California legalized medical marijuana 30 years ago how changes like THC inflation have made using it more complicated

What a long, strange trip it’s been.Thirty years ago, California made history as the first state to legalize medical marijuana, blazing a trail that now stretches across almost the entire country.But today’s cannabis isn’t your grandfather’s grass.Step into a dispensary, and you’ll find products vastly different from those available in the ’60s, the ’70s — even three decades ago.“There’s a lot more nuance because of the emergence of a legal retail market,” Dr.

Ryan Vandrey, a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit, who helps run the school’s Cannabis Science Lab, told The Post.“In 1996, the only industry around cannabis was: You take this to get high.”Since then, 41 states and D.C.have legalized medical marijuana, and 24 states have allowed recreational sales to adults 21 and older — even as it remains illegal under federal law.That’s meant the past three decades have brought a dramatic transformation in the cannabis marketplace — one that experts say has opened up new possibilities for patients while also making the search for relief more complicated.Perhaps nowhere is the evolution more apparent than in the potency of today’s products.“The cannabis that’s available now is much stronger than has ever been available before,” said Dr.

Ziva Cooper, director of the UCLA Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids.“What you hear a lot from people is that cannabis is almost too strong.”Experts call it “THC inflation”: a race to produce cannabis with ever-higher concentrations of the plant’s main intoxicating compound.“Stores sell more when there’s a higher THC percent on the label, so growers and breeders are driven to create products that have higher numbers,” said Dr.

Dustin Sulak, an osteopathic physician who has treated patients with medical cannabis in Maine since 2009.The result, Sulak said, is a market increasingly dominated by products designed to pack the biggest punch...