Pubdate: Sun, 02 Feb 2014 Source: Austin American-Statesman (TX) Copyright: 2014 Austin American-Statesman Website: http://www.statesman.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/32 Author: Steve Contorno, Politifact Page: E2 POT MORE POTENT THAN WHEN OBAMA WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL After President Barack Obama said marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol - opening a broader conversation about legalizing or decriminalizing a drug that's on the federal government's most restrictive list, Schedule I - former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., said the president needs to brush up. "I think the president needs to speak to his (National Institute of Health) director in charge of drug abuse," said Kennedy, who chairs Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes legalization. The director "would tell the president that, in fact, today's modern, genetically modified marijuana (has) much higher THC levels, far surpass(ing) the marijuana that the president acknowledges smoking when he was a young person." Obama's exploits as a pot-smoking adolescent are well documented. But has marijuana changed that much? Cannabis contains roughly 500 compounds, 70 of them psychoactive. THC, or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, is the main psychoactive ingredient in the plant. Potency typically refers to the concentration of THC. THC levels differ depending on the part of the plant used, and how it is processed. In addition to marijuana, there are materials such as sinsemilla (the flowering tops of unfertilized female plants), hashish or cannabis resin, and hash oil (a concentrated extract from cannabis plants). Hashish oil tends to have much higher concentrations of THC than marijuana or even sinsemilla. Both have become more popular. Broadly, marijuana has indeed become more potent. The University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring project analyzed marijuana samples confiscated by law enforcement agencies since 1972. The average potency of all seized cannabis increased from a THC concentration of 3.4 percent in 1993 to about 8.8 percent in 2008. When Obama was in high school (he graduated in 1979), the mean potency for marijuana was about 3 percent, said Mahmoud ElSohly, director of marijuana research at Ole Miss. Also, the number of samples confiscated with a THC concentration greater than 9 percent increased significantly, from 3.2 percent in 1993 to 21.5 percent in 2007. But the high mark in potency (somewhere around 25-27 percent) remains relatively unchanged in the last couple decades and isn't likely to increase, ElSohly said. The former congressman said the reason for the increasing levels of THC is genetic modification. That's not quite right. Producers of marijuana on the illicit market don't have the ability to pull off lab-based engineering. But they do practice genetic selection, breeding marijuana plants with the highest concentration of THC, ElSohly said. Our ruling: Kennedy said that marijuana today is "genetically modified," with THC levels that "far surpass the marijuana" of the 1970s. The potency of marijuana has been on the rise since Obama's youth. The off-base part of this claim is that the rise in THC levels comes from "genetic modification." It's actually from genetic selection. We rate this statement as Mostly True. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt