The other day, I was talking with a mom about marijuana edibles and potency when she asked, “Ten milligrams of what?” Referring to the 10mg serving size on recreational edibles, she kept asking, “At what potency?”

It took me awhile, but after several minutes going back and forth, I finally figured out what she was asking and where the confusion was.

When we talk about potency of flower or concentrates, we talk in percentages. For example, XYZ Concentrate is 75% THC or ABC Bud is 12% THC. That’s the potency.

But when we talk about the potency of edibles, we talk in miligrams. For example, ZYX Brownie has 50 miligrams of THC.

So how do we go from percentage to milligrams? Let’s do the math.

An ounce of flower/bud is around 28 grams. That’s 28,000 miligrams. If it tests at 10% potency for THC, that’s approximately 2,800mg of THC in the entire ounce.

You likely won’t get the full benefit of those 2,800mg if you smoke that ounce, by the way. Smoking is the least efficient method of consuming cannabis because so much of the material is burned up.

Let’s say you turn that ounce into 4 grams of concentrate that tests at 70% potency for THC. That’s approximately 700 milligrams of THC in each gram (1,000mg) of concentrate.

That gram of concentrate is then mixed in with other ingredients and portioned out to make 70 edible servings each containing 10mg of THC.

So to answer that mom’s questions…

Ten milligrams of what? THC.

At what potency? 100%.

— Rx MaryJane (Teri Robnett)

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