Jacob Redmond
Well-Known Member
The multibillion-dollar marijuana industry is booming, but it has not yet grown up. Unlike nearly every industry its size, the cannabis business lacks uniform standards and methodologies to measure the potency of its products.
That inconsistency raises safety concerns that could challenge the legitimacy of the industry and attract more heavy-handed government regulation.
"What do peanut butter, Sambuca and ibuprofen all have in common?" asks Randall Kruep, CEO of Sage Analytics, a new company pitching a $50,000 device that can analyze the strength of cannabis in seconds. "If you take a shot or two of Sambuca, you know what it's going to do to you. But that's not always the case here."
California's medical marijuana industry has few guidelines regarding labeling. States in which recreational use is legal have some oversight of labeling and packaging. The federal government has no role because it still considers marijuana to be an illegal drug.
With such uneven government-mandated standards, the industry is starting to monitor itself. The cannabis business is now embracing the rigors of science and labeling – and the biotech industry sees an opportunity.
On Friday inside a Fisherman's Wharf hotel, 200 people – most of them chemists, biotech researchers and statisticians – gathered to exchange ideas, share the results of experiments and take the first steps in creating uniform pot potency standards at the first Emerald Conference. It was organized by Emerald Scientific, a San Luis Obispo company that bills itself as "Your Cannabis Science Distributor."
Scientists in crowd
It was more like a science fair than a Phish concert, and nary a whiff of weed could be detected. When one presenter – a chemist – asked how many people in the room had a scientific background, most hands shot up.
Outside the conference room, several companies displayed technology designed to quickly analyze the potency and chemistry of cannabis. If the industry is going to go mainstream, many say accurate labeling requirements are a must.
"You can eat a (marijuana-infused) cookie and you don't know if there's 10 milligrams in it or 1,000 milligrams until about an hour later – and then your day is ruined," said Josh Wurzer, president of SCLabs, a 5-year-old Santa Cruz laboratory that is one of the nation's oldest.
The aim here was to prevent another Maureen Dowd incident.
The New York Times columnist became, in her words, "the poster girl for bad pot trips" when she chronicled freaking out after eating a marijuana-infused candy bar last year in Colorado, where recreational marijuana use is legal. Dowd ate a couple of bites of a candy bar that was supposed to be broken up into 16 individual doses. Since then, Colorado has strengthened its labeling requirements on edible marijuana products.
Much of the technology on display Friday to detect the potency of pot is already used to analyze products in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Some see opportunity in a market that is about to burst wide open.
"I know the word 'disrupt' gets overused," Kruep said, "but that's what we're doing here."
Still, creating industrywide standards will not be an easy task for a sector that has spent so long in the shadows of legality.
Even though 23 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical cannabis, and Colorado and Washington state have recreational sales, the federal government still considers it illegal. President Obama, however, gave the industry a boost of encouragement this week when he said his administration will not "spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level on this issue."
"My suspicion is that you're going to see other states start looking at this," Obama said.
Advocates celebrated the president's nod to legalization campaigns as a tacit green light.
With that in mind, many conference-goers feel an urgency to move quickly to adopt standards, particularly in California. It is a near certainty that a ballot measure legalizing marijuana will be before voters in November 2016, and early polls show it has a lot of support.
Industry sets standards
The sooner that the cannabis industry can craft its own standards, "the less chance that they will be imposed on them from government," said Ken Snoke, president of Emerald Scientific.
Kruep compared this moment in cannabis history to the fledgling days of the commercialized Internet.
"There were quite of few different industry players who had to get organized so the Internet could work, so it could scale and move forward," Kruep said. "The early days of the Internet were wild Wild West days just like this. But the industry largely took care of itself."
The growth of the cannabis market is luring companies from other industries. Shimadzu is a scientific instruments company that has long sold its products to the pharmaceutical industry. But now, by selling $30,000 machines that analyze the potency of pot, the California marijuana industry has become one of the company's fastest-growing markets.
"It's very strange," said Drew Abrams, a sales engineer with Shimadzu, as he stood near one of the company machines. "A couple of years ago, you couldn't talk about this at work. Now you can't go to work and not talk about it."
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Pot industry?s predicament: How to measure potency - SFGate
Author: Joe Garofoli
Contact: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com
Photo Credit: Tim Hussin
Website: SFGate: San Francisco Bay Area - News,Bay Area news, Sports, Business, Entertainment, Classifieds - SFGate
That inconsistency raises safety concerns that could challenge the legitimacy of the industry and attract more heavy-handed government regulation.
