This appeared recently, in a California publication:
Not good news for pot users. After all, the idea behind testing cannabis in the laboratory is to 1) ensure that what you buy is free from contaminants, and 2) establish a reliable number for its THC content – THC being the ingredient responsible for the drug’s psychoactive effects.
THC is what gets people high. The higher the content, the “higher” we presumably will get.
In cannabis ads online or in your local hip weekly newspaper, you’re likely to come across companies that boast of the sheer strength of their products. How do they know that’s true? Perhaps because an ‘independent’ lab has tested samples and assessed them at a particular THC content.
Unfortunately, the California State government has found that many labs are hired based on their willingness to fudge results in order to please their customers.
A quote from the article: Regulators at last “have come to grapple with the fact that cannabis labs have been purposefully inflating the THC levels so the cannabis can be marketed as stronger than it really is…” – because after all, stronger is better, right?
That’s true for pot because a regular user will have developed a tolerance for the drug’s effects. That means they require more (or stronger) cannabis to get the same pleasure they once received from a smaller dose, or a less potent sample.
Not coincidentally, it’s the same process that explains why a chronic opioid user will seek out fentanyl, in spite of the well-known risks. The weaker stuff — the pain pills, plain old heroin — just won’t do the trick anymore.
Back to pot: The article reports that savvy vendors have learned to “lab shop’ in order to identify the lab most willing to provide them with their preferred results — however inaccurate those results may be.
This is for a fee, of course.
Well, what did we expect? For them, it’s just good business.
