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'Pot 2.0': Where Can I Get Some?
The feds have started issuing dire warnings about the potency of today's marijuana, calling it "Pot 2.0." Will it backfire and tempt more to toke?
10/20/07|Alternet| By Paul Armentano


Heard the latest from the Feds regarding their multi-billion dollar war on weed? According to warnings posted on the DEA's new website JustThinkTwice.com, today's cannabis is nearly twice as strong as the pot available in the 1970s and 80s. Sounds like its time for the Drug Enforcement Administration to don some new duds. How about t-shirts saying: "I've arrested millions, and all I got was stronger pot?"

Naturally, law enforcement and federal bureaucrats have little sense of humor when it comes to these matters. "We're no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s," Drug Czar John Walters told Reuters News Wire. (The Czar failed to explain why if previous decades' pot was innocuous police still arrested you for it.) "This is Pot 2.0."

Speaking recently to the Associated Press, DEA chief Mark R. Trouville, who heads the agency's Miami office, took an even more dire tone. "This ain't your grandfather's or your father's marijuana," he said. "This will hurt you. This will addict you. This will kill you."

For our friends at the DEA, here's a news flash. Unlike booze, sleeping pills, or even aspirin, pot poses no risk of fatal overdose, regardless of its THC content. (In fact, my physician can prescribe me a pill called Marinol that's 100 percent THC and nobody at the Drug Czar's office seems to mind.) Moreover, cannabis consumers readily distinguish between low potency and high potency marijuana and moderate their use accordingly -- taking smaller and fewer puffs of the "good stuff" than they do the "shwag."

Besides, isn't variety the spice of life? Last time I visited my local, state-sanctioned liquor store I had my choice of a head-spinning variety of alcoholic beverages, all of various strengths and sizes. I passed on the Bacardi 151, picked up a pint of vodka (80 proof) and then went next door to the supermarket to buy a six-pack of beer (7 percent alcohol by volume). Other customers made similar purchases. Nobody from the White House seemed terribly concerned.

But what the suggestion that today's pot is so addictive that just one puff is a one-way ticket to drug rehab? In this case, the devil is in the details.

According to the latest data from federal Drug and Alcohol Services Information System (DASIS), more individuals are, in fact, enrolled in drug treatment for pot than ever before. However, this increase is a direct result of the fact that more Americans are being arrested for pot than ever before. (For example, a new study published in the online journal BMC Public Health reports among the 27,000+ adults entered into Texas drug treatment clinics between 2000 and 2005, a whopping 70 percent of them were diverted to treatment as a condition of sentencing, parole, or probation.) Faced with the choice of jail or attending drug treatment, most offenders -- not surprisingly -- choose treatment, whether they need it (most don't) or not.

So let's review, shall we? Our federal government wants Americans to get off the pot. So they spend billions of dollars outlawing the plant and driving its producers underground where breeders clandestinely develop stronger and more sophisticated herbal strains than ever existed prior to prohibition. The Feds then go out and inadvertently give America's pot farmers billions of dollars in free advertising by telling the world that their weed is more potent than anything Allen Ginsberg, Tommy Chong or Jerry Garcia ever smoked in their heyday. In response, tens of millions of Americans head immediately to their nearest street-corner in search of a dealer (or college student) willing to sell them a dimebag of the new, super-potent pot they've been hearing about on TV.

Perhaps it's time for the DEA to heed their own advice and "just think twice."

 

Buzzby

I guess the drug warriors have realized that nobody was dumb enough to believe them when they told us that today's weed is 20 or 30 times more potent than the weed of yesteryear.

Marijuana prohibition has caused people to seek stronger versions of the product because the criminal penalties are based on weight, not potency, while the price is highly dependent on potency. During alcohol prohibition, very little beer and wine were bootlegged. It was much more profitable to bootleg whiskey.

I'd like a "beer" variety of pot that tasted great and which you could smoke for a while without getting incoherent. Today's low-potency pot is mass produced with almost no concern for quality control because it's aimed at a low price point, not quality.

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kaythree

I love how the government can blatantly lie.

Whatever the people who believe this should be laughed at and aren't the ones smoking weed in the first place.

steakii

I think claiming weed is more potent is not going to stop people from doing it, its going to want to make them do it more.

ssj3gotenks

I just went on their website - it's ridiculous, yet disgusting.

When you read textbooks for your history class in elementary, middle, and high school about governments excersizing prejudice towards individual minorities, you learn about how what they did was wrong at that time.

Now, look at how the government treats that cannabis community. Unlike the example above, this website isn't portraying the message that it's wrong to discriminate towards those of the cannabis community, but rather encouraging it.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that browsing the website justthinktwice.com will strongly compel the senses of comfort in seeing how both examples reveal how our government doesn't change because they feel it's right - but rather to keep in compliance with those who, in some way or another, willing or not willing, keep their political statuses in check.

 

tekkenlaw

You mean I have to smoke less for the same effect! OH NOES!

__________________
"Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself." -- Jimmy Carter

Old Stoner

Like the song says:

How can they think they're right when they're wrong

I guess they've never been stoned.

troublemaker_42

Theres a difference...marijuiana is illegal. Being a minority isn't illegal under most circumstances. To believe a subculture who enjoys using a certain illegal substance is going to be treated the same by the government as other, race-based minorities, is almost laughable. The difference between being Hispanic and a marijuana user? One CHOOSES to smoke weed. You can't choose your race or skin color.

__________________
Remember you're a wreck, an accident
forget the freak, you're just nature
Keep the gun oiled and the temple clean
shit, snort and blaspheme
Let the heads cool and the engine run
Because in the end,
everything we do
is just everything we've done..."Omega" by StoneSour
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reggie_the_dog

you can choose your religion and many people are discriminated against because of their religion.

troublemaker_42

I believe ssj3gotenks was referring to government treatment of minorities, as was I. People can be discriminated against for almost any reason. However, in the context of his post, it was clear he meant government sponsored discrimination, and then attempted to say that the government was continuning this discrimination because of the way cannabis consumers are treated. The goverrnemnt is discriminatory against many groups---hookers, gangbangers, terrorists, drug dealers/consumers, white collar criminals, etc....yes, the governemnt discriminates against criminals. Why would we expect otherwise? Until marijauna is legalized, anyone who uses it is a criminal. I'm not saying thats RIGHT, but only a fool would expect equal treatment as a non-criminal under the law