More than 11% of high school seniors report using delta-8 THC — a compound closely related to the psychoactive chemical in marijuana that’s legal in many states thanks to a loophole in the 2018 farm bill — according to a study published [March 12] in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“We know high school students naturally want to explore and try new ‘exciting’ things, like e-cigarettes, alcohol or marijuana,” said senior study author Adam Leventhal, director of the University of Southern California Institute for Addiction Science. “It’s not surprising that we’re seeing that they’re using delta-8. We just didn’t expect it to be so high.”
Delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol is only slightly chemically different from delta-9 THC, which is the type of THC that is typically found in marijuana and what people most likely think of as responsible for the drug’s high.
Delta-8 is sometimes referred to as “diet weed” or “weed-lite,” because it’s believed to have weaker psychoactive effects than delta-9. The problem, Leventhal said, is that there isn’t enough research to say that definitively.
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Related on the SLP
Delta-8 isn’t the only cannabinoid that has entered the market that has experts concerned, [Director of the UCLA Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids Ziva] Cooper said.
“We don’t know very much about them, but people are using them, and they’re proliferating,” she said, referring to other synthetic cannabinoids.
