Chemical Imbalance

The next step for full acceptance and proper re-introduction of cannabis into today’s society involves access to contaminant-free products. As cannabis moves from being an illegal and unregulated product towards becoming legally regulated and well accepted in a large variety of forms a thorough understanding of what regulations make sense and why they make sense is necessary. It is well understood that cannabinoids and terpenes, most of the predominant chemicals present in cannabis, are relatively safe to humans. What we are more concerned with is what else may be going along on our cannabis that could cause harms to humans who consume these products? We also must keep in mind the plant material can be utilized in a large number of different fashions including via inhalation and direct oral consumption. Therefore, anything added to “help” cannabis grow and thrive is of considerable concern.

One primary area of this type of concern is the use of pesticides, or other chemicals, on the plant during its growth cycle. It is noteworthy that while it is often referred to as pesticides in fact the laboratory’s goal is to look for chemical residues, which can be pesticides, rodenticides, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and even plant growth regulators. As the naming implies different types of chemicals are used for different types of purposes and may be applied at different times, through different means and may be used to different extents. The state of California researched this issue and determined that because the federal Environmental Protection Agency has not established which chemicals may be applied on cannabis crops to which extent, no such chemical use will be legal within the state of California as currently there are no state laws for that purpose either. Ultimately, all pesticide use in California is therefore illegal.

To help regulators and our community understand the potential impact of pesticide use on the plant, we sought to understand whether or not various chemical residues may be harmful via inhalation by a patient under typical use conditions. We took four different chemicals (two being bifenthrin and paclobutrazol, which are the most commonly found in our current screen of over 30 different chemicals which may be applied to the plant during cultivation) and put them on cannabis flowers in known amounts. We then put that flower material in three different inhalation devices and used a mechanical lung set-up to inhale and trap the smoke vapors for quantification. We determined almost 70 percent of a chemical may be inhaled by a consumer using a short hand-held glass pipe. That was quite alarming for sure but a cotton filter within one apparatus was quite effective at mitigating that exposure, but it was still imperfect.

Confirming we can inhale these chemical residues, we should now see more patients demand that their “clean” meds be verified by an independent laboratory, and regulators should be prompted to include these testing provisions within their state’s regulations. Ultimately, this will remove public health and safety concerns that may arise from contaminated medical cannabis supplies. Considering this new insight, and reviewing that there have been many negative reports publicized about the potential harms from cannabis found in large meta-studies, it begs the question: Were those studies not only of “illicit” cannabis that may also have been contaminated? This is a significant question because contaminated “illicit” cannabis is very different in terms of health impacts compared to clean and regulated cannabis? Let’s see some studies of well-regulated cannabis in the future to really understand this plant’s potential impacts properly. It’s too important not to get it right.

www.hindawi.com/journals/jt/2013/378168

Jeffrey C. Raber, Ph.D., is president and co-founder of The Werc Shop, an independent medical cannabis testing laboratory. For more information, visit thewercshop.com.