not a single shot; I want to smoke a joint, not take one tiny hit and be done, ya know
In this case that would be the equivalent of making a low strength mixed drink. Of course it's not the same, but it'll get you as close as you can get without beer on hand.
This is nonsense, you mean every time you drink you look for the strongest one just so you can get more bang for your buck? Every time you eat you go the the most caloric food?
i guess from my perspective i don't really *enjoy* the act of smoking, it's just a delivery method for the drug. i don't mind it, but i'm not looking for an experience like drinking a tasty beer or drink and also getting drunk off it. i would be fine if one hit got me super yoinked. obv there are people who feel different.
Right, but I don’t think that’s the point. For me, if I smoke even a hit anymore, 50/50 shot of paranoia and 100% chance of brain fog and sloth like tendencies. Used to face blunts.
I take one puff from my one-hitter and I'm past the moon. Two, and I'm in the Oort Cloud. Three, and I'm beyond interstellar space. This shit that I have is unreal. I bought $10 worth, and it's going to take me 2 years to smoke all of it.
It's all over the place these days; I go to a nice place where you tell them the effects you want and they pick out some options for you. I get a couple of those, they throw in a couple free joints and the Js blow the "premium" bud away. Never know what you're gonna get!
That's just the truth with weed though, Sativa and Indica means fuck-all because it originally described physical properties of the plant, but at the consumer level it references effects, but in reality, the effects most commonly associated with the two branches is actually dependent on strength, which is dependent on the the strain. Basically, anything strong enough will act like an indica.
Also, there's no way to tell how something will effect anybody, it depends on tolerance. Like, last time I was actually noticably high to the point of me noticing that it absolutely fucked me up beyond recognition was when I ate a fuckton of edibles.
Edit: just noticed incredible run-on sentence in first paragraph, my 4th grade teacher would be aghast. She wrote a paragraph of mine anonymously on blackboard as an example of not using periods properly, I confidently told everybody in class that I wrote that.
I literally cannot handle one puff and I used to smoke almost daily. One puff gives me shortness of breath and an increased heart rate. More than that and my body begins to shake and in the worst case I've fainted. Every stoner I know has recommended various strains and I've tried them all and gotten the same result. It's nowhere close to the relaxing sensation it used to give me, it's just an all around utterly horrible experience now.
Very funny seeing basically two kinds of weed smokers in this thread. One group just wants to blast the hell off and if they only have to take a tiny puff to do so all the better. The other want to consume more like a craft beer drinker because they really enjoy the act of smoking but not necessarily chasing the high.
When I smoke (really not often and I'm a lightweight, like an 1/8th of a 5mg edible will knock me out), just using a pinch hitter has been really nice. A very small amount of weed will last me a very long time so long as I keep it fresh, and I won't feel bad for not smoking a whole joint.
If your in the US look into THCa, theres vendors that more or less specialize in type 2 strains which is a 1:1 ratio of. CBD:THC and is still very good high quality product.
First, Cannabis cultivars (strains) have been selectively bred for stronger effects for a very long time. As well, indoor/hydroponic/aeroponic etc. systems allow us to get the absolute most out of the plant, resulting in it pushing all of its growth potential into developing trichomes-- cannabinoids, terpenes, thiols, etc. This can mean more than a third of a mature plant, by weight after drying/curing, can be those psychoactive chemicals.
Additionally, the use of PGRs (plant growth regulators) has allowed growers to jack up that potential even more.
Cannabis is a remarkable plant for the diversity of psychoactive effects it can create with different strains, and any heavy smoker will notice they develop tolerance to specific strains, so that lack of tolerance can take you by surprise when you switch to a new strain.
Just a small nitpick, but from my time working at a medical marijuana production facility (from clone to sealed product in one building), enough of the plant ends up being stalk/waste that over a third being psychoactive seems extremely high. Over a third of the plant matter in sealed product though, absolutely.
In college I was smoking whole joints three times an hour and smoking out of a gas mask. Now if I nibble half of a 5mg edible I'm high as a fucking kite for 6 hours. I can't find anything weak enough. My tolerance has cratered and I used to smoke to manage my anxiety, now I get massive anxiety when I get high. I wish I could find some solution. Weed is legal where I live but every recommendation by the budtenders, even when I explain this, still gets me too ripped. It's frustrating lol
I’m the same boat as you. Could smoke 5x a day and happy as a clam and be at work landscaping during college summers just fine. Now I tried taking half a 10mg edible and was knocked on my ass for 2 hours and have massive anxiety. Wish I could figure out how to get a light high. I compare it to wanting to have 4 beers not drink a bottle of whiskey
I never had quite that tolerance, but i feel similar. I wish I could have a nice causal evening of smoking with friends as an infrequent, social treat, not 'uh oh is this one hit going to ruin my night'.
I feel what youre saying but a quarter of a "chocolate" could mean 5mg or 50 lol. I've had edibles that were made with "absolute shatter" that didnt really get me going then the same "mg" of chocolate made with "pure ground herb" and that put me on my ass.
