Today's pot is not your grandfather's; it's a higher high

UTRECHT, Netherlands, March 18 (UPI) —

There is some truth to the potent pot myth: Today’s pot is more potent than your grandfather’s and people get higher as a result, Dutch researchers say.

Peggy van der Pol, Nienke Liebregts, Tibor Brunt, Jan van Amsterdam and colleagues of the Netherlands Institute of Mental Health and Addiction in Utrecht, Netherlands, said for the past decade or more, the commonsense idea that high strength cannabis leads to higher doses of Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient of marijuana that provides the high, was challenged and labeled the potent pot myth.

It was also argued smokers of strong cannabis adjusted their drug intake to compensate for the potency, usually by inhaling less smoke or rolling weaker joints, van der Pol said.

It was argued today’s "super pot" was healthier for marijuana users because they get their desired high while inhaling less lung-harming smoke.

The researchers observed 98 experienced pot smokers as they rolled and smoked joints using their own cannabis samples, which were of varying concentrations.

The study, published in the journal Addiction, found those who made strong joints inhaled smaller volumes of smoke, presumably in an attempt to lower the concentration of the amount of THC taken into the body, but these efforts were only partially successful, compensating for roughly half of the THC strength.

People who smoke high-potency marijuana ended up getting higher doses of the active ingredient THC, but although smokers of strong cannabis altered their smoking behavior to compensate for the higher potency, they didn’t alter it enough, the study authors said.