The Benefits Of Naturally Existing Limits For Harm Minimization In A Legally Regulated Regime: Cannabis
factual notes and suggestions
The conversation on what a new regime of regulation for mind-altering substances might constitute has just gotten started- especially in terms of the specific details of the proposals. I’m starting it right now. This is a first draft.
It’s my opinion that a balance needs to be struck between liberalization to acknowledge the autonomy of free citizens and protection of public safety, health and welfare.
This is another way of saying that while I support a substantial liberalization of the drug laws- including an expanded role for both medical professionals and the consumer market in addressing issues of demand- I’m a long way from being a libertarian ideologue. I’m not a “legalize everything” guy. Not unless it becomes clear through sustained experience that it’s the only workable solution, that is. I’m far from convinced of that, presently. Just because- in balance- it might conceivably result in a marked improvement over the status quo doesn’t mean that we can’t do drug law reform a lot better than that.
In the spirit of provoking thought on this matter, I’m going to state a set of various recommendations intended for the purpose of practical harm reduction. My advice differs for each chemical substance; I’ll attempt to sort out the costs and the benefits of each of them, supported by inferences drawn from objective fact. I support the concept of ordinary good sense limits in a regulatory regime. But in my opinion the role of natural physical limitations has an important role to play- and it’s been given only passing notice in discussions of drug law reform. Some of the people still reading this post are likely unclear on what I might mean by “natural physical limitations.” I think that the meaning of the concept in the sense that I’m using it is shown most effectively through offering specific examples.
Cannabis Legalization
I’ve been a foot soldier in the marijuana legalization movement off and on for decades- long before it began to feature as a venture capitalist investment frontier.
The original goals of the movement when I joined it in the 1970s were somewhat inchoate; no one I knew of back then had a specifically detailed plan for exactly how a commercial legalization regime might work. There was general agreement on some of the regulations and restrictions to be imposed as part of a regime in the event of retail market legalization- age restrictions, licensing of retail vendors a la liquor licenses, potency testing available to users, inspection to prevent adulteration of the product. But mostly we just wanted the law off of our backs. No one I knew in the movement had dollar signs in their eyes, looking to cash in on mass market marijuana. In the 1970s, many of us would have viewed the freedom to cultivate a household supply- quantities of a few mature female plants and perhaps one kilo of processed marijuana- as the benchmark of success. Similar to the laws found in many states for winemaking and the home brewing of beer, which permit individual households to possess a fairly liberal quantity of the finished product- like 200 gallons annually- to be stored, used, or gifted to neighors and friends. An ample quantity, for a single household- but from the standpoint of commerce, hardly the basis for a lucrative illicit business.
That’s all that most of us in the movement cared about, back then- the freedom to use, possess, and cultivate a natural, non-invasive annual plant, less poisonous than most of the herbs found in a kitchen spice rack.
The prospect of a legal commercial market was an afterthought for most of us in the movement in the late 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s. I never even heard that much speculation about what that future might look like, in those years. I had heard rumors than that Big Tobacco cigarette companies like Philip Morris and Brown & Williamson had filed copyrights for popular underground market “brands” of pot- “Acapulco Gold”, “Panama Red”, etc.- but in the 1970s, the practical possibility of outright commercial pot legalization was so far out of the picture that I didn’t take the rumors seriously. When I did consider the liability of a takeover of a market in legalized pot by Big Business, what came to my mind was a tightly enforced criminalization of home cultivation, in conjunction with corporate control of the commercial market through a monopoly-oligopoly status officially ordained as a regulatory capture scheme by clueless or corrupt lawmakers. As for the retail product sold under such a regime, I had visions of a retail market of prerolled “joints” using stale cannabis leaf with a THC content guaranteed to be homogenized at, like 2 per cent.
I didn’t think about it all that much, really. But even if I had, I would never have envisioned the array of products currently found in the inventory of legal recreational cannabis dispensaries in the states where cannabis is a legalized retail trade. Prior to the 1990s, I couldn’t have envisioned them; the agricultural technologies pioneered by some of the cultivators in the illegal market were just yielding the dramatic leap in THC content- 15%, 20%, 25%- that eventually became the benchmark attribute for the high-dollar retail marijuana market by the end of the 20th century. The methods to make some concentrated cannabis products of even higher potency- like “shatter”, and “wax”- were practically unknown, before the 2000s. And now those preparations- rivalled only by the most highly refined vials of “hash oil” that had surfaced in the illicit market only rarely in previous decades- were on the retail shelf as legal products. As were a mind-boggling array of THC-containing edible and potable products- chocolates, confections, ‘gummies”, tablets, oil dispensed with droppers; soda pop, caffeinated and herbal tea beverages- and even alcoholic beer or wine, in some cases. There were also similar products that were only compounded with CBD, no THC. The CBD products included liniments and oils compounded for topical use.
A few words about the retail practices of the legal establishments whose wares I’ve browsed, in Colorado and Massachusetts: all the ones I’ve been in follow strict enforcement provisions to prevent underage customers from getting past the front door, much less enabling a purchase by them. That means legally valid picture IDs checked at the door, which are often electronically operated to buzz through customers into an anteroom or counter where the IDs are checked- and then often photocopied, even upon admission, and prior to purchase. If I recall correctly, at least one Colorado store insisted on credit card purchase only- they didn’t want the extra hassles of a cash business attracting robbers.
The practice of retail stores digitally copying and storing photo ID is relatively new to my experience, at least from my decades-long perspective; I first encountered it in a Denver pot shop, but not long afterward I found myself mildly surprised to find that many Pennsylvania food markets with a beer and wine section also copied photo IDs for each purchase of alcoholic beverages, no matter the age of the buyer. It’s a regulation/accountability technique with pros and cons that are worth much more discussion, in the context of the market for mind-altering substances. As practiced in my personal experience, I didn’t find anything objectionable about it.
To return to the topic of the product lines available on the legal market, I have to admit that I was mildly astounded. In all of my imaginings, I never even considered the possibility that edible confections would be sold across the counter in a legal retail market for cannabis products.
This is where the concept of “natural physical limits” begins to assume relevance, as considered in the context of the recreational cannabis trade. My personal vision of a legal cannabis retail outlet had resembled a visit to a cigar store. The pot shops had that aspect, to be sure; but they also featured a product section more resembling the vitamin shelves of a Whole Foods supermarket, along with a stock of refrigerated beverages.
I liked it, frankly. But I also couldn’t help but speculate on the potential problems that might arise from making marijuana so easy to overuse. I had always viewed the raw natural vegetable product as a commodity that provided a natural check on the “attractive nuisance” aspects of drug consumption. That is to say, you buy some freshly cured flower top buds, and if you want to bake a batch of brownies or use the weed for some similar edible purpose, make it yourself. Chemistry skills are not required; to prepare ganja for oral ingestion, one simply browns the substance in a pan with butter or another cooking oil, and turns it into an ingredient in a dish. It’s typically easy to estimate the potency-per-teaspoon of the resulting product by sampling, and there’s ample room for a bit of trial and error.
Establishing an effective dosage level is a process that’s made easier by the assessments of THC/other cannabinoid levels typically found as part of the brand labeling for legally purchased buds (presuming that the tested percentages given are reasonably accurate.) But there’s no especially critical requirement to establish a precisely measured level of THC potency for a batch of pot butter in order to ward off the danger of overdose. It’s easy enough to get a serviceable estimate by smoking a little bit of it before deciding how much to use for making marijuana butter or oil.
Hence, the “natural physical limitation” of cannabis buds comprises the overarching regulatory feature: first, no one is going to inadvertently overdose by eating a handful of Sour Diesel sinsemilla that’s been left out on a kitchen counter. No one over the age of five would ever do that by mistake. A handful of adolescent knuckleheads might do that on purpose as a stupid Jackass-level teenage male trick, on a dare. But what are we going to do…as stupid Jackass-level teenage male tricks go, that one hardly even rates. It’s unlikely that anyone who did it once would do it again (unless the wagering money was good.)
The important point is that it’s practically out of the question that a toddler would happen upon a bag of pot that’s been carelessly left out and try to consume the ingredients- and if they did, it would be relatively difficult for them to eat very much of it. They’d probably chew on some and then spit it out. As I’ll explain in more detail in a bit, that’s a markedly different situation than the attractive nuisance liability from a toddler happening on a bag full of THC-infused gummies, or a candy bar infused with 100mg of THC.
The next arena where natural physical constraint comes into play is the Work and Effort of transforming cured cannabis buds into an edible product. Even the easiest and fastest way to do that- putting a Ritz cracker topped with a fingertip-sized bud of sinsemilla sandwiched between two layers of cheese, microwaved for a minute or so- makes for a little project. You have to get a plate out, add the ingredients, and zap the hors d’oeuvre in the microwave. You can make more than one, but once you run out, you have to make more. Simple as it is, it’s a process. Thought and effort are required. Making brownies or cooking spaghetti sauce or infusing buds into salad oil also requires time and labor. It’s easy, but not effortless.
By contrast, opening a bag of THC-infused sugar candies is effortless. And speaking of sugar, it’s my opinion that sugar is a much more reinforcing substance than THC. Reinforcement in this sense means the capability of inducing a craving for more, or encouraging repeated dosing. (I’d be curious to know the results of any clinical studies that might have been done to compare the reinforcing attraction of concentrated sugar- sucrose, fructose, glucose, dextrose- with the reinforcement attraction of various mind-altering substances.) For many Americans*, it just doesn’t feel natural to stop after eating only one gummy, mint, or bite-sized chocolate candy. In that respect, sugared confections containing THC demand an extra level of restraint from the user- a conscious decision to refrain from doing that comes naturally, which is to gobble a half-dozen or more in the space of a couple of minutes. That’s a temptation that’s unnecessary. The sweetening is unnecessary. Humans want to overeat sugar. Whereas they don’t have nearly the same taste for chewing and swallowing the dry roughage of an herbal spice.
[ *It has to be said: as products of a crazily affluent developed society, Americans are self-indulgent and reflexively gluttonous. One Christmas season, the owner of a cab I leased- a Palestinian immigrant guy- showed me a batch of freshly baked almond and pistachio cookies and invited me to take one. I took one, chomped it down, and casually reached for another one…he slapped my hand.
That was a real educational wake-up call for me. I keep that lesson in mind, as a ready reminder. I know for a fact that many other native-born Americans act the same way that I did. Thoughtless disrespect. Selfish entitlement to instant gratification taken for granted. And they never even get a glimpse of their own lack of perspective. ]
There’s no need to cue horror-story chords on a pipe organ; we haven’t seen a terrifying outbreak of cannabis gummy eaters gone over the edge from consuming ten times the recommended dose of THC, etc. But the numbers from the ER in recent years do indicate an increase in visits for untoward reactions to cannabis edibles, compared to earlier decades. And most of the serious cases are from children who found a bag of cannabis candies, and didn’t stop at just eating one or two. It’s worth noting that the “gummy problem” is not confined to cannabis edibles; many vitamins and supplements are also commonly compounded as gummy candies these days ( a really new thing, practically unknown 20 years ago. A new way of utilizing sugar for enticement purposes.) To put the problem of accidental poisoning from cannabis candy in perspective, melatonin gummies have led to more incidents of accidental child poisoning, and more incidents of serious poisoning. And neither cannabis or melatonin feature anywhere near the top of the CDC list of substances that have led to accidental poisonings from oral ingestion. Yet and still, it’s reasonable to wonder whether it’s really worth it to package cannabis preparations in the form of candies and small confections, for no reason other than maximum convenience. It’s an attractive nuisance. Even compared to classic edibles like “Alice B. Toklas brownies” or majoun paste, the natural physical constraint of volume is lacking. It takes some doing to eat a typically sized plate of brownies or a brick of halvah; I’ve purchased packages of “brownies” in cannabis shops that are smaller than sampler chocolates, and only around 1/8 the size of old-time pot brownies. Did I follow the recommended dosage amounts? Yes. Was I tempted to gobble down the entire container? Also yes. The little bite sized chocolate cake was delicious. I wanted more.
Given a consumer base in the tens of millions, perhaps it’s a mistake to package THC products as sweets, especially in compact sizes. When the consumer market is in the tens of millions of people, even if 99.99% of the buyers are able to keep the temptation to overuse in check, the remaining 0.01% amount to a substantial number of overconsumers. I realize that libertarian ideology and the associated American individualist mythos have a pat answer for this situation. But in principle, I don’t think it’s an answer. When the trailing curve of a population distribution consists of a large number of people, and when the solution involves a product restriction with effects that are merely a trivial inconvenience for the consumers, it’s reasonable to question the wisdom of allowing those product lines to be offered.
I have even more severe reservations about the recreational products shatter hash and wax. I was once enough of a stoner to eat a gram of hash now and then; probably 70mg of THC (there was typically some potency loss in storage and transport.) It was Enough. Two grams would have stretched me out cold on the floor until the next morning. With shatter hash or wax, it’s possible to consume 5-7 times that much THC in the same bite-size volume. I know, kids, shatter and wax are meant to be vaped or added to pot in a bong, not swallowed. But I bet you that some people have tried it anyway. And I’m dubious about both the safety of concentrating 700mg of THC in a gram-size package, and the presence of a compelling reason to consume cannabis that way. Given the potential size of a nationwide consumer market- including a considerable amount of added interest from new and naive experimenters and users- I’d anticipate some untoward outcomes and ill effects associated with overdoing the concentrates. Recreational cannabis use hasn’t yet presented much of a problem in the states where it’s legal. I’d like to keep it that way. And it’s worth pointing out that to the extent that negative consequences have shown up in the post-legalization era, a disproportionate* number of them are due to either the convenience edibles, or the concentrates. Cannabis in its natural form- as cured female flower tops- has a margin of safety that’s exceptionally wide. The concentrates and readily consumed edibles shrink that margin, sometimes drastically. They lack the natural physical limitation inherent in the plant source.
[*I spelled that word right, Spellcheck. You idiot.]
I don’t like sounding like a concern troll on this issue, but I can take the heat. My intention is to head off in advance any complications from legalization that might be highlighted and exploited to gin up a political backlash. Banning THC edibles that are prepackaged in ways that increase their hazards of overuse or accidental poisoning does not deprive anyone of their fun. All it does is shift time and labor- and product liability- to those buyers who might use their purchases of bud to cook up their own edibles.
My natural limits suggestion, for retail stores: orally ingested cannabis should be packaged in the form of unsweetened elixirs, like cough medicine. 5mg a teaspoon. In a bottle with a childproof cap. I’m not talking about adding syrup of ipecac (ugh), or acetaminophen (worse.) I just want no junk food, and enough bitter to get folks to think twice about the next teaspoon.
(Got drugs and children? Invest in a lockbox. Got drugs and teenagers, especially boys? Feral. Don’t get a lockbox that’s easy to pick. Know where the key is.
While I’m up- got a stash of distilled alcohol, and teenagers? Lock the cabinet.)
Making cannabis elixir bitter isn’t the worst idea. It’s a signal that it’s for adults.
Maybe someone will make a cult of mixing it with Fernet Branco, or however that’s pronounced. (But don’t drive afterward.)
And THC concentrates are senseless, except perhaps for some medical patients with exceptional needs. They have the most potential for harm. That’s the chief result of over-emphasizing THC: bad side effects. There are no counterbalancing advantages. No one breaks through to some extra level of psychedelically transcendent enlightenment from doing up 70-90% THC products. They just get too spaced out to talk, walk, or even get up out of a chair without risking a fainting spell. I’d reserve concentrates of that strength for, like, DEA Schedule IV. You can get your medical cannabis prescription for hash oil or shatter with repeated refills, if you can find a physician who’s convinced that it’s doing the job of helping you.
Some of us know the difference between a fun pot high and sleepwalking in a half-conscious daze. The rest of you need to pick up on it, the sooner the better. In my opinion. Also, how many of you have done the 4th grade-level math to figure out how much money you can save from not using more cannabis simply for the sake of using more cannabis? What, you’re that rich, that you can spend $400 a month hassling with shaking off the stuporous side effects of burning too much reefer, when you’d have a better time on 1/5 the amount, or 1/10 the amount. or 1/20 the amount? Humans, it’s a puzzler. I used to overdo it myself, but I had an excuse: I had to fund the Resistance, by keeping my connections fresh. Then the stuff got legalized. The more legal pot gets, the less I care about keeping any around. It’s like alcohol, now. I can find a bottle shop that offers a diverse selection of expensive exotic connoisieur distilled beverages, right up the street. And, well, so what?
I’m not done with my criticism of ultra-THC content cannabis, either. Just to add to the likelihood that I’m making myself unpopular here, I have to say it: the ceiling on THC percentage that’s found in soil-grown, outdoor cultivated cannabis is another worthwhile harm-reducing natural physical constraint.
