There is a strain today for just about any CBD/THC ratio you could ask for, in legal markets anyway. Black market supply might be warped, I don't have any experience with that though.
I don’t smoke or live in a country where it’s legal. Can you literally go in and knowingly buy strains tested to be low and high ratio? Is it listed in the product description?
I live in Las Vegas (where it's recreationally legal), and they break down not only the amount of THC, but by percentage of each terpene in the strain. Nevada's cannabis industry is pretty heavily tested and regulated, definitely moreso than places we like to vacation, such as the PNW. Our last trip to Portland, we stopped by a dispensary to pick up a couple pre-rolls, and probed the bud-tenders about mercene percentage, only to realize later, it's not something regulated by the state. We left with some prerolls they suggested, and probably looking a bit like pretentious tourists.
It's actually quite unbelievable. My local dispensary in CA is like going into a high end health food store where each employee is extremely knowledgable and able to recommend product based on your specific preference. The aesthetic is very clean and minimalist (compared to the head shops I frequented in my youth). Product descriptions have a number of seemingly standardized details listed and the employees will contextualize those for you.
Sorry, this isn't true. I work in the industry and know how to talk about product. I have a very, very low THC tolerance, but I appreciate a buzz. I have failed to find a product that suits my preferences for years in a legal market. My preferences are relatively "niche", and the market has no interest in it.
Are you referring to smoking specifically? Edibles with THC content as low as 1mg are readily available at shops, which make it very easy to control a precise dose, so perhaps I'm misunderstanding.
One could also eat half of a 1mg edible, which provides even more precision dosage.
I'm like this as a user too. It's hard to find low potency flower across the USA, there is a big pull from retail stores for flower over 20% (which leads to those bogus test results I mentioned elsewhere).
I know of only a few vendors that sell "medium" flower - and retailers only let them in because they have some hi-test product too.
It's wild to me that of the responses I got, the only one that seemed to understand what I was expressing is the one that appears to have been downvoted, while the others which appear to have ignored the fact that I work in the industry and talk to me like I don't know what I'm talking about haven't.
In any case, thank you, it's nice to know I'm not the only one.
Well, duh, if I'm very sensitive to THC I obviously don't take large tokes. But with typical THC content being > 15%, "half" a hit is really hard to nail down. I tend to err on the side of caution because getting too high makes me anxious... and the usual outcome is I don't get any effect at all.
With respect, maybe you just need to shop around more? In Seattle some shops have a good variety and some do not. I'm looking at the online menus for two local shops right now. One primarily has high THC products while the other has a variety of low-THC high-CBD products, including flower. For example the strain 'Remedy CBD' from Puffin Farm is listed as THC 0.41% CBD 12%.
Their menu lists 9 CBD flower products and 97 CBD edible products, not to mention topicals, concentrates, etc...
Like I said, I work in the industry. I know how to understand product. The high CBD products are almost universally so low in THC that it takes quite a lot to get a small buzz. Which itself isn't necessarily a bad thing (although can be quite expensive), but that also means very large doses of CBD, which tends to make me very sleepy and dopey.
The product I wish I could find is very rare, I've almost never found it. Something more akin to the "dirt weed" I grew up with, THC around 4-5%. There just isn't enough of a market for "I want to get a little high". There's a high THC market, and a high CBD market, with not much in between.
I'm pretty suspicious about most claims about cannibinoid percentages on any cannabis flowers. You could take two buds from the same plant and get different percentages depending on what part of the plant you take it from. That same variation exists across every plant in the room, even if they're clones of the same strain.
I would assume any grower going for high pecentages in tests are going to pick the biggest choicest top buds to have tested.
Meanwhile, you buy some of that weed from the store and you may end up with some lower buds that barely got any light, or some that was in the back corner of the room while drying and didn't finish properly, or that bud the workers kept brushing against while it was growing knocking crystals and resin off, or maybe the grower sold it before curing properly to make a quick buck so every seller that ends up with it ends up either curing it themselves in different ways or just not bothering at all and selling it as is. The seller may just sit on it for a while and let it degrade.
All of those factors, and many more, have an affect on the amount of cannibinoids and terpenes in any specific bud you might end up with.
