Pubdate: Sat, 24 Jan 2015
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Joe Garofoli
Page: A1

MAJOR MYSTERY OF MARIJUANA - JUST HOW POTENT IS THAT POT?

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 "Your Cannabis Science Distributor."

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 (marijuanainfused) 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.

Columnist ate pot candy

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 industry-wide 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.

Legalization to be on ballot?

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.

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."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom