Synthetic THC effects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6409358/

I've spent most of the last five years working with recovering addicts in both informal and as an assistant in inpatient rehab settings, have lots of personal experience with cannabinoids both natural and synthetic, and exactly nothing you've ever posted about it on this forum has jibed with my own personal or professional experience on the matter. In fact, it's so wildly out of line with it, that I'm going to continue to call you out on it. You're posting asinine, bizarre, statements, and when called on it, you post some NIH articles - a government agency that also said Covid 19 killed 18.2 million people, and also has thousands of articles relating to "gun", most of which speak about how guns are a public health hazard far outweighing, by the way, the deaths in the articles you posted as if they back up your assertions. They don't. You're extrapolating some absolute horseshit off of anecdotes from a friend you keep citing, and some NIH articles. The "stuff" in the vape pens, I'll have you know, isn't anywhere near as potent as just smoking the real thing, by the way. The real problem with that stuff is that you can get popcorn lung off of it, just like the nicotine vapes, but that's far less alarmist and harder to justify the fucking death penalty with.

You've had two family members die of addiction to weed? Are you actually claiming that? Or was it alcohol and other drugs? I lost my father to alcohol three years ago and in the last five, I've had five people close to me die from alcohol. It directly contributed to the death of my grandfather, his father, and his father before him. I'm yet to lose someone to weed in any form. You look ridiculous when you do this. This is "shoulder thing that goes up" levels of derp. We point and laugh at ignorant anti-gunners on this forum who say stupid shit and point to studies that agree with their assertions and then turn around and do it to our own chosen bogeymen that we similarly have no personal experience with, discounting and arguing with the personal experiences of those among us who speak up, and it's just not intellectually honest. It looks bad. It looks dumb. Now this is where some cops will jump up and tell me they've seen all kinds of traffic fatalities from weed, and I'll just end-run that and point out that alcohol is still the far bigger problem in our society, and it isn't even close.

"Marijuana" needs to get dropped from schedule 1, period. When that happens, more honest testing can begin and we can start to get a real picture of what the actual effects are. Because the government can currently use it as a very effective weapon against firearms ownership, it won't be, and that's basically all there is to it. Everything else in this debate is just pure noise.

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Originally posted by CPD SIG:

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“It is time for the DEA to act,” the lawmakers wrote. “Right now, the Administration has the opportunity to resolve more than 50 years of failed, racially discriminatory marijuana policy.”

^^^^ AAAHHHHHH!!!!
There's what I call "a clue".

That’s what this is all about?

“Equity”!

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The "stuff" in the vape pens, I'll have you know, isn't anywhere near as potent as just smoking the real thing, by the way

Most of what you say is accurate. This is not necessarily so. I have seen disposable vape pens that contain advertised 90% concentrated resin. I know the people using them and I assure you they are far more potent than bud at any claimed level of thc %.

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Originally posted by gearhounds:
I know the people using them and I assure you they are far more potent than bud at any claimed level of thc %.

Now you know one more who used to use them who disagrees with that. It’s like the difference between drinking a shot of whiskey vs drinking a light beer - the potency argument goes out the window because the point is to get what you would get off smoking a bowl of weed with one discreet hit when nobody is looking. We’re not arguing for banning whiskey because it’s got a higher alcohol content by volume. Yes, someone could vape most of a cartridge if they wanted to, and that’s the kind of person who’s going to polish off a fifth of Old Crow by themself, whereas most people would have a couple fingers of Bulleit and sit on their back porch and watch the fireflies.

That said, I never got the same quality of high off the vape cartridges that I did off buds. It’s not the same thing. The real deal is just better. Whatever it’s missing by going to an oil form, I couldn’t say scientifically, but it’s basically just hash oil with a carrier and Aglifter is acting like it’s meth. It’s not.

Smudge, I have no dog in you and Ag’s dust up. Perhaps what you were smoking was low potency but refined resin is far more potent than the most thc laden flower. This information is available from a myriad of sources on the web. The most potent flower barely exceeds 30%. Concentrates approach 90%. There is no comparison between the 2 other than that they both contain thc.

I read the NIH paper Ag listed, and synthetic cannibinoids are not thc. They are dangerous concoctions.

It's THC guys. It's not Fentanyl. You'll eat snacks and take a nap if you over do it.

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Originally posted by gearhounds:
Smudge, I have no dog in you and Ag’s dust up.

Oh, I know. I apologize if you felt like any of that was directed at you, I'm just discussing it is all.

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Originally posted by gearhounds:
Perhaps what you were smoking was low potency but refined resin is far more potent than the most thc laden flower. This information is available from a myriad of sources on the web. The most potent flower barely exceeds 30%. Concentrates approach 90%. There is no comparison between the 2 other than that they both contain thc.

I was friends with, or in the social circles of a number of growers over the years, some of them industrial grade. As far as I know, things haven't changed considerably since I quit. I've smoked and/or vaped blonde hash (compressed powdered crystalline THC for lack of a better way to put it), pure hash oil (buds pressed until all the oils drain out), bubble hash (like blonde hash, but chemically extracted with pure butane that essentially causes all the calyxes to drop off the buds), "ear wax" (extract that's the consistency of ear wax", shatter (extract that turns into a texture like cooled sugar that's been melted), 40+% flower, and mixtures thereof. You could say I'm more experienced of a former stoner than probably a good percentage of the forum goers, and I assure you that the practical difference in the end is no different than comparing a 2% beer to a shot over Everclear or overproof rum. The potency discussion is uninformed, and it isn't the problem it's being posed as in certain circles.

Now, if you ingest enough of this stuff often enough, yeah, it's going to cause problems. But like Jljones is fond of pointing out, you can also drink, snort, or smoke all the stuff under the kitchen sink if you want to. None of that stuff is illegal.

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Originally posted by gearhounds:
I read the NIH paper Ag listed, and synthetic cannibinoids are not thc. They are dangerous concoctions.

Oh, and I've also smoked "Spice" and "K2" for a while when I could find it in gas stations and didn't have a good weed hook up. It's the synthetic cannabinoids they're talking about in that NIH paper. Remember the face-eating zombie dude from about 2012? Everyone on the forum was going on about how he was probably high on K2, and it struck me as comically misinformed. It was the drug bogeyman du jour for a while. I will go ahead and tell you that you would have to smoke a quarter pound of that stuff to get as high off it as you would a gram of average strength bud, and the headache from smoking what amounts to hamster cage wood chips would probably kill you before you could accomplish it. The news at the time made it seem like meth, cocaine and LSD combined and it just isn't. It is absolutely not what it's been billed as. It somehow killed 17 people in 2015 or whatever year they cited, but this is also the same agency that put Covid 19's death toll at 18.2 million people. It just doesn't jibe with my extensive experience on this matter. I don't know how else to reconcile it. I keep comparing this stuff to guns and gun grabbers because here, most of us have a fair amount of experience with them, enough to know that the paranoia and fearmongering surrounding them is false. It's the same eye-opener once you get enough experience with THC. It just isn't the bogeyman it's being made out to be.

I’ll just say after 30 years of federal and state level law enforcement, I’m counting the days I can try marijuana. In a legal state of course. I’ll add that I’ve never smoked pot in my life, but I’m convinced it has some medicinal properties that can’t be ignored.

Smudge, I'm interested in your experience with Spice/K2. It's not such a big deal around here anymore since all the neighboring states have legalized weed, so even commercial weed is really easy to get, but I remember some folks having some pretty crazy reactions to spice back when it was common.

One dude puked all over the lab and in the back of a squad car when we took him in for an OWI blood draw. He told us he was smoking spice because he didn't want to pop positive on a blood test at work, but would much rather smoke actual weed because the spice highs always made him feel sick and panicky, while weed didn't do that. He was a nice enough dude...he had to go to jail for the whole driving under the influence thing, but he was clearly pretty miserable and I felt bad for him. I've dealt with a LOT of potheads over the years and have never seen weed do that to anybody.

We had another guy who got into it with his GF and tried to bite her thumb off, then was standing in the road like a zombie when we got there. He ended up trying to run, kicked a cop in the nuts, got bit by a K9, puked his guts out on the curb, had a heart rate of almost 300 when EMS hooked him up to the monitor, and crashed in the back of the ambulance. Thankfully they got him back, but they almost didn't, and we all would have likely made the news if they hadn't. That guy wasn't talkative, but they found spice on him.

