Study Finds Women May Need Less THC To Get High

If you’re a lady-smoker, you may get more bang for your buck when it comes to cannabis as a new study has found women may need less THC to get high. The study was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Psychopharmacology and studied how THC in cannabis affects men and women differently. 91 people were included in the study between the ages of 19 and 25. Each smoked a joint with 750mg’s of cannabis. As we mentioned in this article, THC is the psychoactive component of cannabis and could be what causes people to get high. While one group’s joint contained 12.5% THC, the other group’s joint contained cannabis with just 0.01% THC. The study’s results?

While women and men both appeared equally high, women required less THC to get there.

While being ‘high’ might seem subjective, researchers were able to measure how high each smoker was by testing the following:

• Cognitive functioning
• Measuring their heart rate, and
• Testing the THC concentration in their blood

At the point where their cognitive functioning was impaired, they were declared ‘high’. These findings might seem like a fun fact for a party setting - but what about in medicine? If women need less THC than men, should doses of medical cannabis be adjusted depending on your sex? According to researcher and University of Toronto PhD candidate Justin Matheson, we should at least consider it.

I think the main takeaway is that women may need a lower dose of THC to get the same degree of intoxication as men.

Of course, Australia’s medical cannabis industry is still too young to be making judgements, and this is only one study. But going forward, Matheson would like to see more research into estrogen and gender’s effect on THC absorption (aka dope chemistry). Isn’t science fun!