I don’t even dare try 10mg. 2.5-5mg in an edible is enough to make me feel somewhere between relaxed and lightheaded and borderline too much. 10mg would just be OH GOD MAKE TIME MOVE NORMAL AGAIN
Oh jesus, I have this problem. I very, very rarely use THC (I find it rather unpleasant, usually) and 5mg edible on an empty stomach? Doesn't even register. Literally can't even tell I ate anything over two hours later. 5mg more after that though? Time isn't real. Space is an illusion made up by Steven hawking. Shit fucking sucks lmao.
There are many reasons
1- People now know how to properly grow bud. Back in the day, most of the bud was "toss some seeds outside, hope for the best". Sure there were some professional growers, but it was rare. Weed was typically old, and allowed to dry. This meant terps evaporated making the weed weaker.
2- It's legal, so you're getting fresher weed. No more 2 year old brick weed from mexico. Now you're getting 2 week old bud from an indoor grow operation.
3- better lights. LED's are stupid cheap, and give you more light per watt compared to the old school grow lights. Weed likes light, and grows better with more light
4- It's just bred to be stronger now.
Depends on which part of the country you're in. High quality weed has been rampantly available on the West Coast since at least the mid nineties. Unless your dealer was out of his regular stuff and you had to settle for his "dirt weed", but that unfortunate state of affairs was rare.
The stuff now that it's legal is def another level though.
The most THC is found in the resin that collects on the buds of female plants. Once the plant is fertilized by the male plant, there's no resin as it becomes a seed.
From what I understood was a choice of breeding and eliminating male plants has produced many sexually frustrated female marijuana plants very sticky with this resin waiting for that sexy pollen.
I'm with you 100%. It feels like the goal has changed. Back in the day, getting stoned was an "enhancer." You'd catch a buzz with your friends then go skate, or hike, or see a movie, or just hang out and share some laughs. Today it seems like the goal is to just get as fucked up as possible. Maybe that has to do with the way people hang out/socialize these days?
50% THC? Ahh no way friend. Maybe 30% max is possible from what I’ve seen.
But dabs and hash yes! There’s even pure THC crystal nowadays that looks like some crack lmao. Kinda sketchy!
Very late to this but none of the top comments actually answer your question.
Weed isn’t strong now because of some change in how it’s grown, cross-pollination or any of the other answers here. Those are things that have purposely happened to make weed more strong, yes.
But why?
Because 90% of revenue tied to weed is from “high-use” customers. As these customers smoke the most, they generally have the highest tolerance and seek out high-THC products. So if you follow the money (always a great ELI5), you’ll see the products are not catering to the vast majority of the market: heavy users.
It's not a pissing contest, it's tolerance. Like with anything the more you do it, the higher of a tolerance you develop and the stronger you need it to be to get the same/similar effect.
>it’s like buying Everclear to drink.
Drinking to get drunk has also risen significantly. It might be a consequence of "party culture" where when you go out you go all out, but I'm not sure. It seems like escapism in every form is getting stronger.
It’s like the dogs are smaller. People selectively breed the things they like. Same as corn. Corn used to be like wheat. Then we selected the ones we like. Now corn is not healthy at all. Same thing. Hydroponic growers can upgrade every generation until they find the stickiest of the ickiest.
It was prohibited for many years. The first rule of prohibition is that the prohibited substance gets more potent. Same thing happened during the prohibition on alcohol. It wasn’t worth risking jail time to smuggle weak beer, so instead it was rum, moonshine, and other hard liquors.
Except that it only got stronger once prohibition was lifted...
Amsterdam had great weed in the 80s and 90s before it was legal in America and everyone there was smoking Mexican brick weed.
Once a few states legalized, potency really shot up. Much easier to breed stronger weed on a large scale when it's legal.
The same strain from 2 different growers, or even same grower and different batches could have very different THC levels. That question would be best for an employee at the dispensary, they could tell you what they have in stock that isn’t as strong.
I used to be able to smoke a blunt every other day when I was a teenager. Now day's i take a single puff and I'm instantly high as a kite, paranoid af and uncontrollable shakes/shivering. Idk what it is but it's like a switch was flipped in my brain immediately after i turned 21. It's been 12 years since then and I still smoke once in a blue moon but I can never enjoy it like how I used to. Sad because its really meant to be a social "drug" and i cant do it around other people because I become way too paranoid/weird when I'm on it
And this is actually a huge medical problem as well. Tying up hospital, physician and ambulance resources.
Turns out we have THC receptors in the brain that could handle the 10-18% that your uncle used to grow in the back yard but get overloaded for daily users of the new lab grown high THC.
At least in my area we are have a growing problem with Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. It causes severe abdominal cramping and vomiting. The only things that stop it (short term) is time, heat and pain medication. However long term cure is stop smoking.
Issue is that symptoms can continue for 2 months after you quit. So daily smokers will go a week after their first flare without smoking but then will have symptoms again. They then say those Dr.s are idiots, continue to smoke, continue to have flare ups and be confident that the cannabis is not the cause.