Just because a specific strain or even crop was tested as one thing doesn't mean the weed you actually buy will be that.
Concentrates tend to have less variation within one batch, but that again depends on how their made.
A lot of it in the end is just marketing. Even most strains you buy are likely not what they're sold as. Even if a grower is able to maintain a stable line, over time after successive generations of clones, genetic defects and other undesirable things begin to occur and the grower needs to introduce fresh genetics, thereby changing the original strain.
Cannabis genetics, breeding and growing is a pretty fascinating subject. There's so many factors that go into the final product and just so much variation and endless new discoveries every day.
I'm curious if it was a light, medium, or heavy THC strain of cannabis that the subjects consumed. It would be nice to see a cognitive performance study for all prescription drugs.
To be fair, you can safely go cold-turkey with Vyvanse - but withdrawal symptoms start after 2-3 days and can last up to a week. I'd describe my withdrawal experience as feeling utterly bored and being uninterested in doing anything, even passively watching the trashiest of shows on TV. I imagine that's what clinical depression (without actually feeling sad) is like.
I agree, the difference between some strains of cannabis can seem as wide as the difference between alcohol and caffeine. I suspect none of it is doing me any favors in the long run, but I'm very productive with some strains but locked to a couch with others.
> Overall, the potency of illicit cannabis plant material has consistently risen over time since 1995 from approximately 4% in 1995 to approximately 12% in 2014.
Weed 25 years ago had a THC content of 5% or less, generally speaking. Now 20% is common, and >30% exists. More importantly, the ratio of THC to CBD is higher, meaning you get different effects even if you smoked an "equivalent" amount before.
While potency has increase that doesn't directly correlate to everyone is getting higher. That's still a matter of intake and in this case users are likely smoking a lot less.
In the `70s most of what was available was crappy "dirt weed" (called so because it tasted like dirt when you smoked it) and it was full of seeds.
The strains they have now can tastes like all kinds of things, fruity, spicy, etc. I'm not an expert on that, but I've done a few "tastings" and the different flavors are really pretty amazing.
> anyone who says pot used to be weaker back in the day is a cop.
In reference to spliffs (but not joints) then I can see them having more tobacco content in the past compared to today - and pre-ground baggies being cut with weed look-a-likes compared to buying a bag of pre-ground from a dispensary today.
And strains like "Alien Ass-hat" are definitely new - and they have really high THC/g.
The title here seems like it’s drawing much more conclusion than the paper gives - really should read “Study Correlates Regular Cannabis Use in Adolescents with Reduced Verbal Memory Performance”
Don't want to create a new thread for this, but my suggested title is: "Moderate adolescent cannabis use may have adverse effects on cognitive functioning"
Here is the actual sentence the title was edited from:
>After correcting for multiple testing, a greater frequency and earlier onset of regular cannabis use were associated with poorer cognitive performance, specifically on tests of verbal memory.
I thought the bad grammar was just a typo, but it was due to you cutting up the sentence to mean something different than what the paper actual states.
I don't see the post's title in the "Findings" section. I do see:
"a greater frequency and earlier onset of regular cannabis use were associated with poorer cognitive performance, specifically on tests of verbal memory"
Isn't this the kind of misleading title that should lead to folks flagging the post? That's what I did. I feel the title (in addition to containing a typo) is intentionally misleading, omits key info (the fact that the paper is about adolescents only), and exaggerates other info.
For me, that's a flag. If I'm using flagging wrong, someone should tell me. :)
> A vast majority of participants endorsed [Quotation note: Had used] cannabis use at waves 1 (88%) and 2 (94%), with a mean age of onset of monthly use of 13.7 years. Further, participants reported using, on average, 8.4 (SD 1⁄4 10.8) days per month in the previous 6 months at wave 1.
They’ve collected a group of urban kids whom the vast majority are using cannabis, many starting years prior to this survey.
I know it is chic to be skeptical, but this is one study where I think it is also correct. The study leads the reader to believe that there is a biochemical link between cognitive performance and cannabis as a substance [0]. On the other hand, the evidence they present is that a small minority of kids aren’t using and are performing better. The number of confounding variables is much, much higher than simply alcohol use (Which in the second wave was at 99%, not much to normalize for) and family situation. For example, drug use can result in being kicked off sports teams, suspensions, things that could hinder intellectual development.
