One related thing I'd like to point out that I think the article gets wrong is that the 2018 Farm Bill, which aimed to legalize just hemp, for all intents and purposes made weed legal nationwide due to some clever workarounds by producers. I live in a state that very, very much still calls all use of marijuana illegal except for some very specific and tightly controlled medical uses (i.e. it's not like "hey doc, can you just write me a 'script" like other states), yet I can still walk into a very nice, clean, well-maintained store in a plain strip mall and:
1. Buy D9 gummies and other edibles that contain up to 50mg D9 THC. Basically, since the law defines hemp as containing < .3% D9 THC, producers just extract all the D9 THC from hemp and inject it into edibles such that the total weight of the edible means there is still less than .3% D9 THC in the edible. These get me just as baked as "normal" weed gummies, they're just a bit bigger.
2. More surprising to me is the recent addition of "THCA Hemp Flower". To me these are just normal buds - I can grind them up and vape them and they get me just as high as "normal" weed. Basically these flowers contain low amounts of THC, but high amounts of THCA. But when you heat it, THCA turns into THC by decarboxylation. The thing that I don't understand is that I thought "normal" marijuana always needed to be heated anyway, e.g. why they say you can't just eat a weed bud but if you're making an edible you need to heat the oils first.
The gummies/edible workaround I can understand, but the THCA flower "workaround" seems like it's skirting really close to the edge of the law. Not that I'm complaining or anything, but it's weird to me how people don't know that weed is legal nationwide in the US.
> it's weird to me how people don't know that weed is legal nationwide in the US.
Yes, this. I bought some D9 gummies on a whim after seeing a prominent NASCAR driver racing in a full body wrap ad for an online distributor (3Chi). I didn’t really think much of it but figured I’d try it out. And, uh, wow. It’s literally identical to eating a gummy that you might buy in a shop in Cali, Colorado, etc.
I’ve been trying to tell people this, and that weed is effectively federally legal as long as you stick to this set of rules. But nobody seems to believe me.
That's not a good analogy. Chickpeas and garbanzo beans are just different names for the exact same thing. A better analogy would be different wine grape cultivars, e.g. Chardonnay and Cabernet are the same species of grape, but obviously have quite different taste and features.
While hemp and marijuana are the same species, there is a legal definition that is based on a real, scientific difference. Namely, that hemp is a low-THC cultivar of cannabis sativa.
> A better analogy would be different wine grape cultivars, e.g. Chardonnay and Cabernet
I'll take your word. I know literally nothing about wine except that some are red and some are white, and that they all taste like sweetened vinegar with a splash of paint-thinner.
> there is a legal definition that is based on a real, scientific difference. Namely, that hemp is a low-THC cultivar of cannabis sativa.
Do you mean THCA? What is the "real, scientific difference?" Marijuana naturally has high amounts of THCA and low amounts of THC. High THCA hemp has... well, high THCA and low amounts of THC. Their strengths might vary to some degree, but I would say the only true distinction of is just how they are legally defined.
Plenty of hemp is grown in my state, in which marijuana is still very illegal and very harshly punished, yet some of the hemp grown here is coming in at 15%-23% THCA range at the upper bounds. That is not what I would consider a "low-THC cultivar."
If you get pulled over while in possession of high THCA hemp, good luck convincing the police, "it's just hemp." You might be able to beat it court, but like saying goes, "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."
Yes, it metabolizes to the same thing, which is the point. This is also true for the pure synthetic stuff like Delta 8 and HHC. Even CBD has been known to regularly test hot.
> Further, both the Farm Bill and the USDA specify that analytical testing of samples for total THC must use "post-decarboxylation or other similarly reliable methods
That's interesting. I live in a country where it is legalized, so our gummies are usually 10mg. You can also buy 5mg and 2mg mainly for medical or lightweight use, and usually have an extra dose of CBD.
Having said that eating 2 20mg gummies to get high, or a handful of weaker ones that still add up to 20mg to get high, results in the same thing (as you've mentioned). Most people can easily, and happily, eat a handful of gummies.