It’s a little-known fact that it’s very difficult to grow cannabis with a THC percentage of more than 12% outdoors, planted in soil. Possibly even impossible, although I can’t say for sure; it’s conceivable that selective breeding and hybridization may have slightly increased that upper limit. But the dramatic increases in potency that occured over the course of the 1990s and into the 2000s- buds with THC levels of 18%-28%- were not accomplished by standard outdoor gardening. They’re the result of intensive indoor cultivation techniques- technologies, really.
These techniques begin with selective breeding- typically intended to maximize the THC containing resin. Then cuttings are taken from the most powerful female plants, to raise for their flowering tops (or “buds.”) Following age-old cultivation techniques, the flowering tops of cannabis are intended to be unpollinated, and hence seedless. The recent emphasis on growing marijuana by using cuttings ensures that all of the plants will be grown from female stock. It also allows for genetic uniformity; the cuttings from a single plant are clones, basically. Sinc male plants are absent from the garden from the very first, it’s much less of a problem to ensure that the flowers will be seedless. The only thing that a cultivator needs to do in order to ensure a virtually seedless crop is to be vigilant about inspecting the plants are at the growing stage when they’re sufficiently mature to begin flowering; occasionally, a few of the plants will express hermaphroditism, sprouting pollen-containing male flowers along with female buds. Those plants are culled (or, possibly, only the male flowers are clipped off; I’m not sure if it’s necessary to pull the plants.) As long as the male flowers are removed before they shed pollen, every plant in the garden will be able to reach maturity while producing seedless female flowers.
But that’s only part of the story: the core boost in THC production is due to the intensive hydroponic gardening tricks used to raise the cuttings to maturity. These techniques include the hydroponic nutrient solutions, often cooled with dry ice in order to improve the uptake of nutrients by the roots of the cuttings, along with artificial lights- formerly halides or sodium lamps, now more often LEDs- lowered as close to the plants as possible in order to mimic conditions of unending bright sunlight, shining 18 or more hours a day during the vegetal growth stage. The combination of fertilizer-enriched hydroponic solutions, intense sunlight, CO2 sublimation from the dry ice, and the constancy of the indoor environment works to maximize photosynthesis in the growing plants. Sometimes the indoor atmosphere is enriched even more directly, from CO2 tanks.
The final trick is what’s known as “photoperiod manipulation.” As with many other flowering plants, cannabis is genetically programmed to set flowers when the hours of sunlight perceived by the plant begin to wane, and it sees less daylight and more darkness. This “photoperiod” is easily manipulated in order to trigger cannabis flowering by adjusting the hours when the artificial lights are activated. As a result, the yield of flowers on the plants goes through the roof; the plants are often so heavy with buds that the branches require being suspended with string. And the flowering stage is extended far beyond the limits of any naturally sunlit outdoor garden, no matter the latitude and altitude.
And that’s how Superweed is made, often with a THC content that doubles the limit of anything achievable in an outdoor garden in even the most optimal circumstances.
To offer a succinct personal opinion for extensive experience: I think Indoor Superweed is an overrated hype. It’s also the strength of weed that’s most likely to produce the disorienting effects that turn so many new smokers of to the experience. It’s also at a THC concentration that has untoward effects on vulnerable people, and that’s something that we in the pro-legalization camp need to discuss, and keep discussing. I’m certainly not going to stop discussing the potential hazards of cannabis- which, while relatively minor in most respects when compared to other substances, do exist as potential hazards, particularly for the young.
In my days as a regular pot smoker, I used to be as enthusiastic about finding the most potent pot as the rest of the crowd; that was the prevailing social conditioning of marijuana subculture. And, to be candid, the marijuana I was smoking in the 1970s was often low-strength and mediocre quality, like 1%-2% THC. In retrospect, much of the low-quality stuff had probably once been higher strength THC- but marijuana can go stale if kept too long in storage, particularly if the storage room gets hot. Wehn it gets stale, the THC content degrades. Whatever chemical THC degrades to makes for a sleeping pill that puts Ambien to shame, without the somnambulism side effect that leaves me so wary of Ambien. But as a high, stale reefer is a disppointment. So the quest for better weed was a thing, back in the 1970s. Eventually, it led to the importation of top-quality seeds- from highland Mexico and central America, Vietnam, Nepal, Afghanistan. etc., to be cultivated in American states like West Virginia, Kentucky, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, and Alaska. The growers adopted the culling of male plants to produce seedless or mostly seedless flowering buds. The most intensive cultivators- the ones who made the most of their regional growing season- achieved THC levels of 8%-11%.