Is anyone convinced by the study and would stand to offer support for its conclusion?
[0] To me, the following quote can be read to support this assertion: “ Moderate adolescent cannabis use may have adverse effects on cognitive functioning, specifically verbal memory, that cannot be explained by familial factors”
I like this dialogue, because my first hypothesis (Which I didn’t want to encumber the original post with) was that , given the high base percent of users (85% or so and above), it seemed use would likely not be correlated with less social interaction, but that lack of use might be. Peer pressure doesn’t work without peers, as a DARE officer would probably say.
Maybe there are introverted individuals or closed-group social circles that are just performing better, one descriptor of those groups being the lack of substance use (Or use of a more limited set of substances, like alcohol only).
Irrespective, I think these types of questions are more useful in helping kids grow up intelligent than this study is (If we assume their focus on measuring intellect references is actually out of concern for how well students are doing)
You can do RCTs for adults, though, and teen use of cannabis is trending downward (at least in U.S. states that have legalized medical and/or recreational use).
Easy personal solution is to accept the serious limitations of studies like this. Harder scientific solution is to implement a well designed cohort study that follows people over 20+ years.
That's how we know about cardiovascular health. Framingham cohort study.
I haven’t really vetted this study, but it samples IQ prior to use at 9-12 and after use at 17-20 among twins [0]. It concludes that there is no link between IQ scores and usage. More of a “For your interest” reference.
Your overall comment is spot on, just because designing a good study is hard does not mean we should accept poorly designed studies as good science. Agency risk unaddressed, science should seek to find the solution to a question rather than an answer.
Need comparative data. Repeat same study with heavy ice cream consumption, heavy video game playing, tackle football exposure, or anything else that could impede adolescent health and development.
At first, I thought you meant repeat the study but swap out the cognitive tests so the stoned teens are playing video games and eating ice cream. Pretty sure I can extrapolate the results of that study with 99% accuracy.
From my own personal experience, pot seriously impairs my cognitive performance. I’ll only do it if I don’t have to work for the next 48 hours (eg. a Friday night or vacation). If I’m undertaking some kind of serious effort I can’t do it at all, because that period of impairment will stop my progress.
I think if I had a different kind of job, that didn’t require me to figure out a lot of details, it wouldn’t matter.
I understand that others have a totally different experience and can code while stoned. But I’m not surprised that the average results would show lower performance if a chunk of the population is like me.
First time effects of cannabis can be quite pronounced, but with sustained use / tolerance that level of effect is rarely if ever achieved again. There is definitely some variability from person to person though.
I don’t think this is accurate. Surely it depends on the specific pot. If you consume cbd are you cognitively impaired? Probably not. What about mostly cbd and <1% thc? <5% thc? Or maybe all thc and little cbd. All of these will have different outcomes.
I don’t notice much effects from cbd. Sometimes hints of a “body high” but I’m not sure if it’s the placebo effect. The only thing that seems to matter is the thc content. For me, a little dose of a high thc gummy is the same as a big dose of a low thc high cbd gummy. So I could take cbd on a work night, or probably even during the work day, but it wouldn’t do anything for me.
When I talked about pot, I wasn’t taking about cbd, although I apologize if that causes confusion.
CBD is known to have a modulating effect on THC. Essentially THC on it's own induces anxiety. CBD reduces or even eliminates that effect. My point is more that saying "pot" does this or that is not descriptive enough to draw any conclusions. The effects between different strains and people varies so greatly it's a practically meaningless statement.
I am a regular pot smoker in my mid-40s. I have been using marijuana regularly since I was 16 and have participated in several studies of this nature since I was in my early 20s.
I have volunteered for these because I have always felt that marijuana does not diminish my cognitive performance for certain tasks -- and definitely does not diminish my memory recall abilities.
Some of these tests involved listening to short stories, and re-telling then an hour later, and other memory games.
I like to think I aced them, to keep the bell curve wide.
On one occasion, the researcher did indicate this to me, well after the experiments were over.
In a world of methodological uncertainty and eroding trust in these kinds of studies, anecdotes are more important than ever (and they were never unimportant to begin with).