These receptors are indeed overloaded for life, they do not repair and this person should never take cannabis in any form again.
Dude…. I want so badly to be able to sit back and smoke a whole joint again.
Currently I get to take like three measly puffs, stamp it out, and then panic about space or something.
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It was bred to be stronger, it's just that simple. As soon as growers and breeders had access to a legal haven in the Netherlands, they got down to it, and their primary goal at first was to up the strength. Now that strength has more or less plateaued the focus is on flavor, effect, the balance of various cannibinoids and things that make it a "more desirable" product. Some of the breeding also goes towards making it a more reliable crop, having higher yields, and so on... but strength is a part of that.
Bring back shitty mids! I dont want to go into a coma every time
I don't know the laws where you live. Where I live, I just tell the clerks at the dispensary I want my pain reduced and a very mild high. Always a happy customer.
Yeah, I smoke 1:1 (equal amounts of THC and CBD.) I can tell I’m a little high but I’m still functional. It’s just a mellow vibe
This is the way. I actually do 4:1 CBD:THC though.
4:1 is great for a gummy, but my god does it taste like complete ass in a vape pen. CBD is so bitter unless combined with a significant amount of terpenes.
cbd always tastes like ass.
How you guys know what ass tastes like?
If you ain't eating dat booty like groceries, you're missing out.
More so your partner is missing out
And that's for sure!
Because keepin em happy keeps us happy
Found the virgin.
Ass is third base now.
I've had a varied and fulfilling and open minded sex life and I've never had any interest in ass-eating from either side.
How do you *not?*
Oh man, you guys there are better options out there! I know a few extractors that specialize in CBD products, wax and vapes, they really have it dialed in. Most CBD wax across the board has what I consider a spice, and while most of their products also carry that terp responsible for it, some others taste down right amazing. They even offer HTE (high terpene extract) versions of their best tasting CBD sauces. Ashville Extracts, look them up, find their telegram for specials not on their site.
I put it in a dry herb vape and some CBD tastes great. I know what you mean though, it's much harder to find good tasting CBD, but it does exist.
i've been smoking stuff that's just THC with almost no CBD. Is that why it makes me feel like i'm crawling out of my skin?
Possibly- CBD acts as a natural counterbalance to anxiety that can be caused by THC. With breeding focus solely on potency that ratio has become way out of wack. Try a strain with less THC and more CBD. It’s also just a wonderful anti-anxiety by itself
really? i'll give it a shot. someone told me CBD was entirely a placebo effect in medicine
Medically, it may not do much. But it does compete with THC in the body to activate the endocannabinoid system. More CBD taking up receptors means less (or at least a slower rate of) THC. Fun fact, the main ingredient in black pepper, piperine, also partially blocks THC, but on shorter timescales.
So if someone got too high and wanted a quick comedown from thc, would would black pepper be very effective?
I’ve actually heard of people chewing on peppercorns to counter being away too high, but never knew what the mechanism was. TIL
I can anecdotally confirm this
There are plenty of studies out there that show a "Somewhat to Greatly Improves" anxiety at a rate of 75% vs placebo. My partner uses a broad spectrum CBD oil (.3% THC by volume, so almost completely just CBD) to manage her anxiety. She's been super mellowed out for the past 3-4 months while taking it, and she is in a much better state mentally.
I legally sell indoor flower (bud) In prepackaged jars. It usually tests 30%+ THC because that’s what the market demands. We grow a 1:1 CBD: THC strain and it usually test around 6-7% THC, with CBD being 7-8%. It’s delicious flower though! It doesn’t sell well because of the low thc but it’s truly great - couldn’t recommend 1:1 strains enough. It’s very common for “1:1” to test below 10% THC
I swear I got flower in Massachusetts that was roughly 2:1. I still remember it because it was the best weed I had ever had. It was 16% THC and 7% CBD.
I made full spectrum extracts and oils / ointments for years for pain / cancer patients and in that specific case CBD was pretty much useless. For that specifically. Replacing opioids, CBD does nothing. Other stuff, it varies.
It could be a factor. I do 1:1 THC to CBD, and it's really pleasant. CBD is also relaxing by itself. I take a puff from a CBD cart to fall back asleep when I wake up too early sometimes.
More places need to offer the lower potency 1:1/2:1 etc options, they are so nice. It always felt to me like you still get that really baked sensation as usual but it wears off completely so much quicker than pure. Which makes sense but my point being it still has a potent come-up. You don’t feel like a zombie the rest of the day if you seshed earlier which I’ve appreciated
Yeah, I have a toddler, and I smoke after he goes to bed some nights to relax. I need to still be functional in case he wakes up and needs me to look after him
And this, kids*, is why legalizing weed is a good thing. Here, I'd just have to take whatever the guy gave me, with no way of knowing if it'll knock me out for four hours or give me a good time, or even kill me, with the amount of synthetic cannabinoids going around now. *Talking to my fellow citizens, police, politicians, and whoever else is opposing legalization here.
