U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the Developing Brain

Re:U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the De... by djsumdog on Thursday August 29, 2019 @04:19PM (#20833232)

Is there a listed Median Lethal Dose (LD50) for THC or CBD?

It is possible to overdose on nicotine if it's ingested (50mg ~60mg for a 150lbs adult, according to the CDC's website), but I'm not sure if there is such an amount defined for THC ingestion.

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Re:U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the De... by bigguy0720 on Thursday August 29, 2019 @11:43PM (#20835829)

It depends on your weight and how much tolerance you have, but a fatal does could be as little as 2 grams (2000mg) of THC, which is about 100X what it takes to get high. Since marijuana is about 20% THC, and you only actually absorb about half of that when you smoke or injest it, the minimum lethal dose is probably about 20 grams, though some people may be able to tolerate a few times that amount. Fatal marijuana overdoses are rare, about 200 per year in the U.S., but they do happen. Claims that you can injest your body weight are based on articles written by advocates who can't do basic math.

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Re:U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the De... by bregma on Thursday August 29, 2019 @04:32PM (#20833366)

For THC it's somewhere around your own body weight. I suppose you might get the munchies real bad and OD. Don't bake a dozen hash carrot cakes with cream cheese icing all at one time.

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Re:U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the De... by Broken_Hippo on Thursday August 29, 2019 @05:27PM (#20833882)

I'm not sure there is real harm in baking a dozen hash carrot cakes. Just don't eat them all.

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Re:U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the De... by SimbaOnSteroids on Thursday August 29, 2019 @04:27PM (#20833325)

It's a comically large amount of THC to reach the LD50. 192mg/kg.

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Re:U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the De... by bigguy0720 on Thursday August 29, 2019 @11:58PM (#20835878)

192mg/kg is on the higher end of estimates, which do range widely because they are based on animal studies. However, it's not comically large. Do the math, and it comes to just over 14 grams for a 75 kg (165 lb) adult. That's more than most people would ever consume in a day, but it's far less than the 600 gram lethal dose of alcohol for that same person. Alcohol kills far more people because it takes 100 - 250 grams of alcohol for a 75 kg adult to get drunk, so the lethal dose of alcohol is only about 5X the intoxicating dose vs. 100X the intoxicating dose for THC.

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Re:U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the De... by bigfudge on Thursday August 29, 2019 @06:33PM (#20834376)

How do they calculate the LD50 given there are basically no THC caused deaths?

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Re:U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory: Marijuana Use and the De... by hsk823 on Thursday August 29, 2019 @04:36PM (#20833409)

LD50 for cannabis is debatable but many put it at close to a gram of pure THC per kilogram of weight, intravenously. To put it in perspective caffeine and aspirin has an LD50 around 200mg/kg.

There's a reason why so many people say no one has overdosed on cannabis. For someone who weighs 65kg, they'd have to ingest approximately 65 grams of 100% pure THC for a 50% chance of dying from it. 99.95% THC crystals sold in dispensarys go for around $90 a gram, so someone who wanted to try to test this theory would be spending around $6k in weed to try to do in one sitting

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