More POTent than ever?

...now put this in your pipe and smoke it!

Here's some interesting news from the WIRED Blog:

Modern agriculture hasn't just made beef cows beefier and corn cornier, it's also made pot more potty.

The potency of marijuana, measured by the presence of its (psycho)active ingredient, THC, has tripled since 1987, according to the latest figures from the Department of Justice's National Drug Intelligence Center.

The new data from the University of Mississippi Potency Monitoring Project — which is not just a group of your college buddies talking about the differences between now and the old days — was released in the 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment.

The Department of Justice attributed the steadily rising numbers to "increased demand for higher-potency marijuana and improvements in cultivation techniques." [more]