[0] https://legacygenetics.org

For people using cannabis as medicine in both legal and illegal markets, the trend to buy higher THC potency products is all about stretching their medicine with their limited budget.

To continue your analogy, it’d be like buying 90% moonshine, diluting it 20:1, and then drinking it as a mixed drink the same potency as a casual light beer.

Of course, if only 90% moonshine is available, cuz of Prohibition or Post-Prohibition, then you’re going to have more people “binging” as opposed to “budgeting.”

The THC percentage variation in different varieties varies from say 0-35%. The better analogy for prohibition’s effects are for the explosion in concentrated forms like hash oil specifically. That is the same prohibition pressure that turned opium into heroin.

Would love to hear your experiences. What is the longest flowering cultivar you’ve tried, versus the shortest, and difference in effects on your ASD?

That's the correct way to do a controlled study on the isolate - not the plant that it comes from.

It's clear to me at least that the authors of the metastudy conflate the two and many shades between them for purposes of this study.

That particular study did look at High THC low CBD, mid THC mid CBD, and high CBD low THC. There's no information on the terpene profile of the smoked cannabis preparations, though, and that is a confounding variable in the entourage effect that potentially defeats the part of the entourage effect they did test. Additionally, a quick look at the cannabinoid %s in those smoked preparations rehighlights my point that these are not inclusive of all the chemical compositions that the cannabis plant could present itself in.

I still stand by my point and hope the clarifications bring the conversation back on track to the fact I was highlighting which is simply that this is a metastudy built off of studies that were conducted with restrictions on experimental design that few observers fully understand the research implications of.

tldr; "If they're using cannabis in plant form" is a very, very high bar for the current state of cannabis (really cannabinoid) research.

For randomized controlled trials, even in "legal" states, university scientists can't just walk into a dispensary and buy cannabis to then administer to test subjects.

That's Post-Prohibition for you.

As far as I can tell, most (EDITED FROM ALL) of the studies utilize isolates - and not necessarily in conjunction.

For instance, none of the 6 anxiety studies included in this metastudy used THC and CBD together.

The headline could read instead: No evidence cannabinoid isolates help anxiety, depression, or PTSD.

Cannabis advocates are the first to mention the entourage effect. Cannabis prohibitionists on the other hand, love nothing more than to cite incomplete science.

Simple look at views to comments ratio confirms.

Lots of things need critiquing in today’s world.