Marijuana potencies and transitioning to Schedule III

Complaints about the concentrations and strengths of active ingredients in commercial grades of marijuana are being raised by cannabis critics such as Malcolm Ferguson who appears to confuse marijuana’s THC with potentially lethal mind-affecting drugs. Much as Ferguson would have people smoke rope instead of dope, too many politicians and public officials need to educate themselves about toxicity and the history of medicine before speaking publicly about marijuana.

Toxicities of dangerous drugs are measurable and comparable. In toxicology, the LD-50 is defined as the lethal dosage of a chemical needed to kill 50-percent of a test population of some unfortunate lab rats. For humans, multiplying the LD-50 for rats by a person’s body weight in kilograms gives the approximate lethal dosage for that person. For morphine, the LD-50 is 200-300 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) of human body weight. For cocaine the LD-50 is 96 mg/kg, for methamphetamine it is 55-57 mg/kg, for heroin it is 21.8 mg/kg, and for fentanyl it is 2.61 mg/kg. The LD-50 for marijuana is considered out of reach for a fatal dose, with an estimate of 20,000 to 40,000 marijuana joints needing to be smoked in quick succession. There has never been a documented case of a fatal overdose from marijuana in the 12,000 year known history of its use. In contrast, over-the-counter aspirin resulted in 20,000 overdoses in 2004 that killed 43 American citizens.

And recently a meta-analysis of various published papers raised a prohibitionist red flag by stating that marijuana use can lead to a greater number of head and neck cancers. Marijuana ingredients tested on lab rats are not cancerous. However, when it’s burnt its combustion products can create health problems. Cancerous byproducts include tars, carbon monoxide and other chemical compounds found in tobacco smoke. Bypassing the problem involves doing what chronic smokers have always done by changing the means of ingestion using bongs, hookahs, vapes and cartridges, or by using small amounts of concentrated and more potent forms of marijuana such as oils, hashish, or edibles that reduce or avoid burning the vegetable matter and hemp fibers that produce toxins.

Ancient Mediterranean people and their physicians had a better drug classification system. They divided medications into two categories. One category included deadly drugs like opium and hemlock (Latin: venenum), with the second category consisting of herbs and medications which were never fatal (Latin: remedium). Under the Greek and Roman classifications opium was sharply distinguished from cannabis. Safe use of opium could require careful supervision by a physician familiar with dosages and tolerances. Hashish didn’t.

The early Greek and Roman physicians and scholars who wrote about cannabis included Galen, Oribasius, Aëtius of Amida, Dioscorides, a Greek travel writer named Pausanius, the historians Strabo and Herodotus, and the Roman military commander and naturalist writer Pliny the Elder. Byzantine Greek texts known as the Hippiatrica contain the medical manual of the veterinary surgeon Apsyrtus providing cannabis information for treating horses. Nearly everyone grew marijuana for personal use and no record has been found claiming it created health or social problems. Growers made distinctions between two types of marijuana. Wild cannabis was called indica while the much preferred backyard cultivated and bred variety was called sativa. All the writings present clear evidence to justify a laid back and realistic approach to classifying marijuana.

A new and improved drug scheduling system would reflect the wisdom of the Ancients. It would scrap the current classifications in favor of new ones bearing distinctions based on a drug’s actual toxicity. Had this been done in 1970 when the drug schedules were created and implemented under President Richard Nixon and John Erlichmann, cannabis sativa and indica and magic mushrooms would never have fallen into the same category as heroin. The confusion over switching marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III could have been averted.