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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

> "plant medicine = good"

That's a problem. The other side of that is "natural = unstandardized doses" That's become a big problem with cannabis, which has had huge potency upgrades through both selective breeding and concentrates.[1][2]

The good thing about cannabis used to be that the effective dose and the hazardous dose were a long way apart, and it was hard to reach the hazardous dose. That's changed.

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201116092241.h...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/states-legalized-...

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You can thank the black market for that one. Same as you couldn't buy much beer and such during the prohibition, because hard liquor was more lucrative to smuggle.

And while psychosis occurrence might raise with increased doses, at least LD50 for THC in rodents (I know, but hard to ethically gauge it in humans) is 1250mg/kg orally. If we naively scale this up to humans, a 70kg human would have to consume 90g of pure THC, which is an incredibly outrageous, absolutely unattainable amount.

I would also argue that you need less cannabis to reach a desired state if it is of higher potency. Do people measure their intake in "joints" which are consumed no matter what the actual potency is?

That argument indeed doesn't make much sense to me. If I smoke, its not "this amount regardless of potency or method" rather "to get this high". If I smoked joints which I don't do since I like my lungs it would just mean much more unhealthy hobby.

So yes strong stuff is a godsend, can get to desired state more effectively and cheaply too.

The only situation where it may make sense is some inexperienced users taking too much, which can easily happen with random illegal street stuff. But its like arguing to ban hard liquors since people can get shitfaced from few shots easier than from beer. And indeed getting properly wasted increases the chance to develop some bad mental issues, father of one of my ex gf ended up with lifelong schizophrenia just from excessive drinking at ripe age of 18.

Which is all true but response is - don't do stupid stuff, as it should be with other drugs. Legalizing and having easy available advice / guide is much better.

Someone who isn't me found cannabis intolerable because it was making them feel anxious. Asked whether they considered using a smaller dose or lower potency they said they already tried that. What happened was even though they acquired the least strong stuff it was still too much for them to benefit from it. They ended up with a process making edibles, very much diluting the weakest stuff and that proved useful to them.

A benefit of legalization is that you can have 1mg THC mints or whatever. Good luck finding that in any illegal market.

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