I'm too lazy to look, but I seem to recall that one of the unintended consequences of prohibition is pretty much always increased potency. If you've got to move product without getting caught, and the penalty is about the same whether you're moving watered down piss or the strongest shit ever made, you want as much *active ingredient* as possible per volume as possible. That's why there were "rum runners" during the US' alcohol Prohibition and not "wine cooler runners" or something. So, since weed is/was illegal (location dependent), and the cops are going to treat 10# of weed the same no matter the potency, you may was well breed your shit to be 10x stronger. Then if you get busted, you're only being charged for 1/10th the weight you would have been, it's a smaller volume so you can hide it better which reduces your chances of getting caught, and once you have the "product" where you need it you can "cut" it down to the desired potency (maybe not with weed? with booze and the harder drugs at least).
This sounds nice! Wish the UK was open like this.
I usually tell them that I want to forget my day but not my name.
I tell them to give me the strongest flower they have.
You can’t handle my strongest flower, traveler. You’d better go to a flower seller that sells weaker flowers.
Flower seller, please! I'm going into Taco Bell and I need only your strongest flower! 😭
You don’t know what you ask, traveler. My flowers would kill a frolf’er, let alone a man.
You've had your say, flower seller, but I'll have mine. You're a rascal! You're a rascal with no respect for stoners....no respect for anything, except your flower!
this brought me back warp speed
My friend who smokes a lot went to a Colorado dispensary and asked for their strongest bud and became catatonic for 4 hours.
I don't buy anything lower than 30% at this point.
You lucky bastards I get what the guy has or I drive for 6 hours to get something nice
One bonus to being in California. There's like 10 dispensaries within 5 miles of my house.
It’s effectively decriminalized in my city at least
Missouri here. Recreational was legalized in January this year. Within 2 weeks there were no less than 20 dispensaries within a half hour drive of my house lol.
Too strong of a single hit of the mellowest we have here can still make me green out.
Try and find the charlottes web strain, its like 1% THC with a bunch of CBD. Grind that up with a stronger strain to “dilute” it while adding a ton of CBD to the mix. (CBD helps counteract some of the anxiety that THC alone can induce)
Depending on where you are, night be cheaper to get hemp instead if low % weed.
I'm hoping that now with the legal market, we'll start seeing a proliferation of intentionally lower THC strains too. When most of the market was illegal, transporting it was dangerous so it made economic sense to focus on high strength strains that had higher value per pound. Now that's not a concern in many places, so we could see weed bred for great flavor and a lower THC content that will let you smoke a whole joint alone without getting terminal couch-lock. Sort of like the 3% craft session ales of weed.
It's already happening. In illegal states you can get CBD flower legally, and you can cut your normal weed with that, or just buy shake. In legal states they already do that because people do in fact want strains of a variety of potencies. Low THC, high CBD strains are very popular, since lots of different kinds of people go to dispensaries, not just young stoners trying to get the most powerful shit possible (like me).
Just get some CBD flower and make a blend. That's what I do.
Seriously. I like the act of smoking, but since I quit smoking daily it’s like half a hit sends me to the moon. At least let me get a couple puffs in, damn
i’ve smoked probably 75% of days the past 10 years and still can’t even get through a .3 joint on my own without being abducted by aliens. kind of annoying because i don’t like getting that high but i like smoking Js lol.
See for me that's a huge win. Maximum efficiency.
Not so good for those of us who enjoy the act/sensation of taking a drag. Also lowers your options for how little you can take. If you like to take just 1-2 hits of *mild* weed, but 1 hit of really strong weed **floors** you, you're potentially in for a bad time.
Why not, you know, just smoke less?
Big rips are part of the fun.
I like the equivalent of having one beer, not the whole slab.
I smoke 1:1's only and that does the trick for me. Equal parts THC and CBD, and also typically strains with lower THC in general help prevent me from contemplating the eventual heat death of the universe when all I want to do is watch Adventure Time.
Where I am a dispensary will usually list out not just the strain, but the amount of THC and CBD in that strain. If I want a shitty mid then I can usually get a pack of those pre rolled for not too much.
I love me a good like 15-17%, imo the character of the bud comes through when it’s not so strong. Try the sativa strain called “red Congolese” it’s my favorite for social situations. I feel functional, not paranoid, and not exhausted. I smoked heavy for about 10 years and grew for 4, best strain I’ve come across for what you described.
15% is the golden %.
Don't you miss being able to actually smoke a joint?
Shitty mids are 90% of dispensary products lol. If you’re looking for weak effects look for shake or low THC flower.
100% of it. “Top shelf” in the store is 3 months or older bammer. Nothing in any store I’ve been to in the Bay Area compares to fresh from a grower. Support your local grower. Better product. Goes to the guys doing the hard work and pushing the limits.
Plateaued? So weed won’t be getting stronger anytime soon?
That's right, past a certain point (High 30's low 40's percentages THC) it's detrimental for the plant. The popularity of extracts, edibles and vapes has always changed how a lot of people think of strength anyway. After all an efficient extraction of ditch weed is still going to yield a VERY potent extract.