"What do peanut butter, Sambuca and ibuprofen all have in common?" asks Randall Kruep, CEO of Sage Analytics, a new company pitching a $50,000 device that can analyze the strength of cannabis in seconds. "If you take a shot or two of Sambuca, you know what it's going to do to you. But that's not always the case here."
California's medical marijuana industry has few guidelines regarding labeling. States in which recreational use is legal have some oversight of labeling and packaging. The federal government has no role because it still considers marijuana to be an illegal drug.
With such uneven government-mandated standards, the industry is starting to monitor itself. The cannabis business is now embracing the rigors of science and labeling – and the biotech industry sees an opportunity.
On Friday inside a Fisherman's Wharf hotel, 200 people – most of them chemists, biotech researchers and statisticians – gathered to exchange ideas, share the results of experiments and take the first steps in creating uniform pot potency standards at the first Emerald Conference. It was organized by Emerald Scientific, a San Luis Obispo company that bills itself as "Your Cannabis Science Distributor."
Scientists in crowd
It was more like a science fair than a Phish concert, and nary a whiff of weed could be detected. When one presenter – a chemist – asked how many people in the room had a scientific background, most hands shot up.
Outside the conference room, several companies displayed technology designed to quickly analyze the potency and chemistry of cannabis. If the industry is going to go mainstream, many say accurate labeling requirements are a must.
"You can eat a (marijuana-infused) cookie and you don't know if there's 10 milligrams in it or 1,000 milligrams until about an hour later – and then your day is ruined," said Josh Wurzer, president of SCLabs, a 5-year-old Santa Cruz laboratory that is one of the nation's oldest.
The aim here was to prevent another Maureen Dowd incident.
The New York Times columnist became, in her words, "the poster girl for bad pot trips" when she chronicled freaking out after eating a marijuana-infused candy bar last year in Colorado, where recreational marijuana use is legal. Dowd ate a couple of bites of a candy bar that was supposed to be broken up into 16 individual doses. Since then, Colorado has strengthened its labeling requirements on edible marijuana products.
Much of the technology on display Friday to detect the potency of pot is already used to analyze products in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Some see opportunity in a market that is about to burst wide open.
"I know the word 'disrupt' gets overused," Kruep said, "but that's what we're doing here."
Still, creating industrywide standards will not be an easy task for a sector that has spent so long in the shadows of legality.
Even though 23 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized medical cannabis, and Colorado and Washington state have recreational sales, the federal government still considers it illegal. President Obama, however, gave the industry a boost of encouragement this week when he said his administration will not "spend a lot of resources trying to turn back decisions that have been made at the state level on this issue."
"My suspicion is that you're going to see other states start looking at this," Obama said.
Advocates celebrated the president's nod to legalization campaigns as a tacit green light.
With that in mind, many conference-goers feel an urgency to move quickly to adopt standards, particularly in California. It is a near certainty that a ballot measure legalizing marijuana will be before voters in November 2016, and early polls show it has a lot of support.
Industry sets standards
The sooner that the cannabis industry can craft its own standards, "the less chance that they will be imposed on them from government," said Ken Snoke, president of Emerald Scientific.
Kruep compared this moment in cannabis history to the fledgling days of the commercialized Internet.
"There were quite of few different industry players who had to get organized so the Internet could work, so it could scale and move forward," Kruep said. "The early days of the Internet were wild Wild West days just like this. But the industry largely took care of itself."
The growth of the cannabis market is luring companies from other industries. Shimadzu is a scientific instruments company that has long sold its products to the pharmaceutical industry. But now, by selling $30,000 machines that analyze the potency of pot, the California marijuana industry has become one of the company's fastest-growing markets.
"It's very strange," said Drew Abrams, a sales engineer with Shimadzu, as he stood near one of the company machines. "A couple of years ago, you couldn't talk about this at work. Now you can't go to work and not talk about it."
News Moderator: Jacob Redmond 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Pot industry?s predicament: How to measure potency - SFGate
Author: Joe Garofoli
Contact: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com
Photo Credit: Tim Hussin
Website: SFGate: San Francisco Bay Area - News,Bay Area news, Sports, Business, Entertainment, Classifieds - SFGate
