Marijuana being 3x potent than in 1980's

This thesis is repeated by media again and again…

https://www.thefix.com/content/tests-reveal-colorado-pot-stronger-has-more-contaminants-30-years-ago

the average potency for marijuana is approximately 20% to 30% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound in the plant that creates the feeling of being high. That potency value is markedly higher than marijuana sold in the 1980s, which federal officials cited as being about 4% THC, or even three years ago, when THC concentration in confiscated marijuana hovered around 15%.

What is your opinion on this? Is it myth? Is the methodology change to blame? Do we have stronger varieties? Stronger supplements nowadays?

Looking at 1990 catalogue there were very good strains available at the time. Strains we do love nowadays still (eg Hash Plant).

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Media propaganda. That’s all it is. Can’t speak to 70’s or earlier really, but the 80/90’s had some great, I mean GREAT!, herb floating around. To me it’s mostly an opinion… Trainwreck doesn’t effect me like it effects others, like Blueberry effects me like it doesn’t others.

Were those types of tests readily available back then? I recall having to sneak around to puff and also finding a “stoner” to buy from.

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They must of had shitty connections back then. Ha! Ha!

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No kidding - sure, today’s good weed is 3 times more potent than yesterday’s schwag!

Supposedly those landrace tropical sativas in the 70s-early 80’s were unbelievably potent and also trippy in the high. From what I’ve read, high potency in today’s hybrids mostly derives from landrace sativas, not the indicas.

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The assertion that ganja is much more potent nowadays has zero validity.

I think there are many variables which produce the high from cannabis…not just THC.
And the perception of “highness” is entirely subjective.

I have smoked weed in the '60s, '70’s, '80s,
'90’s, '00s and (obviously) currently.

In the mid 1970s the market was flooded with different and exotic varieties of weed, some of which were wickedly potent:
Thai-sticks, Columbian Santa Marta Gold,
Columbian Wacky Weed, Acapulco Gold,
Panama Red, Oaxacon and many more.
Around this same time was the advent of
Sinsemilla.

I say balderdash and rubbish to the 3x stronger theme!

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Did you just use balderdash in a sentence! Ha! Ha! I love it!

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I think that’s the key “back in the day” there just wasn’t a lot of couch lock indica about, at least here in North America. It wasn’t until technology and infrastructure opened up for there to be a consent, abundant supply. The world climate in the mid 70’s and 80’s went to shit bottle necking landrace breeding stock some too. That alone threw a ten year monkey wrench into the mix as far as evolution goes.“We’ve come a long way baby” (EDIT) sorry Muleskinner I haven’t quite got the forums mechanics down. I was trying for a post not a reply, my bad. toke, toke, pass(/EDIT)

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There was very potent weed in the 70s, but there was a lot of lower potency weed too. Most people smoked seedy, lower potency Mexican, rolled into pencil-thick joints and passed around. Smoking 2-3 joints at a sitting among a group of 4 or 5 people was ordinary. By seedy I mean 10-20 seeds in a medium sized joint’s worth of weed. Anybody who’s smoked seeded weed knows its far less potent that sinsemilla from the same plant.

In addition to the seeds, the Mexican being mostly sativa, meant wispy small buds that didn’t lend themselves to trimming - and certainly the Mexicans, who saw seeds as a way to bulk up the weight of their priced-by-the-kilo commodity weed, weren’t going to waste time trimming down buds for the Yanquis…

But there were beautiful Colombian Golds and Reds, Panama Red, Acapulco Gold and other primo strains available for the lucky few with good connections. I remember a bag of “British Honduran” (Belize for young’ns) that was just psychedelic, no other word for it. Oh to have saved just a couple of those seeds as they rolled down the spine of my favorite de-seeding album, a worn copy of the Airplane’s “Blows Against the Empire” (it included a production credit for a guy whose role was “snowman” hehe.)

Indica hybrids and sinsemilla technique changed everything. Buds got fatter and denser, and being seedless, meant more room for trichomes per volume of bud. Big fat seedless buds fetched a premium - 2 or 3x seedy Mex, so close trimming became the fashion to show off this new premium product. Around 1980 or so a friend of mine brought back an oz of “California sins” to our East Coast crew, and proceeded to snip off little bud bits with nail scissors to place into bowls for us. We’d never seen bud treated so daintily.

By '82-'85 US-grown sinse ruled the market, and those Central and South American sativas just weren’t around much anymore. Nixon’s war on drugs, especially the Paraquat program, where the DEA paid Mexican police to spray pot fields with a Vietnam War-era defoliant that was poisonous to consume, helped rid the US of evil Mexi commersh as well.

Also gone was the “soaring sativa high” that even the commercial Mex could deliver, with enough puffing on the laughing bones. That loss was not immediately appreciated, the heavy indica stone just seemed so potent so who cared? Besides, we had cocaine to keep the party going. LOTS of cocaine :nose:

Is today’s pot more potent than 70s pot? As sold to the consumer, measured by volume, I’d have to say generally, yes. But it has as much to do with growing, harvesting and trimming technique as anything, plus the heavy stoniness of the indica’s cannabinoid mix. That’s why old farts like me are constantly looking for that sativa buzz of yore.

