Across global cannabis markets, the average levels of THC content are continuing a sustained, exponential and well-documented rise. 

Data from the University of Mississippi’s 2024 Potency Monitoring Program shows average THC levels in cannabis rising from around 1% in 1977 to 16% by 2022. These figures are mirrored in the adult use market, which has seen average potency in flower products climb from 12% to over 21% between 2014 and 2024. 

Even tightly regulated medical markets like the UK are seeing this trend play out. Business of Cannabis recently revealed that in 2022, only 11% of prescribed flower was stronger than 22% THC. By 2024, this category accounted for around one-third of all prescriptions, and by the first two months of 2025, they made up almost half

This trend is most easily explained by increased tolerance. When a medical cannabis patient finds their treatment becoming less effective over time, the instinctive response is to take more. It seems logical. But according to molecular pharmacologist Dr Stefan Broselid, it is also almost entirely uninformed. 

Data from a 2025 study tracking over 16,000 medical cannabis patients found that maintaining therapeutic parity as tolerance develops would require increasing THC potency by 4.4 percentage points per session. In reality, patients increase their dose by around 0.6%, less than one-tenth of what is needed. 

The gap between what patients are doing and what would actually sustain the efficacy of their treatment is enormous, but so poorly understood because there is currently no way to measure it. That is the problem Dr Broselid is working to solve. His non-invasive CB1 receptor availability biomarker would, for the first time, give clinicians and patients a measurable number for endocannabinoid system (ECS) function. 

ECS can no longer be ignored

For Dr Broselid, this extends well beyond long-overdue practical use-cases. He told Business of Cannabis:  “Right now, researchers and clinicians can ignore the ECS because they don’t measure it,” he says. 

“Once you can put a number for CB1 tone next to CRP or cytokines or HbA1c or lipid panels, it becomes much harder to pretend that the ECS is optional.”

The biological phenomenon he wants to make measurable is already well-documented in clinical research, but currently only accessible through specialised and expensive brain imaging. PET neuroimaging studies have shown that chronic daily cannabis users display approximately 20% lower CB1 receptor availability compared to non-users. 

Recovery in these users also follows a predictable curve, seeing initial reversal within 48 hours of stopping use, noticeable improvement at 7-10 days, and substantial return to baseline by 28 days. 

Without accessible tools for measuring this dynamic, medical cannabis patients have no objective way of knowing where they sit on that curve. As such, most respond by increasing their dose, unaware of how whether they are over or under-shooting levels that are effective and safe. 

There are also other idiosyncrasies at play here. CB1 downregulation, it turns out, does something else entirely alongside reducing symptom relief. Chronic users with downregulated receptors are neurobiologically protected from the cognitive impairment that would significantly affect an occasional user receiving the same THC exposure. 

Research at UC San Diego found that those consuming an average of four joints per day showed no driving impairment after 48 hours of abstinence, performing identically to non-cannabis-using controls. Occasional users with far lower THC exposure histories showed measurable deficits after acute use.

The implication for medical cannabis patients is significant. A patient maintaining steady CB1 downregulation can drive to work, perform complex cognitive tasks, and maintain occupational function in ways that would be impossible with intact, highly responsive receptors after equivalent THC use. But the moment that patient reduces their consumption to try to restore therapeutic efficacy, that protection begins to erode. Managing both simultaneously, without any objective data, is what Dr Broselid describes as ‘making million-dollar adjustments using penny-slot guidance.’

“What I’m building is really a proof of concept stage ECS medicine,” he explained. 

“A non-invasive CB1 availability biomarker and a non-cannabinoid therapeutic aimed at correcting ECS dysfunction at its roots. My strength is translational science, taking complex ECS biology and turning it into something you can actually measure and intervene on.”

While he acknowledges that ‘cannabis medicine is the obvious early adopter for this, because they feel the tolerance and the impairment issues daily’, Dr Broselid believes measurable ECS markers are desperately needed far beyond just medical cannabis. 

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Beyond education gaps

Last year we spoke with Dr Broselid about the glaring omission of the endocannabinoid system in medical training literature, but the lack of scientific understanding around the ECS reaches much further. 

“The first article was about education”, he says. “I’m now showing that the problem isn’t just teaching, it’s how we’re doing science in adjacent domains like metabolism or inflammation. Researchers are often describing the same biology from different angles without ever referencing each other.”

The most recent example came in January 2026, when a peer-reviewed paper in Frontiers in Nutrition published ‘The Controversial Role of Linoleic Acid in Cardiometabolic Health’ by Berkowitz et al’, examining how dietary fats drive obesity and metabolic disease without mentioning the endocannabinoid system once, even though the dietary fat at the centre of the study is the primary building block for the body’s main endocannabinoids. 

A 2025 review on endometriosis similarly described the exact biological pathways the ECS feeds into, without making the connection. “They’re literally one synapse away and don’t see it,” Dr Broselid says.

“It’s not stupidity, these are smart researchers publishing in good journals. But researchers tend to stay in their lane. The ECS is still mentally filed under cannabis science rather than core physiology, so it’s very easy to treat it as optional background. And if a funder or a field is centred on a specific drug class, bringing the ECS in can complicate the story.”

The consequences are clinical, not merely academic. “With inflammation, if you ignore the ECS, you keep stacking. Block this cytokine, add that biologic. But if you include it, you can ask whether this is actually a failure of resolution signalling, and whether adjusting ECS tone could make existing anti-inflammatories work better, or reduce the need for them. It’s the same data, but you either treat symptoms at the edges or you target the regulatory system directly.”

Alongside his biomarker work, Dr Broselid is launching the #ECSOmissionChallenge, a community-driven campaign inviting researchers, clinicians, and industry professionals to publicly document cases where the ECS has been omitted from relevant mainstream research. Participants are asked to identify a review paper in their field, search it for any mention of the ECS, and post their findings on LinkedIn with a brief explanation of why the connection matters.

“Major review papers in metabolism, inflammation, pain, women’s health, psychiatry and more routinely describe ECS-adjacent biology in detail, without ever mentioning the endocannabinoid system,” he says. “We’re mapping the blind spots. You can help.”

The first generation of ECS-aware medicine 

Patents for his non-invasive CB1 receptor availability biomarker are now being filed, and pilot studies adding CB1 availability measurements into existing metabolic and inflammatory research cohorts can begin in parallel. 

Running alongside the biomarker is a non-cannabinoid therapeutic aimed at correcting ECS dysfunction at its source, not managing symptoms, but addressing the underlying imbalance directly. Together, Dr Broselid describes the two as the foundation of  ‘the first generation of ECS-aware medicine.’

Looking ahead, he is actively seeking investors who see ECS diagnostics and therapeutics as a new category in their own right, not an add-on to cannabis, alongside co-founders and strategic partners with experience in clinical development, regulatory strategy, reimbursement, and the infrastructure needed to turn proof-of-concept science into a functioning company.

The long-term value, he argues, lies not in cannabis medicine but in the adjacent fields where the ECS is already highly relevant but almost entirely unmeasured, metabolic syndrome, chronic inflammation, mood disorders, and women’s health. 

 “That’s where this can really change the story,” he says. “By giving those fields a way to see the ECS, instead of treating it like a niche cannabis topic.”