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THC/CBD content of cannabis

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Artificial Emotion

Artificial Emotion

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My best friend just recently purchased some expensive seeds which state on their package that the THC and CBD content of the cultivated plant contains 20% and 0.9% respectively. I looked on Wikipedia and it stated that:

A scientific study published in 2000 in the Journal of Forensic Sciences (JFS) found that the potency (THC content) of confiscated cannabis in the United States (US) rose from "approximately 3.3% in 1983 and 1984", to "4.47% in 1997". It also concluded that "other major cannabinoids (i.e., CBD, CBN, and CBC)" (other chemicals in cannabis) "showed no significant change in their concentration over the years". More recent research undertaken at the University of Mississippi's Potency Monitoring Project has found that average THC levels in cannabis samples between 1975 and 2007 have increased from 4% in 1983 to 9.6% in 2007.
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So do you think the vendors are making an untruthful unsubstantiated claim, or did they really perhaps do a GC/MS test on the plants after growing them in favorable conditions and get the result they claim? Can the plants really have a THC content of 20% or is this just not possible?

Also, I've heard people argue that more potent cannabis is actually safer because you need to smoke less to produce the same effect, yet I have been told that they did a study comparing hash to 'skunk' and found a higher prevalence of schizophrenia amongst 'skunk' users than hash users. Is this due to them getting higher on more potent gear or is there some other factor I am unaware of e.g. a different ratio of cannabinoids?
 
a THC content of over 20% is easily possible to achieve and ballpark but establishing a concrete cannabinoid percentage seems pretty much impossible to do without mass spec. i would say they're probably ballparking these percentages based on some prior knowledge. keep in mind that weed is black market shit, ergo you can get away with claiming really any kind of bullshit which makes it fairly pointless to book time with someone who can put some nug through the mass spec and decode the data.

as for what you're saying about schizophrenia being higher amongst skunk users than hash users, it's clear that is just UK anti-drug bullshit since the rest of the world doesn't refer to all bud as skunk (for no reason, i might add!) it would be naive to put faith in studies since they are usually non-scientific and almost always carried out by sociologists with no knowledge whatsoever in any kind of actual science!
 
Breeding cannabis to change THC:CBD ratio

Since cannabidiol (CBD) has favorable effects in people suffering from schizophrenia and probably other psychiatric conditions, strains containing a much higher proportion of CBD than delta-9 THC could potentially have a therapeutic effect, especially if the amount of THC is particularly low. So, I wanted to ask, would it be possible to breed cannabis plants (probably using indica variety) to change this ratio of cannabinoids to a much more favorable one? Would this involve selecting plants with better cannabinoid ratios using GC/MS to determine total cannabinoid constituent quantities? Or would some other technique be employed?
 
Artificial Emotion said:
So, I wanted to ask, would it be possible to breed cannabis plants (probably using indica variety) to change this ratio of cannabinoids to a much more favorable one? Would this involve selecting plants with better cannabinoid ratios using GC/MS to determine total cannabinoid constituent quantities? Or would some other technique be employed?
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If you google "Horthapharm & CBD" you'll get your answer.
 
Cannatonic variety from Resin Seeds has a ratio of 1.1 of thc and cbd.
Around 6/7% of thc and the same percentage of cbd.
 
Damn that does sound like it's pretty heavy on the couchlock side. Have you smoked it before? This stuff would leave me hung over as hell I bet. Though I'd love to try it during an episode of my GI infections.
 
This thread is very old :\ edit: I see why it was bumped now.

Anyway, to answer my own original question (when I didn't know any better), it is bullshit.

Also, I'm skeptical of the Cannatonic claim.

The best place to look for high CBD strains is landrace varieties, Mazar-I-Sharif being a good example of a strain whose phenotypes show high CBD levels. Because there is incomplete dominance between the CBD alleles, you should get something like a ratio of 25% high THC, 50% 50/50 CBD/THC, 25% high CBD. The 50/50 CBD/THC pheno can then be cloned or used in other crosses (which is what I'm in the process of doing right now).
 
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/Me bows before the pot scientist

Well since you seem to have experimented with high CBD/THX ratios, what can you say about their benefits to you or their differences overall?
 
^ Don't know if you're being sarcastic, but take a look at this video. Ignore her BS about 'skunk' etc and just take note of how she responds to both injections. It's quite funny to watch!

But what is shows is the difference between taking THC with little CBD and a 50/50 mixture of THC:CBD. Personally I find it difficult to smoke without feeling very anxious, paranoid and very worried in general. High CBD levels change the nature of the high completely and make it easier to enjoy the experience without those side effects.

CBD unfortunately has been bred almost completely out of most drug cultivars, whereas some of the landrace varieties have been untouched by modern breeders and can be a valuable resource for people wishing to reintroduce CBD alleles back into drug hybrids.
 
I was actually not being sarcastic. I'm really stoned though. I liked the video, but it all seemed a bit staged to me. Especially when she claims she is at "no long term risk" in the end, that kinda told me for sure they had some kind of agenda lol.

Are sativas just high thc low cbd basically? That's what I always assumed anyway. I've still seen people laugh like crazy on Kali Mist over and over...
 
crOOk said:
I was actually not being sarcastic. I'm really stoned though. I liked the video, but it all seemed a bit staged to me. Especially when she claims she is at "no long term risk" in the end, that kinda told me for sure they had some kind of agenda lol.

Are sativas just high thc low cbd basically? That's what I always assumed anyway. I've still seen people laugh like crazy on Kali Mist over and over...
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Sorry about that mate, it's hard to tell over the internet.

The common perception is that sats are high thc/low cbd and that indicas have higher cbd levels, but I think it's more accurate to say most sat/indica hybrids (and lets face it, 99% of what people smoke are hybrids and not pure species subtypes) are high thc and low CBD. That said indica dom strains have more of a couchlock/body high or stone. This is due to a large number of factors so it's quite complex and shouldn't be oversimplified, especially when you have other factors such as harvest time. Leaving the buds to harvest for longer where most trichomes are amber and even curing for long periods can effect THC and CBD levels.

It's interesting to note that a lot of The Real Seed Co pure sativa landrace strains have the potential to produce high CBD phenotypes.

As for that video, I appreciate what you're saying but I don't think think it's that she had an agenda, but more that she had unknowingly been brainwashed by the Daily Mail propaganda. Documentaries like that are quite dangerous, because they present the facts as if they're unbiased and factual, whereas in reality this couldn't be further from the truth. However I would expect her to have that sort of response if injected with a large dose of pure THC like that. Likewise, a THC/CBD injection would tend to resemble the typical cannabis high, with a bit less anxiety, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's how she was effected and it wasn't an act. Perhaps she was 'over-exaggerating', though.
 
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Yeah I see your point about being careful not to oversimplify the situation. That's part of why I never tried to get into the biochemistry of pot at all, even before I started studying again. There are... what? 200? ...different potentially active components in cannabis? The more I learn about biochemistry and physiology the less simple the interactions between drugs seem to be. Once I got a better understanding of the basics I'll try to find out more about those CB receptors and how the countless ingredients in cannabis effect them, but right now all I'd get is confusing, oversimplified anbd therefore misleading information unless I browse the top relevant publications which I don't feel up to.

I agree my use of the word agenda probably didn't do justice to what's really happening (and I do realize the word of cannabis and agenda in one sentence makes me sound totally paranoid). I totally agree to what you say about documentaries like these though, but I'm afraid there are very very few out there who actually manage to take a purely explorative take on things. This has been cannabis' curse moreso than it's the case for most other drugs. You don't see many people running around telling you cigarettes, booze, cocaine and heroin (...) are actually really harmless medicine that makes the world a better place. We should build our houses out of hemp, print our books on it, use it as an energy source (not only when withdrawals are making us really tired), as cough medicine (lol how absurd is that), cancer treatment, to make dirty fingernails shiny again, make your babies sleep through, also against any kind of pain, as a general sleep aid for appetite... And the seed actually taste good do! And it's brought to you straight from god, so it's got to be healthy.

The problem really is that most people can't even grasp what it means that a substance has positive as well as negative aspects on different organ systems (even positive and negative seems slightly simplified). It's the same with booze, people hear wine lowers their cardiovascular risk and since they enjoy wine, they start promoting it as the new remedy against heart heart attacks and strokes.

I really don't know what side I'm more fed up with, the nutjobs that promote cannabis for it's immense benefits or the nutjobs that condemn it for it's dangers. It's one huge charade, a circus that can just not be taken seriously as it is. :/
 
Maybe I shouldn't have used the video to help show what I meant, but regardless I can see you get the gist of what I meant.

As a totally unrelated note, my first Mazar-I-Sharif seedling popped today!
 
Don't you know better? it's pretty much just bullshit. You'd need lab mass ec to get realistic results... also this is strain discussion material.

edit: I see this thread is from 2009. It's amazing how much we can learn about shit in such a short period of time. ps: 400 chemical compounds in cannabis, 66 psychoactive by a measurable result.
 
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