Utah Lab Retests After False THC Results Called Out
by MADELINE FERGUSON
The legal cannabis community has a problem and it’s impacting patients in Utah. The issue? Labs posting false results when testing for THC potency.
For patients/consumers, the amount of THC in a product or medicine is treated like the holy grail number when deciding on the right product for your individual health, manipulating this number is not only shady but potentially dangerous.
THC is the cannabinoid most people are familiar with and gives the high feeling people associate with cannabis. Most testing is done for two cannabinoids, THC and CBD.
States like Washington, Nevada and Michigan have all experienced issues with falsified or inflated THC testing and it’s not just the THC, bunk testing can lead to issues with contamination of the plant, causing potentially harmful effects to consumers.
But, when it comes to inflating THC numbers, it can raise the going rate of the product. Typically, the higher the THC content the higher the price, according to a recent report from Forbes. Typically herb with a higher THC percentage sells for more and quicker than others.
“THC inflation is pernicious, it’s easy to accomplish and there are strong financial incentives to do it,” Don Land, a professor of chemistry and forensics at the University of California, Davis, told FiveThirtyEight. “I believe that it is likely to happen at least infrequently in every market out there, and there’s very little chance that labs would get caught.”
When it comes to THC percentage and patients, higher doesn’t always mean better. Every person is different, every person’s needs are different, not everyone required or can even tolerate an extremely high THC percentage. According to Christine Stenquist, a patient advocate and founder of TRUCE (Together For Responsible Use And Cannabis Education), there isn’t a magic number, it just depends on the person.
With everyone’s needs being different, a mislabeled product could have detrimental effects on a patient. It’s as if the sugar or a common allergen was mislabeled on a nutrition label.
On top of bad THC testing, labs are also responsible for testing the biomass for pathogens, mold and quality. What if one of those tests had bad results? It has happened before, one example when a lab in Nevada allegedly “routinely passed samples that had failed tests for pesticides, microtoxins, heavy metals and microbials.”
Now that you understand the potential impacts of shoddy testing practices, let’s localize the story for Utah patients and future patients.
A medicinal cannabis company in Salt Lake City, Sugar House Selects, recently posted lab results showing that a cultivar tested with a THC percentage of 45 percent.
This photo was shared by Beehive Farmacy celebrating the lab results received.
That’s completely impossible.
Sugar House Selects is under the Zions grow license, Zions has also been pushing Delta-8 to Utah’s patients, learn more about that here.
Beehive Farmacy posted to Facebook about a new cultivar called “Ice Cream Cake” from Sugar House Selects labeled 45.1 percent THC. Being an advocate for patients Stenquist reached out to check on the lab results.
The lab and dispensary know the impossibility of the test results thanks to patient advocates and they are now committed to fixing the issue, showcasing the importance of local advocacy and informed consumers.
Full legalization of cannabis relies on accurate and thorough lab testing so consumers can be well informed and know exactly what is in their plants.
“This has to go back to why we need federal prohibition to end we are running into these types of problems where the industry wants to be legitimized and wants to have credibility, but our hands are tied when we don’t have legal protections and that’s where patients can get taken advantage of,” Stenquist finished.
An Opportunity For Growth
After the impossible test results were brought to the attention of the lab, the lab offered board members of TRUCE a tour to see where they have recently made improvements to fix the issues.
Former lab manager and pharmaceutical program operations manager and board member of TRUCE Valerie Ahanonu was impressed with the improvements she had seen the lab make after the results were brought to their attention. The lab in question has a new lab manager who brough on a new team of techs.
“Really what it came down to is that they didn’t have any way to be checking the lab tech’s work, but they recently got a new lab manager and he put in some different mechanisms like standard operating procedures that allow for them to check whether the HPLC machine is actually testing properly,” Ahanonu said.
Ahanonu speculated that it could have been two things causing the high THC results, over dilution of the sample or double pippetting, both operations errors that would cause the HPLC machine to get an incorrect read, but with these new operating procedures, mistakes like that are far less likely to happen.
An HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography) machine is a technique in chemistry used to separate, identify and quantify components of a mixture.
“This lab in particular is doing a great job of putting in quality assurance checks that were not there before,” said Ahanonu.
Ahanonu was complimentary of the newly hired lab manager and his willingness to put in repeatable procedures and quality assurance checks to protect and inform patients in Utah.
“I would not say they are a lab who is inflating or trying to push flower through for any reason,” she concluded. “This lab seems really standard, they seem to treat everybody the same.”
The lab in question offered to retest the product and these are the results received the second time it was tested.
Lab Director William Deutschman demonstrated his understanding of how important accurate and repeatable testing is for patients and advocates in the medical cannabis space.
When asked about his thoughts on the first results showing 45% THC results he said he realized he had some digging to do within the testing process.
“I’ve got some work to do to get to the bottom of this and figure out what we do and do not know about the situation,” Deutschman told The Utah Bee, “Past that initial reaction, I immediately started thinking about how we could improve our analytical techniques and introduce some internal checks in there that would allow us to double and triple check the accuracy of our results at multiple steps in the process.”
Since that test, he has been dedicated to improving the process, which he showcased during the TRUCE lab tour.
“There’s a long list of process improvements we’ve implemented since the sample in question came through the lab. A lot of them were already in development before this issue was brought to our attention, but several are in direct response to our review of this particular result. Without getting overly technical, what we have done is gone through our cannabinoid testing protocol on a step-by-step basis and identified every place in that process where an error by one of our technicians or one of our instruments would affect the final reported results. At each of those points, we have either added in an internal standard (a known analyte whose concentration never changes unless a process error occurs) or made a change to the procedure so that the source of the potential error is eliminated,” he explained.
Finally, Utah patients can have confidence knowing that the lab understands the importance of good, reliable testing, not only for the medicine but for the future of cannabis legality locally and nationally.
“Accurate testing and reliable results are important to everyone involved with the cannabis and hemp industries in Utah.
For patients, it’s critical that they know what they are buying and that they can get reliable and consistent effects from the products they purchase.
For producers, it’s about being confident that the products they put on the shelves have the composition they want and that their customers expect. It’s also important to have a level playing field for everyone who is on the production side of the industry.
Finally, for APRC, accurate testing is essential because we sit at the nexus of all the constituents in the cannabis and hemp industries. We’re the independent quality control entity that everyone depends on as the foundation of a reputable and trustworthy medical cannabis program in the state. From a very practical standpoint, if our results are not reliable, we lose the trust of the consumers, the producers, and the folks at the state that license our operation. If that trust evaporates, the ramifications spread far beyond our doors,” Deutschman concluded.