US 'marijuana increasing in potency' deliberately misleading

The University of Mississippi and the US Government's National Institute of Drug Abuse released data based on samples from the US Drug Enforcement Agency, on the potency of marijuana seized in the United States, and it comes with some surprising revelations.

Newspapers around the US have pointed out that the strength of marijuana went from 4.78% THC to 10.54% THC, a massive increase, more than doubling potency. Did marijuana growers get twice as good at growing marijuana over the last year?

What no newspaper mentioned was that the number of seizures analysed by the laboratory went from 852 in 2007 to 12 in 2008; did drug busts suffer a 99.98% decrease over the past year, or is the DEA picking and choosing samples?

Of the 12 samples, 10 were described as sinsemilla buds, typically, for every other year, ditch weed and seeded bud made up much larger portions of seizures. The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that the DEA and NIDA data has been manipulated with cherry picked data and very low sample size.

Another interesting point of the study is the strength of hashish in the United States, which has apparently suffered a massive decline, going from 28.19% THC in 2007 to a mere 0.26% THC in 2008. Hash Oil declined as well, from 27.17% to 1.35% THC. So, while marijuana is doubling in potency, hash is somehow loosing between 99.95% and 99.99% of it's THC content.

From this study, the only conclusion one can fairly draw is that NIDA, the DEA, and the University of Mississippi are producing fundamentally flawed or intentionally misleading data on the strength of marijuana.

U of Mississippi and NIDA Marijuana Potency report