STATE'S POT AMONG MOST POTENT IN NATION

Alaska is home to some of the most potent pot in the country. In 1992, a
crop from Copper Center registered a whopping 29.8 percent THC, or
tetrahydrocannabinol, the ingredient that makes users feel high. The figure
was nearly seven times the national average and stood as a record until an
Oregon grower topped it at 33 percent.

Since then, drug enforcement officials have often cited the Copper Center
measurement as evidence that modern pot is far more dangerous than the pot
of yesteryear.

"The critical thing to remember is that the marijuana of today is not the
marijuana of the 1970s," said Lt. Col. Bob Kean, who heads the National
Guard Counterdrug Support Program, reciting what is a litany among law
enforcement in Alaska and elsewhere.

But high-potency pot is the exception rather than the rule, according to
government statistics at the University of Mississippi's Marijuana Project.
The federally funded program is sent samples of pot from busts around the
country and has tested more than 38,000 samples in the past two decades.

According to the university lab, average potency has risen only slightly in
15 years, from about 3.5 percent to about 4.5 percent THC. Most tests at 5
percent or less.

In Mat-Su, the average potency from marijuana seized last year was 9
percent, according to members of the Mat-Su drug team. Those figures are
conservative, though, said trooper Steve Adams, one of five officers in the
unit. In many cases, the plants sent to be tested had not fully matured and
had not yet reached full potency, he said.

Still, Alaska drug officials said they know of no evidence that stronger
pot is more dangerous. Legalization proponents argue that more potent pot
is better because people smoke less of it to obtain the desired result.

That's not to say marijuana doesn't have harmful health effects.

According to a 1999 study done for the federal government by the Institute
of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, smoking marijuana
may cause lung damage, is linked to changes in behavior, and in some cases
users can become reliant.

But the same report also found that marijuana is not as addictive as
heroin, cocaine or nicotine. And unlike with other drugs, no one has ever
overdosed on marijuana. The report also dispelled the notion that marijuana
leads to the use of harder drugs.

"In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows
initiation into the use of other illicit drugs, it is indeed a gateway
drug," the report states.

"However, it does not appear to be a gateway drug to the extent that it is
the cause or even that it is the most significant predictor of serious drug
abuse. That is, care must be taken not to attribute cause to association. "

Reporter S.J. Komarnitsky can be reached at skomarnitsky@adn.com.