Cannabis Explorations: Cascadia Lab Expedition

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about some rumors that caught my attention in a piece titled, “Is THC Bad For Cannabis?” I’ve spent the past several weeks trying to get at how, exactly, to answer the questions I posed in that article.

I started at what I felt the most sensible place would be, and designed a simple, general test centered around THC potency to see if there was any validity to the perception of the spike. I figured that each lab would do one test, right?

I downloaded a list of every lab in Oregon and started making phone calls. Soon, to my delight, I found that nearly every lab in Oregon agreed that there was an issue, and that they would be happy to help me by testing samples that I submitted to them. Some even helped by promising to reimburse me the cost of the test!

Just the news that so many labs were enthusiastic to help was exciting, so I’ve kept going.

I contacted the OLCC and have started the process of a massive public records request — I’m waiting to hear back from them. I’m excited about this prospect because my 20 year background in data architecture and analysis coupled with this paper will render meaningful information once I can crunch data from that system.

I started contacting members of the Oregon Cannabis Association to get their take on how I can best enlist their aid. I’ve been talking to farmers and retailers about the severity of the impact for them. I’ve asked people for ideas on how to make a more healthy environment for the labs and how to make a coalition of labs dedicated to continuous process improvement. I’ve talked to a lot of them about how something like that is a way to level the playing field and can give them an important voice politically. I’ve talked to them about how other industries use coalitions such as the one I’m proposing as a way to help regulators craft meaningful regulations.

Over the weeks of researching if there was a story here, and if there was — what it was, I started to formulate a more robust testing plan. Employees of labs reached out to me to help me refine my tests. Some confided in me ways that test results could be tampered with. Others confided that they worried about the lab where they worked. It has been an honor to listen to these people and give space for their concerns.

This is a massive undertaking. Because there’s a huge monetary investment I’m going to have to figure out a way around some of that — and it’s going to require me to contact my Senators and Representative and complain to them about banking, because all of the cannabis laws around banking is making it hard for me to figure out how to fund this (but I’m trying to get the aid of farms and dispensaries to help with some of it!).

To meaningfully test this, I need to be able to pay the labs upfront for their costs and be reimbursed later. Each test is, around, 100 dollars (I need THC and moisture content), and I need five of them from each lab. Cost of Testing Upfront: $10,000

Now let’s talk product. It’s good I’m medical because I’m going to need to buy a lot of cannabis or hemp. It SUCKS because UNLIKE recreational users my purchases are tracked (It’s yet another way that medical users are at more risk than ever for an industry that has left their needs behind). Now, I’d love to get some friendly farmers to help me with some product, but I also need to homogenize at least three samples from dispensaries. I need at least one high tester, and one mid line tester that would be pushed into higher territory. There are some other little hitches of design. For each sample run, for each lab, I need to provide an average of 3 grams of material. 20 labs, that’s a total of 60 grams per test. Cost of Testing: $2400 will cover it.

Expensive. And without crowdfunding, no easy way for me to pay for it. But the answer will come. All of the others have.

Time-wise.I’ve spent around 70 hours talking to various people in the industry and over 50 hours of those conversations focused solely on laboratories, I’m learning a lot about some of the complexities of the situation. Many have affirmed what the economists were talking about here. The TL;DR is: once a single ‘discretionary’ metric is defined for an industry’s economy — that metric becomes corruptible.

I’ve also had a lot of time to talk to directors and managers and scientists at the lab at the kind of pressure this puts on them. About how uncomfortable it makes them. About how they are afraid of how the public perceives them, when a vast amount of them are just looking to deliver an accurate number. Because people are seeking this number, we are losing genetic strains in addition to creating real harm for the cannabis industry.

Between all of this talking and learning and trauma bonding — there has been very little written here beyond my provocatively named introduction to the issue a couple of weeks ago. For that I apologize, but offer my exciting plans for what I’ll be creating for you as a result. Because at the heart of this pursuit for me is you — what can I tell you, my darling readers, about the accuracy of testing?

What’s the best way to explain this important and complex situation?

I certainly can’t do it in a single sitting. It isn’t even a marathon — even my worst one was completed in a day and that’s nothing compared to what will need to be accomplished. It will take an expedition.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be writing a series of articles aimed at talking through some of the things I’ve learned — from testing processes and procedures to the impact of dry weight on THC values, as well as another look at what your labels tell you. After that, sometime in February, I’m hopeful that I will have a piece that encompasses what our Lab Expedition / ‘round robin’ activity learned. I’m hoping that I can leverage those findings to enact positive change in Oregon, and I’ll be walking through what that looks like — what sorts of materials I prepare to state my case all the way to who I state it to.

While daunting, I feel it’s an exciting next step for Cannabis Explorations — to launch an expedition to learn even more about the plant we love, and the people who try to make it safe to consume.