I guess that law is why our packaging also includes the concentrations for the whole package as well as the per-unit concentrations - to make some of it saleable in the parts of the US with the type of laws your describing.
Federally legal weed is a cash cow for the government and provinces here alike. Sadly it's hard to profit for the producers, so the stock market value is terrible.
Imagine a government that can make it hard to profit off of weed! Pretty shocking on its own. So full legalization is a "damned if you do; damned if you don't" situation for producers.
Yeah, to clarify, the D9 gummies I see here are always 10mg. 50mg is only sold in things like brownies or rice krispies treats that are intended to be shared or eaten in multiple servings.
Of course, the problem with a pot brownie is that I may start intending to only eat a quarter of it but then somehow it all ends up getting eaten pretty quickly...
It depends on a lot of factors, such as your body weight and tolerance. In university a 10mg edible would put me on a nice high for hours. Nowadays I'd need to consume at least 40mg to even feel it. To answer your question though 40mg is a large dose, especially for someone who hasn't used cannabis with frequency. I recommend most people start out with 5-10mg.
What I find really fascinating is that the route of administration can affect your tolerance even if the potency theoretically should be the same. If you consume edibles often (eg for health reasons) you'll find you increasingly need larger and larger doses until it plateaus somewhere. If you "switch it up" and consume the same quantity via, say, a concentrate you vaporize, it'll hit you a lot harder. Even if you don't change the route of administration but the circumstances (like a new location) there's a similar effect.
I bought a chocolate treat once, and it was small so I ate the whole thing. It didn't occur to me at the time that there was a cross imprinted on it for a reason - it was meant to be divided into 4.
So it was 40mg. I was super high on the bus on my way home, I cannot deny. Thankfully I could still handle and enjoy it. I think if it was 50mg, it would have been a whole different experience.
In my comment above, I meant to say 2 10mg doses, since we were talking about adding up to 20mg. It's the kind of mistake that's fine as a typo, but quite a different thing irl.
Also depends on other factors. If you're partying and have been drinking, you'll probably find it a whole lot less of an impact than if you ate it with your morning McMuffin on your way to work.
> The gummies/edible workaround I can understand, but the THCA flower "workaround" seems like it's skirting really close to the edge of the law.
They both fit the law in the same way; the law defines hemp in an expansive and inclusive way, subject only to the D9 THC limit, so anything not D9 THC doesn’t count against the limit even if it has similar effect. Even the DEA accepts this, though the DEA seems to have adopted a view unsupported by the text of the law that things that don’t naturally occur in cannabis but meet the inclusive description in the law’s text aren’t legalized as hemp, which leads to controversy around some synthetic cannabinoids, where the DEA view and the text of the law (and some emerging case law) seem at odds.
I guess the thing that surprised.me is that I thought the majority of THC in "normal" marijuana was in the form of THCA anyway.
I remember reading an article years ago (well before 2018) that basically said "to make the THC in marijuana available in a way that gives pleasurable effects, it must first be decarboxylated, which is why it needs to be heated before being consumed." So from that I thought that most of the stuff that was sold as weed (again, pre 2018) was in the form of THCA anyway.
I’ll preface this by saying I don’t think there is anything wrong with using cannabinoids in general. I don’t personally, but find the industry fascinating.
The farm bill opened the doors to a lot of other stuff besides legal D9 gummies and high THCA flower. Companies are selling an ever increasing number of cannabinoids. Some are found in tiny trace amounts in nature, others are completely novel. What they all have in common is they are unstudied, unregulated, and created via various chemical synthesis processes from base cannabinoids. It seems like a ticking time bomb.
>The thing that I don't understand is that I thought "normal" marijuana always needed to be heated anyway
I can confirm, as I had a rather disappointing failure (many years ago) in making some edibles when they didn't get hot enough for decarboxylation when I was using marijuana that I knew to be of excellent quality.
It’s still illegal for federal/military employees or anyone with a security clearance - at some point the government will have to reconcile this discontinuity. Even off-the-shelf hand lotion and soaps have CBD now and might be risky for someone who gets drug tested.
As I understand it, normal marijuana contains 1-2% TCH and the rest being THCA. So the new "high TCHA flower" is not higher TCHA than normal, simply lower pure THC than normal.
