Business
Inaccurate strain names, poor labeling hinder marijuana industry, study shows
Marijuana consumers have long suspected that strains aren’t accurately named.
For example, Blue Dream flower from Colorado can vary drastically in taste, flavor, effect and appearance from Oregon flower with the same name.
In fact, the strain can vary drastically from two different marijuana retailers on the same block.
Now, there’s a study that proves it.
Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and Seattle-based cannabis commerce platform Leafly published a study in the journal PLOS One in May that found cannabis labels “do not consistently align with the observed chemical diversity” of the product.
Not only that, but the researchers found the labels to be inadequate to communicate to consumers the full range of cannabinoids and terpenes, which could be useful in helping customers better understand the plant and make more informed decisions about purchases and consumption.
“It’s like if your cereal box only showed calories and fat and nothing else,” the report’s co-author, Brian Keegan, an assistant professor of information science at the University of Colorado Boulder, said in a news release.
“We as consumers need to be pushing for more information. If we do that, the industry will respond.”
Sativa and indica doesn’t work
The study analyzed nearly 90,000 samples of cannabis across six states with legal marijuana markets.
It found that cannabis flower typically falls into three categories that are high in the following terpene combinations:
- Caryophyllene and limonene.
- Myrcene and pinene.
- Terpinolene and myrcene.
That data is an invitation to the industry to move away from these clusters, which are not exhaustive of what people can metabolize or what growers can produce, according to Keegan.
The three categories also don’t fit into the overly simplistic naming scheme of sativa, indica or hybrid.
“It’s not an effective way to brand these products,” Keegan said in an interview with MJBizDaily.
“Everything is a hybrid these days.”
Keegan said he believes this study is the largest analysis of cannabis data to date.
He said the marijuana industry could learn from the data revealed in the survey and adopt best practices used in other industries to disclose “what people are putting in their bodies.”
The lab perspective
Although adding terpene and minor cannabinoid testing costs could be a hard sell for cannabis companies that are already operating with increasingly shrinking margins, Keegan said that if more businesses in the industry were to add the tests, the costs likely would come down.
Lev Spivak-Bindorf, co-founder and chief science officer for Ann Arbor, Michigan, cannabis testing laboratory PSI Labs, submitted 7,200 data points, including terpenes and cannabinoids from flower, to the study.
His lab was one of six in six separate state markets to participate. Data scientists at Leafly vetted the labs, according to Spivak-Bindorf.
“What makes this study so valuable is it’s the largest survey thus far of regulated modern cannabinoid profiles,” he said.
Spivak-Bindorf pointed out that the reason those three terpene clusters mentioned above were so dominant is because the industry is driven by a focus on THC potency and breeding for cannabinoids, not terpenes.
Strains such as Chemdawg, which has a high THC content, are so popular in current flower genetics that its diesel fuel-like terpene combination shows up frequently in lab tests.
But moving away from a focus on potency among consumers could help to add more diversity to the terpenes that show up in lab tests, Spivak-Bindorf said.
“If you want all the flavors and smells, the many colors of the rainbow, you’re can’t just have THC,” he said. “You can’t have everything be potent.”
Beyond that, Spivak-Bindorf said the trend of cannabis lab shopping, where growers shop around for a lab that will give them favorable test results, including boosted THC numbers, is also a trend he’d like to see go away.
“It’s a challenge we’re all facing,” he added. “It’s about transparency. That’s the foundation of good science.”
Building brand trust
When she walks into a marijuana dispensary Kim Stuck’s first question about flower is “what does the terpene profile look like?”
“I usually get, ‘I don’t know,’” said Stuck, founder of cannabis consultancy Allay Consulting, which has an office in Portland, Oregon.
“Indica and sativa is lazy marketing and doesn’t make sense unless you know the other components of the flower.”
Stuck has been a member of the cannabis standards committee for standards organization ASTM since 2017.
She would like to see the marijuana industry do better in educating cannabis consumers, including adopting standardization among labels that include information beyond THC or CBD content.
For example, putting a QR code on products could help consumers to evaluate the terpene and cannabinoid profile and make more informed decisions.
The scannable code would also prevent the labels from taking up too much space on the product packaging.
With that, the sativa-indica and strain-name convention could “completely go away, and it almost doesn’t matter,” she said.
Instead, Stuck would shop based on a terpene such as limonene or a minor cannabinoid such as CBN.
As consumers become more mature and understand what they want, she expects the industry will see a change in how cannabis consumers shop.
Stuck doesn’t own a cannabis brand, but she said that’s what she would do to build trust among the customer base.
“There would be an upfront cost, but it would be worth it for your brand,” she said.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/inaccurate-strain-names-poor-labeling-hinder-marijuana-industry/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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