Even that THC level is a bit much for me; the big compliment is that the product was “two-toke weed”- and that’s just what it was. Any more was pointless. And for me, even two tokes was a bit of an overshoot. I’m more of a one-toke guy. And I prefer more control over my titration. The best weed I ever smoked was from highland Mexico, hands down. Oaxacan, Michoacan, Acapulco, Guerrero. It was probably 3% to 5% THC, had some other cannabinoids and terpenes in there that made for an authentically superior product. Those pure strains may be extinct now-in the late 1970s, the Mexican government, funded by the U.S. government, went on a marijuana eradication campaign that destroyed most of the original marijuana industry (independents, mostly indios in the hills; read Jerry Kamstra’s books, his experiences as an expat between the 50s and the 80s.)
The Mexican anti-marijuana effort was named Operation Condor. There’s more than one of those. Man, do I hate Operation Condors. (Don’t tell me there’s no such thing as right-wing totalitarian oppression.)
The Mexican eradication was also the one that turned into a fiasco for the Carter administration, in late 1978; some of the fields were sprayed with the infamous herbicide paraquat, and some of the tainted marijuana was said to have been shipped north to some U.S. retail outlets. For what it’s worth, it was later found that paraquat is 94% changed into benzopyrene when burned; benzopyrene ain’t anything great- it’s a tobacco carcinogen- but it doesn’t appear to have led to a spike in cancer or fibrosis (at least not any more than any of the other hellbroth chemicals of the petro-industrial age.) I doubt that very much paraquat-tainted pot made it to the market; I’ve seen what it looks like- unsaleable. But paraquat sprayed weed was a real thing, and it was bad omen for the carefree American 1970s. That they weren’t going to last.
I harbor doubts-purely as a hunch- that Carter didn’t order that Mexican eradication effort, or the pesticides. My inside-the-Beltway guess is that Operation Condor had already been planned- maybe even since the Nixon administration- and perhaps even already funded, and Carter didn’t think he could afford the headaches from cancelling it. I think Jimmy Carter made the wrong decision by not blowing the whistle on the whole mess- it was as much a Highland Ethnic Clearance as it was a drug war pogrom. I wasn’t in Carter’s shoes. Anyway, the paraquat fiasco did blow up in his face. It did lose him substantial votes in the next election.
I’ve idly perused new cannabis catalogs that speak of heritage strains from Oaxaca and Acapulco. They all seem to be hybrids. I can tell, because the original highland Mexico strains had some unique characteristics that I don’t see noted in any of the catalogues: they were crystally, but not dank- the Oaxacan smelled more like mint, but mostly the scent was “basic reefer” and black pepper. Not skunk, or Air-wick, or juicy fruit gum, or what have you, artificial flavor. An herb. The real scandalous, oh no- the buds had seeds in them! Not too many of them, if you were lucky. Overseeded weed is not very crystally. But this was naturally fertilized weed, and it had a better balance to it, I think. The good stuff still had plenty of flower bud, just enough resin to be a bit sticky, and cyystals. Find photos of old High Time magazines and look at the pictorials, you’ll eventually find highland Mexican weed. Some of it was multicolor- red, purple, gold, green, tan. Only in Mexico. Also gold, mint green. bracts with little fine red stamen hairs, not all clotted with resin, healthy flowers. It could turn a cigarette paper transparent when burned. The truly unique thing was the taste and the ash. The taste was mixed cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper. The ash burned white, not gray. I’ve never seen any other strain or hybrid do that.
This what it looked like:
High Times magazine picks for the best strains, vintage 1977. Courtesy of some self-deleted rando on Reddit.
Now I sound like a wine snob. I’m not, or I might have stopped smoking pot in 1977. But that doesn’t mean I have to like fortified wine.
Indoor cannabis is environmentally unhealthy. The natural check- on both an unnatural level of THC strength and carbon emissions- is to make indoor warehouse growing a thing of the past. The high just ain’t that great.