Craziest part is you can buy the high TCHA flower and the D9 Edibles online, shipped through USPS, and you just pay standard sales tax (not a sin tax like you would in a legal state).
Thank you for this point this is really interesting. I had a friend who is a recovering alcoholic living in TX. He would talk about going to get CBD gummies, and sometimes he'd say something about "wow, I took too many, I got messed up!". I was thinking "what a crackpot, you don't get high off CBD", I live in a legal state and I've taken CBD-only products. He came to live with me for a while and one day came home saying he'd bought some CBD. I asked him to show it to me, it was just regular 10mg THC gummies. Now this guy had a shaky relationship with the truth, but I thought THC was totally illegal in TX. This explains what was happening, I'm sure he actually was buying THC products.
Also, we smoked a joint together, and it was kind of scary. I've smoked my share of pot with lots of people, and I've never seen it affect someone like this. Not long after he moved away I read something else on here tying THC to schizophrenia. This guy was already bipolar but his affect under THC was different and really bothered me - I wouldn't smoke with him anymore after that one time. I'm no psychologist, but schizophrenic is how I'd describe his reaction to it.
I'll add that skepticism follows most addictions. I do have a problem with alcohol and this is part of the AA literature: only alcoholics understand an aloholic's relationship with alcohol. I've sat through enough meetings to know it. Lots of people in my life have asked "why can't you just stop at one or two?", the answer is that my brain handles it differently from theirs.
"[some peoples] brains handle it differently from [others]" seems to also be describe the weed-schizophrenia relationship.
Like you I've been in my share of situations, and been with a few people who've had that schizophrenic reaction. However, and not to defend cannabis, but all such situations (people) were complex and with many contributing factors, e.g. concurrent alcohol abuse, home and social issues, traumatic events.
I expect that a weight of scientific study can eventually discover the nuance, but legal and moral prohibitions dictate that usage far outstrips research.
He may have misunderstood or lied but I can tell you I clearly know the difference between cannabinoids and I have purposefully gotten very high off of CBD alone many many times. Probably more than a hundred. I don't know if it takes specific conditions, because I don't know why it's said so frequently that it doesn't get you high.
CBD gets you "stoned", or calming, contended effects, more so than "high".
Folks I know who use it medically describe it as "too relaxed". Combine that with a drink and a prescribed muscle relaxer, and you can get yourself into some discomfort for sure.
> The thing that I don't understand is that I thought "normal" marijuana always needed to be heated anyway,
It does. The difference between high THCA hemp and marijuana is merely a legal distinction and not a scientific distinction.
It's somewhat akin to some of the laws in the US about firearms and firearm regulations e.g., some AR-15s can be legally classified as "handguns" and can be openly carried depending on the state despite said firearms clearly not being a handgun.
I've also heard that THCA breaks down into THC over time, so maybe there's a chance that when it's shipped it's compliant with the Hemp bill, but some time later if the cops seize and test it, then you actually now have illegal cannabis in your possession. Not sure to what extent that is true, but seems reasonable.
1. Buy D9 gummies and other edibles that contain up to 50mg D9 THC. Basically, since the law defines hemp as containing < .3% D9 THC, producers just extract all the D9 THC from hemp and inject it into edibles such that the total weight of the edible means there is still less than .3% D9 THC in the edible. These get me just as baked as "normal" weed gummies, they're just a bit bigger.
2. More surprising to me is the recent addition of "THCA Hemp Flower". To me these are just normal buds - I can grind them up and vape them and they get me just as high as "normal" weed. Basically these flowers contain low amounts of THC, but high amounts of THCA. But when you heat it, THCA turns into THC by decarboxylation. The thing that I don't understand is that I thought "normal" marijuana always needed to be heated anyway, e.g. why they say you can't just eat a weed bud but if you're making an edible you need to heat the oils first.
The gummies/edible workaround I can understand, but the THCA flower "workaround" seems like it's skirting really close to the edge of the law. Not that I'm complaining or anything, but it's weird to me how people don't know that weed is legal nationwide in the US.