I grew up around a lot of people who were regular smokers from an early age, say 15. (and by regular I mean "can't sleep without pot"), and their cognitive abilities definitely suffered from smoking, and they freely admit it, and I think it's very obvious if you're around people who smoke a lot.
You simply can't concentrate when you're high the same way you can when you don't smoke. Reading is more difficult, exercise is more difficult, that's just the literal effects of weed.
If you're high all the time you're not going to perform the way you can when you're sober, and this is just my anecdotal observation, with people who started smoking young it becomes a sort of personality trait. You just become less sharp, less active, and when there's habit less interested in doing things not-high. Studies aside, that just can't be helpful.
I have noticed this in others too -- I never recommend trying pot to other people mainly for this reason.
But it does not affect me in this way. The code I write when stoned compiles just as well as sober code, and I remember everything I read when high just fine.
It enables me to achieve a deeper and longer focus when performing solo tasks that involve a certain level of concentration, than I can do otherwise.
However, it is most definitely detrimental to team orientated or social tasks -- especially to starting them at all.
It is possible that I have conditioned myself to be this way, but it was also the reason I started using it in the first place.
I have no formal education beyond high-school, so it is not too hyperbolic for me to state that nearly everything I have ever taught myself (from coding to hardware design), I have learned while high.
I do not believe I have been handicapping myself but rather the opposite.
Sure, this seems obvious with respect to my own experience with it, personally. But the question I really want to know the answer to is if I've been totally sober for over 24 - 48 hours, is my performance still below baseline? What about a week or a month without it?
If it were theoretically somehow proven I was still experiencing a negative effect despite cessation for over a week, that would be enough for me to rarely or never use it again. As far as I know, there isn't any convincing evidence of that, but if there ever was, I'd definitely want to know about it.
In my anecdotal experience, I definitely notice difficulty with conversations, deep reading, etc for ~2 weeks after stopping. It takes about 1 month of sobriety for me to feel 95% back to normal and 2-3 months for 100%.
Not that this necessarily makes things any better, but what are the odds this could largely be explained by a kind of withdrawal from people who were using it every day for years? If you suddenly stop taking almost any psychoactive substance that you've had in your body 24/7 for years, the odds of some negative effects persisting for a month don't seem too unlikely.
It could certainly be some combination of both, too.
For me, this was not true. I smoked weed almost daily from my freshman year in high school through college. I was able to zone in and concentrate while high, and every subject was much more fascinating. It did take me longer to do the work but I pulled straight A's and was probably more creative and more willing to take calculated risks. I was probably the exception though because most of my stoner friends did not have this experience.
"You simply can't concentrate when you're high the same way you can when you don't smoke."
I won't argue against that being your personal experience but it's certainly not mine.
Mine is quite the opposite and has been for a long time. I've been smoking for 47 years taking a puff and getting to work is routine for me.
Weed is the only "drug" I've ever used. I snorted a few lines back in the 80`s but I never liked that crap. I don't take any prescription drugs and never have but most of those I know my age do now. I'm not saying weed is the reason why, but it's worth noting.
> From 2001 to 2006, 245 probands/257 siblings from San Diego and 351 probands/373 siblings from Denver were recruited via substance abuse treatment programs, alter- native schools and juvenile probation departments (see [30] for ascertainment details)
Citation 30 is:
30. Gelhorn H., Hartman C., Sakai J., Stallings M., Young S., Hyun Rhee S., et al. Toward DSM‐V: an item response theory analysis of the diagnostic process for DSM‐IV alcohol abuse and dependence in adolescents. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psy- chiatry 2008; 47: 1329–39; https://doi.org/10.1097/ CHI.0b013e318184ff2e
Is this really all that groundbreaking? I had a teammate in highschool remark that you could pinpoint in his grades the times when he started/stopped smoking weed.
Well not if you ask him as he would tell you his grades were highly correlated to his smoking habits.
Obviously its a non scientific anecdote, but my point is I thought it was well established common knowledge that marijuana affects cognition.
And his smoking habits might be directly correlated with reduced motivation, poorer time management, and any number of other things. Meaning that it might not be a direct cognitive effect, but a second or third order effect altering his performance.
89 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] threadHowever weed strains back then had a different CBD/THC ratio than the ones today.
