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A technician in the Wadsworth Center labels cannabis sample vials in preparation for the autosampler

“ Much more than dry flower testing”

The problems for state laboratories stem from both legal constraints and their limited, collective experience with cannabis testing.“ So much of this issue is anecdotal; it would be good to have some hard data,” said Julianne Nassif, MS, APHL’ s environmental health director. Nassif noted that, in the absence of federal guidance and regulations,“ states have had to figure this out on their own and they have very different approaches.”

The issue is further complicated by the grassroots origin( no pun intended) of virtually all state cannabis laws, which tend to be based on voter initiatives crafted by pro-cannabis groups. For example, the 2010 ballot initiative legalizing medical marijuana in Arizona was silent on matters pertaining to public health. Thus, The Grand Canyon State has no product testing requirements, and no state entity has regulatory authority over the private labs offering cannabis-testing services, such as potency analysis.

Patients have a right to have access to medicine of

Of six state PHLs surveyed for this article, only one, New York’ s Wadsworth Center, performs routine cannabis testing, and only for medical marijuana, as nonmedical“ adult use” is illegal in New York. Two others— the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment( CDPHE) laboratory and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health( MDPH)— provide oversight and guidance to commercial cannabis-testing laboratories in their states. And the remaining three— the Alaska State Public Health Laboratories, Arizona Department of Health Services Laboratory and the Washington State Department of Health Public Health Laboratories— perform no cannabis testing and have no oversight of their states’ cannabis industries.

Dave Verbrugge, manager of analytical toxicology at the state PHL in Alaska— which legalized“ adult use” in 2014— said he would like the state to have“ a technical presence” overseeing private laboratories that perform required quality control testing for Alaska’ s cannabis growers and processors. That responsibility lies with the Alaska Marijuana Control Board in the state department of commerce. So far, the health agency has received no cannabis tax revenue to support laboratory oversight and neither the PHL nor the state food safety laboratory( housed in a separate agency) has volunteered to bring up a cannabis-testing program.

Said Verbrugge,“ Neither one of us really has capacity. Plus, we felt it wasn’ t a good fit for the PHL to be testing marijuana plants for an intoxicating agent and certifying that.”

Marijuana’ s status as a Schedule I narcotic was also an issue:“ At least half of our funding is federal. I definitely had some concerns about the potential for changes in the [ federal ] administration and enforcement of federal grant requirements regarding a drug-free workplace.” Although the US Drug Enforcement Agency( DEA) registers qualifying analytical laboratories to work with controlled substances, Verbrugge said it is unclear“ whether testing marijuana for recreational use would be a violation of a DEA license.”

Of course, even without the DEA looking over scientists’ shoulders, any marijuana testing program requires analytical methods. And a ripple effect of the federal stance on cannabis has been a lack of laboratory guidance from any US government agency, other than a CDC protocol developed to monitor children’ s exposure to secondhand cannabis smoke.

This void is being filled by both nongovernmental organizations and the state laboratories tasked with cannabis oversight.

The first cannabis-specific guidance document published in the United States— Cannabis Inflorescence, Cannabis spp., Standards of Identity, Analysis and Quality Control— is a monograph released in 2013 by the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia, a nonprofit organization that promotes“ the responsible use of herbal medicines.” Jahan Marcu, PhD, one of more than 30 contributors to the monograph, said it is“ intensely peer-reviewed” and cited in the cannabis laws of 19 states, including California.

Last May, APHL released its own cannabis document, Guidance for State Medical Cannabis Testing Programs, developed by a committee of experts drawn from PHLs, academia and the private sector. It cites some of the same source material as the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia monograph. However, this guidance is geared toward governmental testing programs and covers, among other things, product sampling, microbial and heavy metal testing, toxicity scoring, risk assessment and criteria for determining acceptable risk.

A few states, including Massachusetts and New York, have developed their own methods, either created de novo or based on existing testing protocols for foods, drugs and other consumer products. MDPH, for example, has