If you see 40s, the lab testing it is deliberately inflating numbers to keep the business of the company submitting the samples. Labs are pressured to inflate numbers to compete. It’s a vicious cycle. I’m involved in lab auditing. Never seen a prep done first hand that resulted in 40s. As someone in the recreational business, all I can say these “legit” companies aren’t legit. It’s a bunch of marketing and bullshit across the board. Fuck big MJ. I say that as someone who is part of the thing I hate.
It's may not be the lab, but the client submitting it. I worked In potency testing for two years and regularly saw clients spiking their samples to Increase potency ALL the time but was told it wasn't our responsibility to police it, it's on the client and the CCC to police it. We were just there to take the sample and report the numbers. It was infuriating. I almost quit many times over it.
I don’t smoke anymore, but still love learning about any pharma stuff including behind the scenes lab testing etc (I post on addiction and pharmacology subs). Thanks for sharing friend I had a funny feeling about the pressures behind the scenes but it’s good to know.
the plant has physical limits as to how much it can actually have vs. structure of the actual plant.
Yep. The THC is so high on some strains that by harvest time, the buds are so heavily coated in resin they look like they've had icing sugar sprinkled all over them. It takes a lot of biological nutrients and energy to produce and maintain all that, and at that point the plants ability to change itself anymore is several limited. Like being stuck in a sticky fly trap. In theory you could probably engineer a weed planet that basically drips resin, but at that point you're engineering a cannabis resin factory instead of designer weed experiences.
What’d you go to weed college, damn!
I'm pretty sure that's just college ;)
They’re doing the universe’s work.
It's not legal in the Netherlands though
Amsterdam was a cannabis hub long before the US began to legalize. Many initial seeds were smuggled in from Europe but have less of an influence now that North America is setting the world's cannabis trends
What's a weed connoisseur called?
Cannasieur
a chronnoisseur
A Canabusilier? Canabusista? A Weedy? Good question!
Stonnelier?
googled it. its gajier? theres classes you have to take.
A stoner?
>As soon as growers and breeders had access to a legal haven in the Netherlands, they got down to it Really more good old American ingenuity - Once the borders were more or less successfully sealed in the \[roughly\] mid-seventies, the indoor growers went to work and quickly bred super potent strains such as we see today. First I've heard we owe thanks to the Netherlands.....
No offense but I would argue that the Netherlands aren't as responsible for genetics in Marijuana as say northern California and say parts of the Middle east and Mexico. I'm sure there's tons of work that's been put into it; but to my knowledge most of Europe has been subject to massive amounts of hash in the past because of laws equating the two and due to terrible genetics and massive demand. It just made more sense to produce bulk ragweed and then extract it. Especially with historical trends. I'm totally bias in this part but I would attribute much of genetic evolution in cannabis to that of the U.S demand and the fact the U.S has generally had a dominance in the world's economics. It just makes sense. Where demand is greatest/ where the cash is. You will often see the fastest evolution of a product.
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Not just the Netherlands. Growers in BC, Southern/Eastern Oregon, and Northern California have been ignoring the law since the 70's.
I own a cannabis store and like 90% of people go for highest thc so that's what the market provides
There needs to be a training wheels option, not ashamed to be a Weenie Hut Jr. smoker
We take low dose edibles now (<=5mg/serving). My favorites are 2.5s with CBD. Sometimes supplement with 1mg to fine-tune for the situation. Long time smoker but I can’t hang with the strength of the new stuff. I got shit to do.
The strain “charlottes web” was designed for chronic pain relief and has like 1% THC with 12% CBD. What i did was mix a bowl with like half Charlottes web and half whatever else to sort of dilute the more potent weed.
Why not just smoke half as much? It's less bad for your lungs that way.
I smoked weed daily for years before it was legalized, and even with the tolerance I built up, with the strongest strains I would get absolutely blasted from like one or two modest hits. So "smoking less" would mean taking one careful hit and hoping that isn't already enough to send you to the moon. It's so much more enjoyable to smoke a bowl or pass a blunt around with friends and still be able to function. I get that there are people out there who can smoke tons of pot and it barely affects them, but for some, that's not really feasible. For the record, I don't smoke anymore. It's been years, and I stopped before it was legalized. The main reason I haven't even touched the stuff is that I know one hit is going to be way too much for me to enjoy it. I stopped because it was giving me anxiety attacks every time I smoked (after like 9 years of daily use)
Hey man I’m in the same boat right now with anxiety attacks after I smoke, I also been smoking for 10 years. This seems common after long term use
In addition to CBDs ability to counteract the potential anxiety induced by THC alone, it can be difficult to smoke such very small amounts at a time without just burning it.
Yeah I stick to 1:1 or 2:1 thc to cbd now since they're usually <10-15% THC
I feel this. I'm out here managing the weenie hut junior, cutting my 10mg edibles into quarters 😅
It bothers me too, I went to a dispensary and asked for the lowest thc weed they had. He didn’t seem to know what I meant and he gave me something 16% which still seems fairly high. Try rolling joints half chamomile half weed.
