Template:Past, Present, and Future of Cannabis Laboratory Testing and Regulation in the United States/Laboratory testing of cannabis/Intro

3. Laboratory testing of cannabis

Analyzing the chemical constituents of the Cannabis plant is a difficult task due to its matrix, and the task becomes even more difficult when it's added to food and other matrix types, requiring established and consistent methods for testing. As mentioned in the prior chapter, regulators, users, and the testing industry are calling for improved standardization of both the production and testing of medical and recreational marijuana. Without proper testing, several issues are bound to arise:

• label claims may not match actual contents;
• contaminants may linger, causing illness or even death;
• chemical properties and medicinal benefits of specific strains and their unique cannabinoid-terpene profiles can't be isolated; and
• research on potential therapeutic qualities can't be replicated, hindering scientific progress.

In 2011—a year before any U.S. state had enacted broad legalization of recreational marijuana—California NORML reported that its assessment of analytical cannabis testing laboratories' accuracy found that while California labs broadly reached +/- 20 percent consistency from a replicate sample, three out of 10 provided unfavorable results on at least half of their tests. Similar wide-ranging discrepancies were also found among edibles, extracts, and tinctures, and NORML found that none of the labs could reach two decimal points precision of cannabinoid results, despite laboratory claims stating otherwise. Another report out of the state of Washington in January 2015, not long after recreational marijuana sales to the public (requiring accredited lab testing prior) began, found blind tests of recreational marijuana at dispensaries could range as much as 7.5 percent in accuracy from their corresponding label. Further issues in 2016 with alleged partiality by some Washington testing laboratories prompted emergency proficiency testing rules to be enacted. ("Proficiency testing" essentially requires a laboratory in question to test a sample with known properties, and then those results are compared to those of a neutral third-party lab testing the same sample.) Additional testing problems in Alaska and Washington labs in late 2017 found high disparities between two different testing labs, as well as a laboratory that couldn't "properly perform a coliform test that looks for bacteria." More recent testing abuses by labs in Nevada and Arizona muddy the waters even further.

These discrepancies and deficiencies highlight the growing need for homogenization of testing methods and procedures, if not nationally at least across an entire state. Such homogenization would, in theory, not only positively affect the quality of product but also provide greater consumer confidence that label and product match. As Marketing Director Scott Kuzdzal of Shimadzu pointed out during a January 2017 webinar on analytic testing of cannabis, poor sample preparation, lack of thorough testing, and the manual process itself—which can introduce user error, particularly when good laboratory practices aren’t used—all can contribute to discrepancies between label and product. When dispensaries, edible manufacturers, and supplement companies perform insufficient lab testing or overstate claims on labels, it reduces consumer confidence, and both state and federal authorities—including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—have to interject.

As was mentioned prior, efforts to improve testing methods and procedures—with the goal of seeing the best of them become standards—are ongoing. Where are those efforts now, and where are they going? Before we can examine that, we first need to briefly look at what aspects of cannabis are actually being analyzed.