Pubdate: Sun, 02 Feb 2014
Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX)
Copyright: 2014 Austin American-Statesman
Website: http://www.statesman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/32
Author: Steve Contorno, Politifact
Page: E2

POT MORE POTENT THAN WHEN OBAMA WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL

After President Barack Obama said marijuana is no more dangerous than
alcohol - opening a broader conversation about legalizing or
decriminalizing a drug that's on the federal government's most
restrictive list, Schedule I - former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I.,
said the president needs to brush up.

"I think the president needs to speak to his (National Institute of
Health) director in charge of drug abuse," said Kennedy, who chairs
Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes legalization. The
director "would tell the president that, in fact, today's modern,
genetically modified marijuana (has) much higher THC levels, far
surpass(ing) the marijuana that the president acknowledges smoking
when he was a young person."

Obama's exploits as a pot-smoking adolescent are well
documented.

But has marijuana changed that much?

Cannabis contains roughly 500 compounds, 70 of them psychoactive. THC,
or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, is the main psychoactive ingredient
in the plant.

Potency typically refers to the concentration of THC.

THC levels differ depending on the part of the plant used, and how it
is processed. In addition to marijuana, there are materials such as
sinsemilla (the flowering tops of unfertilized female plants), hashish
or cannabis resin, and hash oil (a concentrated extract from cannabis
plants). Hashish oil tends to have much higher concentrations of THC
than marijuana or even sinsemilla. Both have become more popular.

Broadly, marijuana has indeed become more potent. The University of
Mississippi Potency Monitoring project analyzed marijuana samples
confiscated by law enforcement agencies since 1972. The average
potency of all seized cannabis increased from a THC concentration of
3.4 percent in 1993 to about 8.8 percent in 2008.

When Obama was in high school (he graduated in 1979), the mean potency
for marijuana was about 3 percent, said Mahmoud ElSohly, director of
marijuana research at Ole Miss.

Also, the number of samples confiscated with a THC concentration
greater than 9 percent increased significantly, from 3.2 percent in
1993 to 21.5 percent in 2007.

But the high mark in potency (somewhere around 25-27 percent) remains
relatively unchanged in the last couple decades and isn't likely to
increase, ElSohly said.

The former congressman said the reason for the increasing levels of
THC is genetic modification. That's not quite right.

Producers of marijuana on the illicit market don't have the ability to
pull off lab-based engineering.

But they do practice genetic selection, breeding marijuana plants with
the highest concentration of THC, ElSohly said.

Our ruling: Kennedy said that marijuana today is "genetically
modified," with THC levels that "far surpass the marijuana" of the
1970s.

The potency of marijuana has been on the rise since Obama's youth. The
off-base part of this claim is that the rise in THC levels comes from
"genetic modification." It's actually from genetic selection.

We rate this statement as Mostly True.
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