Ep. 32 - THC Dose: How High Is Too High?

In 2020, an estimated 209 million people around the world, or just less than four per cent of the global population, reported using cannabis in the past 12 months. Around the world, cannabis is being legalized or decriminalized and hundreds of thousands of patients are currently being treated with medicinal cannabis. Cannabis products are becoming increasingly diverse, and vary considerably in their concentrations of the one psychoactive cannabinoid found in cannabis, delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as THC. It is in use of THC that we develop risks and harms from cannabis.

Currently, there is no standardized THC dose or measure that has been recommended by experts, and there are no approved treatments for THC intoxication. On this episode of Cannabis Nurse Truths, we review the concerns with standard THC dosing - just how high is too high?

 

Episode Resources

Bhaskar, A., Bell, A., Boivin, M., Briques, W., Brown, M., Clarke, H., Cyr, C., Eisenberg, E., de Oliveira Silva, RF., Frohlich, E., Georgius, P., Hogg, M., Horsted, T.I., MacCallum, C.A., Müller-Vahl, K.R., O’Connell, C., Sealey, R., Seibolt, M., Sihota, A., … Moulin, D.E. (2021). Consensus recommendations on dosing and administration of medical cannabis to treat chronic pain: Results of a modified Delphi process. Journal of Cannabis Research, 3(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42238-021-00073-1

 

Freeman, T. P., & Lorenzetti, V. (2020). ‘Standard THC units’: A proposal to standardize dose across all cannabis products and methods of administration. Addiction, 115(7), 1207–1216. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.14842

 

Glare, P., Chye, R., Bloch, M., Arya, M., Moore, A., & Montgomery, J. (2023). Tolerability and Efficacy of a 10:25 Preparation of Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol and Cannabidiol for Treatment of Chronic Back or Neck Pain: A Multiple-Dose Escalation Study. Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids, 6(1), 66–76. https://doi.org/10.1159/000531232

 

Leung, J., Stjepanović, D., Dawson, D., & Hall, W. D. (2021). Do Cannabis Users Reduce Their THC Dosages When Using More Potent Cannabis Products? A Review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 630602. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.630602

 

Rozanc, J., Klumpers, L.E., Huestis, M.A., & Tagen, M. (2024). Tolerability of High-Dose Oral Δ 9 -THC: Implications for Human Laboratory Study Design. Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, can.2023.0209. https://doi.org/10.1089/can.2023.0209