For years Americans have been told marijuana is a harmless plant and that tougher laws were the real danger. The facts emerging from laboratory monitoring programs tell a far different story: the THC in the marijuana people smoke today is many times stronger than what older generations faced, and that matters for families and communities.
Back in the 1990s the average THC concentration in seized cannabis flower was around three to five percent, a level that produced a very different public-health profile. Today routine testing from federal monitoring programs and academic reviews shows average THC for flower in the double digits, often in the mid-teens and higher in recent years.
The surge is not limited to flower; the market has exploded with concentrates and extracts that commonly test at sixty percent THC or more, and some products approach the ninety percent range. Those are not the same products our parents used; they are industrialized, highly processed highs engineered for maximum effect and maximum profit.
How did we get here? Growers and corporate producers perfected selective breeding, hydroponics, and extraction techniques, and legal markets have incentivized ever-stronger products because consumers — and profits — chase the next big high. That commercial logic, cheered on by legalization advocates, has produced a Big Marijuana industry more interested in sales than in community wellbeing.
This matters because higher potency is not abstract; it raises the risks of addiction, psychosis, and cognitive harm, especially in young people whose brains are still developing. Authorities and professional groups warn that early and heavy use increases the likelihood of dependency, and with the modern potency landscape parents and schools face a harder fight.
Our policymakers and media elites refuse to grapple with the consequences because admitting reality would mean admitting their policies and narratives were wrong. Conservatives must call out this negligence: demand honest labeling, strict limits on youth access, and real accountability for companies pushing the most dangerous products.
Regulation should aim to protect children and neighborhoods, not to enrich well-connected corporations and fund political pet projects. It is perfectly reasonable — and urgently necessary — to insist on common-sense rules: potency caps for retail products, stringent testing standards, and penalties for sellers who target minors or mislabel potency.
Patriots who love family and freedom should reject the soft-on-risk rhetoric and insist our leaders safeguard the next generation. We can respect individual liberty while refusing to allow a profit-driven rush toward ever-stronger drugs to erode our communities, our kids’ futures, and basic public safety.
