If you haven’t noticed, the movement to legalize marijuana has picked up steam in the past couple of years, with states passing medical marijuana bills with overwhelming support across the country. And now organizations like NORML are making commercials like this one to keep things moving forward.

If you ask me, it’s obvious that marijuana will be legalized – the evidence for the benefits of that on our society are too strong. Not that everybody should smoke weed all the time – just like everybody shouldn’t drink all the time – but that we as a people are being punished for using a plant that is less harmful than McDonald’s, and that MUST stop. If you want to be on the winning team with this one, now’d be a good time to jump onboard. (Not that you aren’t taking a bong hit right now, anyway.)

Back in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, weed was nothing much more than some funky grass that made you feel chill, silly and hungry. But today, the US government’s Office of National Drug Control Policy has announced that the average percentage of THC, the psychoactive ingredient, in the currently available marijuana has risen to 9.6-percent, up from 1983’s report of just under 4-percent.

The study was done by the University of Mississippi’s Potency Monitoring Project (how do we join?), which tested 62,797 cannabis samples, 1,302 hashish samples, and 468 hash oil samples, confiscated by law enforcement. “The increases in marijuana potency are of concern since they increase the likelihood of acute toxicity, including mental impairment,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Increased mental impairment a concern? Well, our only concern is getting our hands on some of that bud.

[Props to Gawker for this bit]