[420 Girl]

Results of a recent marijuana-testing project, alerting the public to unprecedented and dangerous THC levels averaging 10.1 percent received lots of media attention. Major news outlets and the nation’s office of the Drug Czar jumped into the fray, warning the public of the dangerous potency of twenty-first century marijuana.

However, the Marijuana Policy Project read the report, breaking down the math and discovered that the media hype reporting THC levels of 10 percent was patently false.

The government sponsored Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project at the University of Mississippi, issued a report based on the testing of samples of Marijuana confiscated during drug busts.

The project claimed the potency of pot seems to be trending upwards with average THC levels for 2008 at 10.1 percent, compared to 7.3 percent in 2007 and 3.2 percent in 1983.

However, a reading of the actual report tells a different story. The real marijuana potency is only 8.52%. This figure is based upon the removal of tested samples of hashish and hash oil from the equation, which have a higher potency.

The Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project didn’t reveal that it just threw the test results of marijuana, hash and hash oil into one large number, to make its claims that marijuana alone has a 10 percent potency.

There is also the issue of whether marijuana confiscated in drug busts is a true representation of the pot smoked by users in the United States.

“Domestically produced marijuana tested tended to be significantly weaker than the imported stuff, but domestic cannabis only represented 29.7% of the samples tested,” said Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project.

And the vast majority of Marijuana smoked in the United States is of the domestic variety, with exports from such places, as Colombia and Jamaica, representing a small fraction.

Although, the accurate figures from the Marijuana Potency Monitoring Project still show an increase in potency, the dangers presented to the public are overblown.

The Marijuana Policy Project is dedicated to increasing public support for non-punitive and non-coercive marijuana policies and to work to change state laws to reduce or eliminate penalties for the medical and non-medical use of marijuana.

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