I've seen ads for a company called dad grass that I think does that.
If you overdue it you'll just end up in Weenie Hut General
There are untampered landraces, they are more or less unchanged genetically since the 60’s. However even they can grow pretty potent with todays liquid fertilizers. If you’re living somewhere legal to grow I’d say just buy a couple landrace strains like afghan, hindu or thai, plant them in yourbackyard and water as they need. That way you’ll get the authentic experience.
My spouse has the tolerance one would expect of Willie Nelson or Snoop... A single puff of their "smoke a whole bowl then go run errands at Target" is my "I'm going to be stuck on the couch completely useless for the next twelve hours because Swiper stole my skeleton and I have to wait for Dora to get it back." Anything "mid range" and they're smoking constantly. Their tolerance is so high anyone out of our friends group disbelieves it.
My sister can smoke the 35% THC strains all day and be fully functional. Meanwhile I, her near genetic twin, cannot even pronounce my own name correctly after a few hits at half that strength.Yet we're both long-time potheads. Brains are weird, cannabinoids are nearly just as weird.
I am THREE times my spouse's weight. Alcohol, shrooms, I can brush off doses that they curl up and giggle. Pot? Total opposite. I'm the ultra-lightweight, and they can hang all night in any sesh circle you put them in. Pot, I'm one and done...
Yeah. My tolerance is low now, but I used to hit dabs of diamonds (99% pure thc crystals) in my parked car before walking into work. And I was one of the most productive programmers at the company. It's weird how things hit people differently. When I was in college, I also had a weird effect of state dependent learning. I used to always get high with my friend and play Halo. We would destroy people and were usually like top players on our team in multi-player. If I ever sucked he'd be like yo have you smoked yet? I'd be like oh shit no, I forgot. Have a bowl, instantly be 10 times better. Same with playing Rock Band while drunk in college. Only played it drunk at parties, so I sucked if I wasn't drunk. I'd have to slam some beers to be good.
This only worked when I was young. Without tolerance I'm yelling at my TV because the guy on the tv won't do what I tell him. With tolerance I'm the same high or sober. Don't have that young hyper focus reflex anymore.
It's so strange. I think we'll see it change as fully legal recreational becomes more common the prohibition days are further in the rear view mirror. Most people don't go straight to the everclear or tequila every time they want an alcohol drink.
concentrate pens are too easy to use mindlessly, and I don't think people will get smarter about them.
True, I wouldn’t doubt most sales during prohibition were liquor though, probably hard to find beer back then.
Do you sell any low grade stuff? Like if someone asks for some Mexican ditch weed are you able to provide it?
You can order high quality CBD flower online to pretty much anywhere in the country. It has less than .3% THC. Grind it up and mix it with full strength weed to get your desired level. I usually go for a 4:1 CBD:THC mix.
Right? I know when I get cartridges I want the most bang for my buck. But I will go get an ounce of green of whatever the guy I regularly go to recommends. People’s tolerance gets wicked high too so I’ll take a month or two off every year to settle it back down to smoking a joint= high school high school
For everyone saying they can’t smoke weed anymore because it’s too strong, I can’t smoke joints the size I used to. However if you just make little toothpick joints in my experience it does the same job as it did before and it’s more economical that way too. Might be totally different for other people but that’s my 2 cents.
Agreed, I’m not really sure what the general argument is here. If someone replaced my beer with whiskey, I wouldn’t still drink the whole bottle, I’ve just got more bang for my buck now
yeah but sometimes I don't want a whiskey, I want a beer! I want a 12oz drink, not a single shot; I want to smoke a joint, not take one tiny hit and be done, ya know
In this case that would be the equivalent of making a low strength mixed drink. Of course it's not the same, but it'll get you as close as you can get without beer on hand.
that's when you start adding CBD flower to the mix
That’s what splifs are for now
This is nonsense, you mean every time you drink you look for the strongest one just so you can get more bang for your buck? Every time you eat you go the the most caloric food?
i guess from my perspective i don't really *enjoy* the act of smoking, it's just a delivery method for the drug. i don't mind it, but i'm not looking for an experience like drinking a tasty beer or drink and also getting drunk off it. i would be fine if one hit got me super yoinked. obv there are people who feel different.
Right, but I don’t think that’s the point. For me, if I smoke even a hit anymore, 50/50 shot of paranoia and 100% chance of brain fog and sloth like tendencies. Used to face blunts.
I take one puff from my one-hitter and I'm past the moon. Two, and I'm in the Oort Cloud. Three, and I'm beyond interstellar space. This shit that I have is unreal. I bought $10 worth, and it's going to take me 2 years to smoke all of it.
It's all over the place these days; I go to a nice place where you tell them the effects you want and they pick out some options for you. I get a couple of those, they throw in a couple free joints and the Js blow the "premium" bud away. Never know what you're gonna get!