If only the war on drugs hadn’t focused on Mexican cannabis, and Central and South Americans had developed a sinsemilla culture sooner, and the Hippy Trail led down the spine of the Sierra Madre instead of through the Rif and Hindu Kush ranges, we might be tripping on psychedelic American sinse sativas instead of nodding off on couch-lock kushes today.

-b420

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This is a most excellent synopsis of the 1970s weed scene!

There was a certain enjoyable, ritualistic procedure employed when rolling joints out of seeded ganja.

George Carlin describes it perfectly:

Carlin: The ritual was very important to me: cleaning the pot, rolling the pot—I was never a pipe or bong man. That’s California stuff. I was an Eastern roller. My daughter had to teach me to use a water pipe, and I’d still fuck it up every time. To me, smoking pot meant sitting with a newspaper on my legs, rolling the seeds down, pulling the twigs out and finally producing a perfectly cylindrical, absolutely wonderful joint that you either locked at both ends or pinched off, or pinched at one end and left open at the other.
Playboy: What was your technique?
Carlin: We always locked in the East. I got to be a pincher later on.
From:
http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-george-carlin

And of course the introduction of seedless indica absolutely changed everything as @Baudelaire mentions above.

I think I first smoked sinsemilla indica in the late 70s or so. Way more soporific in it’s effect than the customary sativa dominant strains generally available back then.
Couch lock was previously induced primarily by taking Quaaludes…aka gorilla biscuits…hahaha.
But now there was weed available that could provide drooling inebriation! Not to mention that many people combined coke, Quaaludes and indica buds on many an evening’s excursions into oblivion.
Sadly, the cerebral, spacey, trippy sativas fell out of favor with many weed consumers.
So very sad!

Something else that now seems funny to me is that back before the late '70s, most weed was absolutely not even remotely green in color. Browns, golds and rust colored hues were highly desirable. Anything green was shunned and bitterly criticized…“ewww it’s so green, what is it, homegrown?” Ewww!
Hahaha,nobody wanted to pay for obviously inferior “green” buds. No way can those green buds be any good…“homegrown” meant third rate crap!
Wow, how things have changed.
Nowadays I have had friends turn up their noses at some of my buds that I have kept in jars for a couple of years or so. The buds oxidize with age, and smoke smooth and yummy, however, contemporary perception of high quality cannabis expects it to be green…gold and brown colored buds are now shunned! Hahaha!

In summary, I think that there is probably less mediocre weed available now to consumers compared to the 1970s.
But most strains on the market now have significant indica influences in their genetic composition.

So I think it really boils down to this simple question:

Are “pure” sativas more potent than “pure” indicas?

This is a highly subjective question which each individual smoker can answer only to his own satisfaction.
:sunglasses:

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FWIW vacuum sealing the jars will keep 'em green for 2 years, and preserve flavor too.

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Here are some pictures of an assortment of high quality buds from 1977.

What a difference 40 years makes!

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wow, that’s an amazing article!!! thanks for posting. I’ve read so much about what the herb was like in the 70’s, never thought I’d see samples! They all have a distinctively different look - and all landraces.

I think we may be going back to this type of herb with legalization. This is simple outdoor that only costs $10/ounce.

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Wow, looks like the shit that sticks to the underside of my lawnmower.
My old-man had the FIRE :fire: in the 80’s. We were smoking homegrown blonde afghani that would turn people green.

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I agree the bag appeal is shit but what i wouldn’t give to try a few.

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I liked the Old C-Red.

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I think it is just the old stories i read about but man i would like to try some 70’s Hawaiian anything.

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Hahahaha…relative to today’s standards of what attractive buds should look like, those buds of yesteryear are hideously ugly.
However, the buds pictured in that photo spread were perceived then as drool inducing, fabulous beauties!

I lived in the New York City metropolitan area back then…I moved to the Boston area in 1978 or so. Most of the various types of sativas pictured were available, and I smoked almost all of 'em!

Picture 12—Colombian Chiba was devastatingly potent!

I vividly remember the first time I tried Thai Sticks…I was gobsmacked by the sheer strength of the high! In fact, one of my friends could not handle the potency of the Thai buds…he ran outside and vomited voluminously after trying them!
Ah, the good old days😄

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you guys really think the buds look that bad? They’re just un-trimmed land race flowers. The pure Hazes and landrace flowers of today would look just the same hung & dried.

You were paying 10 or 20 bucks an ounce! You don’t get trimming for that, even in central america :smiley:

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Hahahaha…you are correct.
Modern sensibilities perceive those old style buds to be unattractive.
Trust me, they were potent, heart pounding, head rush inducing, trippy, yummy tasting smokes.
I grow lots of Haze and sativa dominant strains outdoors nowadays and they do look similar in structure and “rustic” appearance to those old buds. Except I prevent seeding of my buds…most of the buds in the old High Times pictorial are seeded.
Indoor Haze hybrids are much more green.

If memory serves, an ounce of fine buds as depicted above would cost from $30 to $60 from 1972 thru 1978 or so!
A great deal indeed.
When sinsemilla buds displaced the seeded buds the prices went up.

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I was paying $45.00 for a Q.P. and could sell it at $20.00/oz. And then we add in the mystery of the “lid” originally considered to be 3/4 oz. But that was amended to only 5/8 oz. To stay south of a felony in New York State.

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