I really appreciate your considered response and the dialog we are able to have. I don't think we actually disagree that much (perhaps only maybe on whether the war on drugs is worse than the drugs themselves); but overall we are at risk of talking past each other.

My point is very simply that the majority of cannabis users are seeking to achieve a desired effect, not smoke a certain volume. Hence the statement (that I'm paraphrasing with some exaggerated emphasis) of "OMG, because pot is so much stronger today, people are getting so much THC! Unprecedented amounts!". I say no, people are just smoking less to get the same level of high. Further, nothing about the high potency is that novel, there _were_ higher potency strains and they were quite available (the availability was spotty due to black market, but the still very available). A really notable example would be domestic production. Generally that has always produced strains over 10%. There has been a _lot_ of domestic production for quite some time running. Certainly not everyone knew a grower, or knew someone that knew someone, but plenty of people did. It would be super interesting to know the percentage of domestic cultivation around the 1960s to 1980s compared to imports, but those numbers will never be known with any certainty. Further though, not all imports were low quality cannabis, people have been rolling Afghani hash-balls for a very long time. In short, smoking hash in the 1960s is very similar to smoking high potency pot of today - and there was quite a bit of hash available in the 1960s and prevously.

Second, and this is really my point - the majority of cannabis users are looking to achieve a desired effect. If it takes less to get the same effect, then less is consumed. It's exactly similar to how people will have 3 drinks, they're going to stick to 3 drinks whether that is 1 pint of beer and 2 shots, or 3 beers and 0 shots. For smoking and the health impacts and toxicitiy, the volume smoking is the dominant factor, not the quantity of THC consumed. Alcohol is not like that, it's the amount of alcohol that drives the toxicity, not the volume that contained the alcohol.

Which also brings me to another point, I failed to convey the nuance carefully, in terms of harm - I'm only talking about chemical toxicity and the biological harm of the drug itself. I'm not at all talking about the societal harm and I do not discount it.

Regarding societal harm - pegging millions of people with felonies, with life sentences for simple first time possesion is immense societal harm. There is only one job in my life I could have had with a felony record. You can't even bag groceries if you have a felony... (that was my first job, and it didn't accept felons). Though, nobody is pretending it's all roses on the other side. The big point though is those suffering from severe impacts because of their consumption - it's not the case that the war on drugs actually did anything to help them. In other words, the war on drugs generally only hurt people further. The legalization movement gained a lot of steam when it was commonly acknowledged that the legal consequences of getting caught with cannabis were the largest risk for cannabis users, not the dealer, and not the person failing school because of cannabis use. That's just saying for 90% of some users during prohibition, their dealers were safe and they were not going to fail school because of cannabis. Legalization really helps for two reasons, it removes the black market and the ties and interactions average users were forced to create (they no longer had to work with someone that also sold other drugs, or dealt with large amounts of cash and the associated violence, etc..); and it removed the legal penalties. This leaves us with the just the societal harms of cannabis use, none of which are helped with black markets.