One could also eat half of a 1mg edible, which provides even more precision dosage.
I know of only a few vendors that sell "medium" flower - and retailers only let them in because they have some hi-test product too.
In any case, thank you, it's nice to know I'm not the only one.
Their menu lists 9 CBD flower products and 97 CBD edible products, not to mention topicals, concentrates, etc...
The product I wish I could find is very rare, I've almost never found it. Something more akin to the "dirt weed" I grew up with, THC around 4-5%. There just isn't enough of a market for "I want to get a little high". There's a high THC market, and a high CBD market, with not much in between.
I would assume any grower going for high pecentages in tests are going to pick the biggest choicest top buds to have tested.
Meanwhile, you buy some of that weed from the store and you may end up with some lower buds that barely got any light, or some that was in the back corner of the room while drying and didn't finish properly, or that bud the workers kept brushing against while it was growing knocking crystals and resin off, or maybe the grower sold it before curing properly to make a quick buck so every seller that ends up with it ends up either curing it themselves in different ways or just not bothering at all and selling it as is. The seller may just sit on it for a while and let it degrade.
All of those factors, and many more, have an affect on the amount of cannibinoids and terpenes in any specific bud you might end up with.
Just because a specific strain or even crop was tested as one thing doesn't mean the weed you actually buy will be that.
Concentrates tend to have less variation within one batch, but that again depends on how their made.
A lot of it in the end is just marketing. Even most strains you buy are likely not what they're sold as. Even if a grower is able to maintain a stable line, over time after successive generations of clones, genetic defects and other undesirable things begin to occur and the grower needs to introduce fresh genetics, thereby changing the original strain.
Cannabis genetics, breeding and growing is a pretty fascinating subject. There's so many factors that go into the final product and just so much variation and endless new discoveries every day.
I'll admit I'm wary of the potential neurotoxic damage I'm doing to myself through my Vyvanse prescription...
Weaning-off it is far more preferable.
> Overall, the potency of illicit cannabis plant material has consistently risen over time since 1995 from approximately 4% in 1995 to approximately 12% in 2014.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4987131/
In the `70s most of what was available was crappy "dirt weed" (called so because it tasted like dirt when you smoked it) and it was full of seeds.
The strains they have now can tastes like all kinds of things, fruity, spicy, etc. I'm not an expert on that, but I've done a few "tastings" and the different flavors are really pretty amazing.
Also, anyone who says pot used to be weaker back in the day is a cop.
In reference to spliffs (but not joints) then I can see them having more tobacco content in the past compared to today - and pre-ground baggies being cut with weed look-a-likes compared to buying a bag of pre-ground from a dispensary today.
And strains like "Alien Ass-hat" are definitely new - and they have really high THC/g.
Better yet, “Stoned Teens Don’t Listen” hah.
Can’t paste all the nuances in the title, so checkout the actual link.
>After correcting for multiple testing, a greater frequency and earlier onset of regular cannabis use were associated with poorer cognitive performance, specifically on tests of verbal memory.
I thought the bad grammar was just a typo, but it was due to you cutting up the sentence to mean something different than what the paper actual states.
"a greater frequency and earlier onset of regular cannabis use were associated with poorer cognitive performance, specifically on tests of verbal memory"
For me, that's a flag. If I'm using flagging wrong, someone should tell me. :)
They’ve collected a group of urban kids whom the vast majority are using cannabis, many starting years prior to this survey.
I know it is chic to be skeptical, but this is one study where I think it is also correct. The study leads the reader to believe that there is a biochemical link between cognitive performance and cannabis as a substance [0]. On the other hand, the evidence they present is that a small minority of kids aren’t using and are performing better. The number of confounding variables is much, much higher than simply alcohol use (Which in the second wave was at 99%, not much to normalize for) and family situation. For example, drug use can result in being kicked off sports teams, suspensions, things that could hinder intellectual development.
Is anyone convinced by the study and would stand to offer support for its conclusion?
[0] To me, the following quote can be read to support this assertion: “ Moderate adolescent cannabis use may have adverse effects on cognitive functioning, specifically verbal memory, that cannot be explained by familial factors”
Drug use can also be a symptom of a poor mental state, for example that induced by social exclusion or poor mentorship.
In such a situation the casual graph would look like:
Maybe there are introverted individuals or closed-group social circles that are just performing better, one descriptor of those groups being the lack of substance use (Or use of a more limited set of substances, like alcohol only).
Irrespective, I think these types of questions are more useful in helping kids grow up intelligent than this study is (If we assume their focus on measuring intellect references is actually out of concern for how well students are doing)
https://allthatsinteresting.com/margaret-howe-lovatt
That's how we know about cardiovascular health. Framingham cohort study.
Your overall comment is spot on, just because designing a good study is hard does not mean we should accept poorly designed studies as good science. Agency risk unaddressed, science should seek to find the solution to a question rather than an answer.
[0] https://www.pnas.org/content/113/5/E500
I think if I had a different kind of job, that didn’t require me to figure out a lot of details, it wouldn’t matter.
I understand that others have a totally different experience and can code while stoned. But I’m not surprised that the average results would show lower performance if a chunk of the population is like me.
When I talked about pot, I wasn’t taking about cbd, although I apologize if that causes confusion.
I have volunteered for these because I have always felt that marijuana does not diminish my cognitive performance for certain tasks -- and definitely does not diminish my memory recall abilities.
Some of these tests involved listening to short stories, and re-telling then an hour later, and other memory games.
I like to think I aced them, to keep the bell curve wide.
On one occasion, the researcher did indicate this to me, well after the experiments were over.
You simply can't concentrate when you're high the same way you can when you don't smoke. Reading is more difficult, exercise is more difficult, that's just the literal effects of weed.
If you're high all the time you're not going to perform the way you can when you're sober, and this is just my anecdotal observation, with people who started smoking young it becomes a sort of personality trait. You just become less sharp, less active, and when there's habit less interested in doing things not-high. Studies aside, that just can't be helpful.
But it does not affect me in this way. The code I write when stoned compiles just as well as sober code, and I remember everything I read when high just fine.
It enables me to achieve a deeper and longer focus when performing solo tasks that involve a certain level of concentration, than I can do otherwise.
However, it is most definitely detrimental to team orientated or social tasks -- especially to starting them at all.
It is possible that I have conditioned myself to be this way, but it was also the reason I started using it in the first place.
I have no formal education beyond high-school, so it is not too hyperbolic for me to state that nearly everything I have ever taught myself (from coding to hardware design), I have learned while high.
I do not believe I have been handicapping myself but rather the opposite.
If it were theoretically somehow proven I was still experiencing a negative effect despite cessation for over a week, that would be enough for me to rarely or never use it again. As far as I know, there isn't any convincing evidence of that, but if there ever was, I'd definitely want to know about it.
In my anecdotal experience, I definitely notice difficulty with conversations, deep reading, etc for ~2 weeks after stopping. It takes about 1 month of sobriety for me to feel 95% back to normal and 2-3 months for 100%.
It could certainly be some combination of both, too.
Some strains make you highly focused. Others more social. Some make you more creative. Some might make you scared and hearing things.
It's like thinking all food is the same. One person eats chocolate bars all day and another carrots but are treated as a baseline.
I won't argue against that being your personal experience but it's certainly not mine.
Mine is quite the opposite and has been for a long time. I've been smoking for 47 years taking a puff and getting to work is routine for me.
Weed is the only "drug" I've ever used. I snorted a few lines back in the 80`s but I never liked that crap. I don't take any prescription drugs and never have but most of those I know my age do now. I'm not saying weed is the reason why, but it's worth noting.
Pardon my ignorance here but, does this mean they only studied kids with "delinquent behaviors"?
> From 2001 to 2006, 245 probands/257 siblings from San Diego and 351 probands/373 siblings from Denver were recruited via substance abuse treatment programs, alter- native schools and juvenile probation departments (see [30] for ascertainment details)
Citation 30 is:
30. Gelhorn H., Hartman C., Sakai J., Stallings M., Young S., Hyun Rhee S., et al. Toward DSM‐V: an item response theory analysis of the diagnostic process for DSM‐IV alcohol abuse and dependence in adolescents. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psy- chiatry 2008; 47: 1329–39; https://doi.org/10.1097/ CHI.0b013e318184ff2e