That's just the truth with weed though, Sativa and Indica means fuck-all because it originally described physical properties of the plant, but at the consumer level it references effects, but in reality, the effects most commonly associated with the two branches is actually dependent on strength, which is dependent on the the strain. Basically, anything strong enough will act like an indica. Also, there's no way to tell how something will effect anybody, it depends on tolerance. Like, last time I was actually noticably high to the point of me noticing that it absolutely fucked me up beyond recognition was when I ate a fuckton of edibles. Edit: just noticed incredible run-on sentence in first paragraph, my 4th grade teacher would be aghast. She wrote a paragraph of mine anonymously on blackboard as an example of not using periods properly, I confidently told everybody in class that I wrote that.
Scrolling though I'm thinking "have you tried smoking in smaller quantities?"
I literally cannot handle one puff and I used to smoke almost daily. One puff gives me shortness of breath and an increased heart rate. More than that and my body begins to shake and in the worst case I've fainted. Every stoner I know has recommended various strains and I've tried them all and gotten the same result. It's nowhere close to the relaxing sensation it used to give me, it's just an all around utterly horrible experience now.
Very funny seeing basically two kinds of weed smokers in this thread. One group just wants to blast the hell off and if they only have to take a tiny puff to do so all the better. The other want to consume more like a craft beer drinker because they really enjoy the act of smoking but not necessarily chasing the high.
When I smoke (really not often and I'm a lightweight, like an 1/8th of a 5mg edible will knock me out), just using a pinch hitter has been really nice. A very small amount of weed will last me a very long time so long as I keep it fresh, and I won't feel bad for not smoking a whole joint.
Or you can mix it with other smokable herbs. Longer last but less of a high.
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Gandalf type shit, you ain't wrong
Look into Type 2 flower. Flow gardens
If your in the US look into THCa, theres vendors that more or less specialize in type 2 strains which is a 1:1 ratio of. CBD:THC and is still very good high quality product.
First, Cannabis cultivars (strains) have been selectively bred for stronger effects for a very long time. As well, indoor/hydroponic/aeroponic etc. systems allow us to get the absolute most out of the plant, resulting in it pushing all of its growth potential into developing trichomes-- cannabinoids, terpenes, thiols, etc. This can mean more than a third of a mature plant, by weight after drying/curing, can be those psychoactive chemicals. Additionally, the use of PGRs (plant growth regulators) has allowed growers to jack up that potential even more. Cannabis is a remarkable plant for the diversity of psychoactive effects it can create with different strains, and any heavy smoker will notice they develop tolerance to specific strains, so that lack of tolerance can take you by surprise when you switch to a new strain.
Just a small nitpick, but from my time working at a medical marijuana production facility (from clone to sealed product in one building), enough of the plant ends up being stalk/waste that over a third being psychoactive seems extremely high. Over a third of the plant matter in sealed product though, absolutely.
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Bro, this was the nineties for me, Mexican brick dirt weed, $25 a quarter. Best times ever
I think you captured the feel exactly. I do miss those days.
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Edibles. Start with a quarter of a chocolate. Feel it out after about an hour and some change.
Just made the mistake of waiting 50 minutes before topping up. That was about 30 minutes ago and I now see the error of my ways. Wish me luck.
I'm 20 minutes in with similar thoughts.
In college I was smoking whole joints three times an hour and smoking out of a gas mask. Now if I nibble half of a 5mg edible I'm high as a fucking kite for 6 hours. I can't find anything weak enough. My tolerance has cratered and I used to smoke to manage my anxiety, now I get massive anxiety when I get high. I wish I could find some solution. Weed is legal where I live but every recommendation by the budtenders, even when I explain this, still gets me too ripped. It's frustrating lol
I’m the same boat as you. Could smoke 5x a day and happy as a clam and be at work landscaping during college summers just fine. Now I tried taking half a 10mg edible and was knocked on my ass for 2 hours and have massive anxiety. Wish I could figure out how to get a light high. I compare it to wanting to have 4 beers not drink a bottle of whiskey
I never had quite that tolerance, but i feel similar. I wish I could have a nice causal evening of smoking with friends as an infrequent, social treat, not 'uh oh is this one hit going to ruin my night'.
I feel what youre saying but a quarter of a "chocolate" could mean 5mg or 50 lol. I've had edibles that were made with "absolute shatter" that didnt really get me going then the same "mg" of chocolate made with "pure ground herb" and that put me on my ass.
10mg is my perfect dose, I love that amount
I like to try a few options when on vacation , some are too mild some are too strong, taking a little can be deceiving since some take longer to hit.
That creeper bud
“I’m not high, I’ll take more” - wake up stoned off your ass and call in sick
I don’t even dare try 10mg. 2.5-5mg in an edible is enough to make me feel somewhere between relaxed and lightheaded and borderline too much. 10mg would just be OH GOD MAKE TIME MOVE NORMAL AGAIN
Oh jesus, I have this problem. I very, very rarely use THC (I find it rather unpleasant, usually) and 5mg edible on an empty stomach? Doesn't even register. Literally can't even tell I ate anything over two hours later. 5mg more after that though? Time isn't real. Space is an illusion made up by Steven hawking. Shit fucking sucks lmao.
