I
By the mid-2000s the feds no longer had any control, thank god ;)
I've NEVER seen a THC count anywhere near that, but what do i know? THC levels have gone steadily up since the 1990s. Today is wildly more of an explosion than there ever was!! There was no day ever better for this plant than today. It's a goddamn real live revolution :)
I smoked ounces of shwag back when sensimelia was synonymous with the black hole myth. Once the kind yeska became available it did not become available to everyone. I had a waiting list ppl had to join if they wanted an eighth of my g13, original kush (not to be mistaken for "OG kush ") hashplant or Afghan gold. 75 an eighth. The highest thc content strains were not for sale and kept for my pers smoke - Burmese and skunk #1.
Point I'm making is that very few knew of the aforementioned strains or their thc content let alone has smoked it. It's not surprising even for accomplished growers not to have been privey to them.
Final note, your right: the feds had very little to do with the 2000 operation I mentioned earlier.
It was the fda, they stood to suffer the biggest loss to the emergent high thc cannabis. They are the ones that spearheaded the operation
In case this sounds very fantastical to you - remember - back in the early 60s when Mexican politicians refused to stop the cartels from growing cannabis sold to Americans in the usa..... Yup, you guessed it. Thc content manipulation was their weapon of choice. B52 bombers were used to drop copious amounts of contaminants on the crops, degredating the thc and birthing the cannabis that would be referred to as the "shwag " or "shwaggles".
The history book on the shelf - it keeps repeating itself. -Abba