We had other similar stories, but those are a couple that have always kind of stuck out in my mind. I've never used either, so my understanding is entirely based on my observations of others and information that they've shared with me. Obviously, there's no standardized formula for synthetic cannabinoids, so reactions probably vary depending upon the batch, but I'm curious how those stories jive with your experience.

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Originally posted by cajunmuscle:
I’ll just say after 30 years of federal and state level law enforcement, I’m counting the days I can try marijuana. In a legal state of course. I’ll add that I’ve never smoked pot in my life, but I’m convinced it has some medicinal properties that can’t be ignored.

A few words of advice, tailored to you: If you are going to buy at a shop, let them guide you. Don't go for the highest strength, you don't need it. If they'll let you smell it, the ones that smell best to you will be more appealing to smoke as well. I suggest smoking rather than vaping because it's necessarily self-limiting and harder to accidentally get too much. Don't grind it up, just take a tiny little pinch and stuff it in a pipe (we call it a bowl). Take ONE HIT, set it down, and then go sit on your couch with some soft music playing and don't have any more. It is very possible to get "too high." Getting too high won't kill you, but you really won't like it. This can range from feeling super anxious and feeling like you're going to have a heart attack to lying on the floor with room spins like you've never had, wishing you actually were dying. Avoid edibles because even at the lowest strengths, it's still possible to get way too high, and unlike smoking it, this will only increase in intensity and last for far longer compared to smoking it. Smoking is fast-acting and much shorter lived.

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Originally posted by 92fstech:
One dude puked all over the lab and in the back of a squad car when we took him in for an OWI blood draw. He told us he was smoking spice because he didn't want to pop positive on a blood test at work, but would much rather smoke actual weed because the spice highs always made him feel sick and panicky, while weed didn't do that.

What he said rings true with my experience with it. It was a way of getting a high that was analogous to, but lacking all the qualities of smoking actual bud. I never puked or got sick to my stomach off it, though. I wonder how much of it he'd had, or if it was combined with any amount of alcohol, even amounts you wouldn't have smelled or noticed on him. Being mostly drunk and adding a tiny amount of THC or being really high and adding a few sips of alcohol was like a magnifying effect for me. You'll find a lot of dedicated stoners who don't drink for specifically this reason.

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Originally posted by 92fstech:
We had another guy who got into it with his GF and tried to bite her thumb off...

I would have been interested to see what his tox screen looked like. He may have had Spice on him, and it may have been in his bloodstream, but this sounds a lot like the stories I've heard from meth addicts. There's one I was in rehab with who stayed clean and sober afterward, and he flat out told me that you don't become someone who mainlines "Goofballs" (meth mixed with heroin and sometimes cocaine as well) as he did, without having tried everything else you'd ever managed to get your hands on.

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Originally posted by 92fstech:
We had other similar stories, but those are a couple that have always kind of stuck out in my mind. I've never used either, so my understanding is entirely based on my observations of others and information that they've shared with me. Obviously, there's no standardized formula for synthetic cannabinoids, so reactions probably vary depending upon the batch, but I'm curious how those stories jive with your experience.

Part of what makes people's experiences with weed so different is that it's an organic thing, and it's not just the THC in the bud, but various flavonoids and terpenes that combine in different ways even from plant to plant and can have totally different effects on any two different people. A particular crop/batch of a particular strain that does totally magical things for me could make someone else feel like shit, and maybe you come away from that with the impression that I like feeling the way it made you feel, when the truth is we both had a wildly different experience with it. The synthetic stuff seeks to, and as I understand it, does indeed strip away some of that part of the experience from it. The end result is that you basically just get the THC, and by itself, it's not a complete picture - it's just the intoxicant part of it without all the other things that can, and do enhance the experience for people.

