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ARTICLE
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Nip it in the Bud:
How Skunk DOES NOT
Cause Psychosis.
By: Mitchell Colbert
There’s nothing new about bad cannabis science,
but now in the days of rapid cannabis policy reform it often seems that new examples of the
popular genre are cropping up every day.
Time to nip them in the bud. A new study was
released last week showing that smoking skunktype cannabis can increase the risk of psychotic
episodes. Unfortunately for the researcher, and
the legion of journalists who wrote about it without fact-checking the study, the study’s methodology and definitions are entirely hogwash.
First off, the researchers rely heavily on self-report data which is notoriously inaccurate. While
methods to combat those inaccuracies exist, the
study does not mention them using any, leaving us to assume the researchers did not control
for people mis-reporting their answers. If that
wasn’t enough, the definitions used by the head
researcher, Marta Di Forti, are so inaccurate
they are actually laughable. The study only compares two types of cannabis, skunk and hash.
The study also provides no definitions for these
terms, leaving you to assume whatever you want
about them. In fact, the study doesn’t define any
of its terminology at any point, which is a major
oversight. All we have to work on is that “skunklike” cannabis is “high-potency” and that “hash” is
a “low-potency cannabis” or “resin.”
Here is where any true cannabis smoker will stop
and chuckle, because these definitions could not
be further from the truth. Skunk is a strain of
cannabis, or more broad a family of strains that
all began with Skunk #1. While generally Skunk
strains are known to be potent they are by no
means more potent than any other strain that
tests with an equal amount of THC. The strain is
irrelevant for potency, because only the cannabinoid and terpenoid profiles determine potency;
by that measure, Skunk is no more potent than
Sour Diesel, Red Congolese, or a myriad of other
strains. Hash, on the other hand, is not a lowpotency resin; that is pipe resin and it is garbage
leftovers you clean out with isopropyl alcohol.
Hash is a very high potency concentrated form
of cannabis, which could be derived from Skunk
or any other strain. If you want to know more
about hash, see this handy blog that I wrote over
a year ago profiling the different types and how
they are made. The most potent hashes on the
market can test upwards of 90% pure THC.
The fact that the researchers’ working definitions could not be further from reality calls the
entire findings of the study into question. If one
can’t be bothered to do enough background research on Google to know what hash really is,
the oversight can only indicate a startling lack of
due diligence. I doubt that incompetence is reserved only for definitions. Marta Di Forti, by the
way, released a virtually identical study last year
with the same bogus definitions. With definitions
so inaccurate it becomes impossible to apply the
findings to the public at large, because the findings are based on a fictional world where hash
is weaker than bud. In order to show that Skunk
causes psychosis she’d need to design a whole
new study with entirely new definitions. In the
meantime, her work is worth only so much hot
air.
After a week of this study circling the Internet,
not a single person has thought to point out that
hash is not resin, and that hash is guaranteed to
be more potent than just bud, even if it is a very
potent Skunk. With that said, I think this study
has been nipped in the bud.