OPINION
TRUTH, LIES AND BULLSHIT: DISPELLING CANNABIS MYTHS — A COLUMN By Mike Allison for Northwest Leaf
TESTING THE TRUTH: WHAT THOSE RESULTS REALLY MEAN >> Getting accurate, valid results is no joke, and requires serious training and a level of commitment few possess
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lot of access points are now testing their medicine for THC, CBD and CBN. After all, no one will argue whether patients have the right to know what they are ingesting. So, not to be outdone, our access point purchased a gas chromatograph several months ago. And, since I’m the resident geek, the job of figuring out how it works landed in my lap. At first, I thought it would be simple. After all, I’m good at geek stuff - why else would I be the resident geek, right? It’s not simple, though. Not by a long-shot. I’ve been at it for the better part of three months now and, after performing hundreds of tests, I’ve learned a few things that might be helpful when considering your medicinal options. One thing I never understood is how anyone can say 15% or 20% of any bud is pure THC. It’s obvious, when you look at a bud, that far more than 90% of it is vegetable matter. We all know the medicine is almost entirely isolated in the crystals (capitate trichomes, to be precise). But, by weight, the crystals only make a small fraction of any bud. That’s obvious to the naked eye. It’s completely impossible for anything but a concentrate, where the crystals have been separated from the vegetable matter, to contain so much medicine.
Photo by Daniel Berman
But, those numbers have to come from somewhere, right? Indeed, they do. Gas chromatography is the most widely used method for analyzing cannabis. With this method, you don’t just stick a piece of bud in the machine, like I used to imagine. No, not at all. The first, most obvious step is to weigh a sample in a container. Then, a predetermined amount of solvent is added. In most cases, the solvent is alcohol. So, what we are doing is dissolving the cannabinoids in alcohol and testing the resulting solution. It’s the percentage of medicine, in solution, that is measured, not the percentage by weight. That’s where those numbers actually come from. In fact, one of the most important steps in obtaining reliable results is calibrating the machine. To accomplish this, the operator needs lab standards - alcohol solutions with precise amounts of the compounds which need to be measured. Using these standards, operators can tell their machine precisely how much of a given substance is present. The standard we use is 33% THC, 33% CBD and 33% CBN. This is diluted with our solvent to render a solution with 13.32% of each. This standard is then injected into the machine and a test is performed. This
way, the machine knows, for example, what 13.32% THC looks like. Then, when a real world sample is tested, the machine knows how much THC is in the sample, based on the calibration standard. The most important thing to understand about gas chromatography is that the operator plays a huge role in the validity of test results (or lack thereof ). If the operator isn’t proficient, there is absolutely no chance of obtaining consistent and reliable results. While the machine does the actual testing, it’s up to the operator to correctly prepare samples, inject samples and interpret the results. The margin for error is slim and, lacking thorough training, errors are certain. Also, for many, the temptation of boosting results is impossible to overcome. It’s human nature to want a product to be good. So, when it’s time for a judgment call, many operators tend to err on the side of favorable results, rather than realistic figures. Considering everything, my advice for patients is to take test results with a healthy dose of skepticism – especially suspiciously high measurements. At best, they are a rough estimate. At worst, they are artificially inflated and purposefully misleading.
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