I hate to keep comparing it to alcohol, but it's easier this way. I drank a lot of different types of alcohol, and while the end result is impairment, I got different "buzzes" off different types of them - even among types and brands of liquors and beers. I was a happy, silly drunk on Tanqueray, but give me a bottle of Old Crow and it was like adding liquid Asshole. Synthetic THC is more like drinking something like Everclear or moonshine, but if it were very watered down. It's just the psychoactive stuff quite literally sprayed in liquid form on wood chips, and I can't imagine what their manufacturing controls are like, or how they "dose" the stuff, but I can't imagine it being all that consistent. When I smoked it, it was impairment, but without any of the things that made smoking weed enjoyable, if that makes sense.

Thanks for the feedback, smudge. I'm kind of in a weird position because I deal with folks who are using on a regular basis, but have no frame if reference since I've never been high (or even drunk) myself. My Grandpa was a drunk and my dad grew up with that and managed to break the cycle, so alcohol was completely off-limits in our house. As I got older I retained that...partially from fear of addiction but also simply because I've always been perfectly content without it and didn't see it adding anything beneficial to my existence.

It's my job to enforce the law in a state where weed is still illegal, but I try to be understanding and respectful to everyone I deal with (when they'll allow it). Somebody might have to go to jail, but that doesn't mean I have to be a dick about it. I appreciate your input because it gives me a glimpse into their experience and a little bit of understanding without having to imbibe myself .

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Originally posted by 92fstech:
I'm kind of in a weird position because I deal with folks who are using on a regular basis, but have no frame if reference since I've never been high (or even drunk) myself. My Grandpa was a drunk and my dad grew up with that and managed to break the cycle, so alcohol was completely off-limits in our house. As I got older I retained that...partially from fear of addiction but also simply because I've always been perfectly content without it and didn't see it adding anything beneficial to my existence.

Honestly, I went further down that road than a lot of people ever come back from, and you're not missing anything. Truly.

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Originally posted by 92fstech:
It's my job to enforce the law in a state where weed is still illegal, but I try to be understanding and respectful to everyone I deal with (when they'll allow it). Somebody might have to go to jail, but that doesn't mean I have to be a dick about it.

You're a gentleman, and if you don't hear it enough at work from your customers, I at least appreciate your mindset.

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Originally posted by 92fstech:
I appreciate your input because it gives me a glimpse into their experience and a little bit of understanding without having to imbibe myself .

Hey, I'm happy to share my experiences with this stuff. I went through, put myself through a lot with addiction. It has to be worth something, even if that's only to provide honest feedback and input on some of this stuff for others who deal with folks like me daily, or in family life. There's just a ton of bad information out there, and it gets repeated a lot. Here on SF, we have people from all walks of life with tons of experience. What I hadn't really been seeing was anyone speaking up super honestly and openly about addiction and drug use, and that's understandably because doing so means federally risking your second amendment rights. Maybe some day, they'll choose to go after those of us who are sober now who weren't at some point when we owned firearms, but for now, I think it's still reasonably safe for me to speak up and help offer some of my experience with these things. There are people on this forum, I guarantee this (and if I'm right, some of them would shock a number of you), reading this thread who smoke weed daily and are laughing their asses off at the Reefer Madness 2024 stuff because it's so ridiculous. We're not going to hear from them, so I'll speak up instead.

Same story, different day.

This just switches the burden from marijuana enforcement, to marijuana tax enforcement just like we have seen at the state level. Now, the feds want to get their hands in the money jar.

Cartels will still run weed. Drug dealers will still murder over weed. Trafficking will still be a thing.

Old boss, meet the new boss. (Yeah, I know there will be posters that will tell me how this is good for freedom, this time it will be different, people will be adults and downtown outdoor events won’t smell like a housing project, that it’s about time the government gets this monkey off of freedom lovers backs, how they much prefer impaired drivers that are on weed on the roadway instead of alcohol impaired, blah blah but we all know how this will turn out thanks to paying attention in the last five years. Or most likely they’ll claim none of the above was ever said. Non-marijuana users won’t be any better off for this)

Now, this might surprise some: I didn't use to agree with you, but you were right when you were saying all the same stuff ten years ago, and you're right today. The government wants their cut of the tax money, and this doesn't actually buy anything for anyone. They'll still find a way to use it to punish firearm owners, but still stick a straw in a revenue stream they couldn't legally do before.

From a standpoint of having done lots of impaired driving on both weed and alcohol, I maintain that while both are bad, booze is the far bigger problem there.