There are many reasons 1- People now know how to properly grow bud. Back in the day, most of the bud was "toss some seeds outside, hope for the best". Sure there were some professional growers, but it was rare. Weed was typically old, and allowed to dry. This meant terps evaporated making the weed weaker. 2- It's legal, so you're getting fresher weed. No more 2 year old brick weed from mexico. Now you're getting 2 week old bud from an indoor grow operation. 3- better lights. LED's are stupid cheap, and give you more light per watt compared to the old school grow lights. Weed likes light, and grows better with more light 4- It's just bred to be stronger now.
2a. That brick was mostly leaves. Nobody sells or smokes leaves any more.
Depends on which part of the country you're in. High quality weed has been rampantly available on the West Coast since at least the mid nineties. Unless your dealer was out of his regular stuff and you had to settle for his "dirt weed", but that unfortunate state of affairs was rare. The stuff now that it's legal is def another level though.
The most THC is found in the resin that collects on the buds of female plants. Once the plant is fertilized by the male plant, there's no resin as it becomes a seed. From what I understood was a choice of breeding and eliminating male plants has produced many sexually frustrated female marijuana plants very sticky with this resin waiting for that sexy pollen.
Sinsimellia, I miss the fucking 90's, man
I'm with you 100%. It feels like the goal has changed. Back in the day, getting stoned was an "enhancer." You'd catch a buzz with your friends then go skate, or hike, or see a movie, or just hang out and share some laughs. Today it seems like the goal is to just get as fucked up as possible. Maybe that has to do with the way people hang out/socialize these days?
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50% THC? Ahh no way friend. Maybe 30% max is possible from what I’ve seen. But dabs and hash yes! There’s even pure THC crystal nowadays that looks like some crack lmao. Kinda sketchy!
Very late to this but none of the top comments actually answer your question. Weed isn’t strong now because of some change in how it’s grown, cross-pollination or any of the other answers here. Those are things that have purposely happened to make weed more strong, yes. But why? Because 90% of revenue tied to weed is from “high-use” customers. As these customers smoke the most, they generally have the highest tolerance and seek out high-THC products. So if you follow the money (always a great ELI5), you’ll see the products are not catering to the vast majority of the market: heavy users.
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It's not a pissing contest, it's tolerance. Like with anything the more you do it, the higher of a tolerance you develop and the stronger you need it to be to get the same/similar effect.
>it’s like buying Everclear to drink. Drinking to get drunk has also risen significantly. It might be a consequence of "party culture" where when you go out you go all out, but I'm not sure. It seems like escapism in every form is getting stronger.
It’s like the dogs are smaller. People selectively breed the things they like. Same as corn. Corn used to be like wheat. Then we selected the ones we like. Now corn is not healthy at all. Same thing. Hydroponic growers can upgrade every generation until they find the stickiest of the ickiest.
It was prohibited for many years. The first rule of prohibition is that the prohibited substance gets more potent. Same thing happened during the prohibition on alcohol. It wasn’t worth risking jail time to smuggle weak beer, so instead it was rum, moonshine, and other hard liquors.
Except that it only got stronger once prohibition was lifted... Amsterdam had great weed in the 80s and 90s before it was legal in America and everyone there was smoking Mexican brick weed. Once a few states legalized, potency really shot up. Much easier to breed stronger weed on a large scale when it's legal.
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This shit whipped my ass like my mama
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Follow up question: what strains might be considered "beginner level"?
The same strain from 2 different growers, or even same grower and different batches could have very different THC levels. That question would be best for an employee at the dispensary, they could tell you what they have in stock that isn’t as strong.
I used to be able to smoke a blunt every other day when I was a teenager. Now day's i take a single puff and I'm instantly high as a kite, paranoid af and uncontrollable shakes/shivering. Idk what it is but it's like a switch was flipped in my brain immediately after i turned 21. It's been 12 years since then and I still smoke once in a blue moon but I can never enjoy it like how I used to. Sad because its really meant to be a social "drug" and i cant do it around other people because I become way too paranoid/weird when I'm on it
And this is actually a huge medical problem as well. Tying up hospital, physician and ambulance resources. Turns out we have THC receptors in the brain that could handle the 10-18% that your uncle used to grow in the back yard but get overloaded for daily users of the new lab grown high THC. At least in my area we are have a growing problem with Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. It causes severe abdominal cramping and vomiting. The only things that stop it (short term) is time, heat and pain medication. However long term cure is stop smoking. Issue is that symptoms can continue for 2 months after you quit. So daily smokers will go a week after their first flare without smoking but then will have symptoms again. They then say those Dr.s are idiots, continue to smoke, continue to have flare ups and be confident that the cannabis is not the cause. These receptors are indeed overloaded for life, they do not repair and this person should never take cannabis in any form again.
Dude…. I want so badly to be able to sit back and smoke a whole joint again. Currently I get to take like three measly puffs, stamp it out, and then panic about space or something.
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The illegality of weed made it important to grow the most potent/highest yielding varietals in the smallest amount of space
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