From the onset of prohibition, criminalisation advocates sought to advance their agenda by sensationalising the supposed strength of cannabis. In the United States in the 1930s, while lobbying for the first-ever federal ban on cannabis, Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner Harry Anslinger alleged that the ‘marijuana’ of a century ago was so uniquely potent that it was “entirely the monster Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured”.
Modern day prohibitionists continue to engage in this same rhetorical tactic. So let’s set the record straight. First, the availability of higher potency cannabis products is not a phenomenon unique to today’s state-legal markets. In fact, more potent products like hashish have always been publicly available and was the very reason for the original prohibition in Australia, instigated by the Egyptians at the 1925 Geneva Convention on Opium and Other Drugs, a century ago.
Typically, when consumers encounter higher strength cannabis, they ingest lesser quantities of it. This self-regulatory process is known as self-titration. Second, higher potency cannabis products do not dominate legal markets. In fact, retail sales records from legal markets show that most consumers tend to prefer and gravitate toward lesser strength products. Third, unlike alcohol (readily available in a variety of potencies, including highly-potent formulations), cannabis (and THC in particular) is incapable of causing lethal overdose—regardless of potency or quantity consumed.
That’s not to say that cannabis products cannot be over-consumed. They can. But in such instances, consumers typically experience only temporary dysphoria (a panic attack)—the effects of which dissipate within a few hours and can be helped with simple treatments like ingesting the terpene found in cracked black pepper, basil, rosemary, cinnamon and cloves—Beta-caryophyllene. By contrast, alcohol over-consumption is associated with some 2,200 overdose deaths annually in the United States, whilst in Australia there were 1,667 alcohol-induced deaths in 2023 (5.6 deaths per 100,000 people).
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6 July, 2025