Whilst cannabis has been decriminalised for personal and private use in South Africa, it cannot yet be sold on the legal recreational market.

In other words, you can grow, and get high off, your own supply, but you cannot legally sell your stash to others.

That hasn’t exactly stopped a flourishing market, but in the US it’s a regulated, multi-billion dollar industry that is going from strength to strength.

(Meanwhile, here in South Africa, we have characters like this…)

Marketing tends to focus on two numbers, in particular –  the list price, and the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content – and it’s here that many are being duped.

Forbes calls it “The Cannabis Industry’s Greatest Lie”, saying that Americans are “buying weed wrong”, which is quite the claim.

There’s a very good point being made, though, as dispensaries sell out of 25% THC products at a rate of knots, and other lower-level products remain on the shelves for far longer.

Enter science, with some hard truths;

THC shopping is almost as bad and dumb as buying wine based on how cool the label looks (which is also how some people buy weed).

Not only does THC content have nothing to do with how “good” the weed is, as recent research conducted by the University of Colorado and published in JAMA Psychiatry found, THC content is also a poor indicator of potency.

High-THC weed doesn’t even get you “more high”!

Read that study in full here, if you’re really in for the deep dive, but let’s get some of the basics of what must have been a rather enjoyable study to conduct.

Researchers documented the experiences of 121 cannabis users, with half being given cannabis concentrates, containing high levels of THC, and half choosing cannabis flower.

In order to monitor the high, researchers kept tabs on the participants’ blood and monitored their mood, cognitive function, and intoxication level before, immediately after, and then one hour after use:

As the researchers expected, the concentrate users had very high levels of THC in their bodies after use. But they weren’t “more high.”

In fact, every participants’ self-reported “highness” was about the same—“as were their measures of balance and cognitive impairment,” as CU noted in a news release. Medium THC flower, high-THC flower—all the same high! This was not what the researchers were expecting.

“People in the high concentration group were much less compromised than we thought they would be,” said coauthor Kent Hutchinson, a professor of psychology who studies addiction, in a CU news release.

Whilst the findings were surprising in certain respects, it does echo what cannabis scientists have long suspected – there are more factors at play than simply the THC level.

At this stage, a warning/disclaimer is necessary to prevent disaster:

One very large exception to this: edibles. If one edible says it has 100 milligrams of THC, and another says it has 10 milligrams, and you eat the 100, you will absolutely be higher, longer, than if you ate the 10.

If you’ve ever experienced an edible high that just will not go away, you will agree.

For those who own and operate dispensaries, however, they concede that the public perception of THC determining high is unlikely to change any time soon:

The THC fallacy persists despite everyone’s best efforts. Both Instagram influencers as well as cannabis entrepreneurs and advocates have tried to explain that the THC number is, at best, a rough estimate…

With this much momentum, it’s unlikely science will change anything. It will take a long time for buyers to adjust their habits and realize THC content isn’t like alcohol by volume on a beer label after all. Until they do, connoisseurs can take advantage of the market inefficiency, and take home superior pot with lower THC levels at a reduced price. It will just require a little more work on the consumer’s end.

Perhaps you can use this information to negotiate a better price with your, um, ‘connection’.

Knowledge is power, man.

Whatever strength dagga you’re smoking, we hope you enjoy.

[source:forbes]