Why Measuring and Reporting Standards in the Cannabis Industry is Vital
By: Shawn Cooney, Co-Founder of the Sustainable Cannabis Coalition
Can you imagine a burgeoning industry in the United States operating under varying cultivation, manufacturing, and testing standards state by state, city by city, or even town by town?
If the manufacturer of automotive brake systems was not held to the same safety standards in Kansas as in Arizona? If the acetaminophen you gave your baby wasn’t always 160 mg/5 mL. Or, despite giving the Benjamin Moore paint color code for CC-40 Cloud White, your bedroom walls ended up OC-52 Gray Owl. Imagine a commercial building industry without the efficiency and sustainability guidance LEED provides.
The cannabis industry is at a crossroads.
“You can get five different values of THC in your product from five different labs,” said David Vaillencourt, CEO & Founder of The GMP Collective. “What is the acceptable range of results? How does the sampling of the ‘batch’ of products impact the results? Is a 1% difference OK, is 10% variability OK, or 25%? Without a standard on how to sample, how much to sample, and what an acceptable reporting error is, we all suffer.”
Consumers can’t make informed decisions about the products they are buying and about the companies they are supporting.
You can’t manage what you can’t measure.
Vaillencourt, who is also vice-chair of ASTM’s Committee D37 on Cannabis, continued, “We, in the industry, must rally around defining acceptable standards and begin to harmonize them across jurisdictions or else we will continue to get what we ask for – regulators who make decisions for us.”
The North American cannabis market’s annual growth is projected to be nearly 34%, meaning that by 2026, the size of the market will be approaching $200 billion.
Federal legalization is an issue, but are we even ready for legalization? The industry is not taking the opportunity to propagate and standardize best practices on a national playing field seriously enough. That places cannabis businesses in a very vulnerable position, possibly having to accept whatever regulatory requirements a federal agency may impose, be it the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), TTB (Tax and Trade Bureau), USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), or EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).
Measure, report, then measure again.
The only way to determine whether a certain process is successful, efficient, or safe is through measurement. Tracking and trending data continually ensures that requirements are being consistently met and can be reported to all stakeholders, from regulators to C-suite through to the consumer. If you look at the cannabis industry as a whole, there are many different pieces that must work harmoniously in order to guarantee a safe, effective, and consistent product. Those same players must also ensure that sustainability standards are being met.
From cultivator to manufacturer to labs to the dispensary, standards must be constructed and met across the board, providing consumers with a product that meets the highest of standards and uses our natural resources efficiently. A product that can garner trust. As the industry currently stands, that is simply not the case.
“Manufacturers and cultivators suffer from frustrations because they feel they can’t rely on labs to give consistent results. Labs suffer because they are following their ‘validated method’ to report what they are confident are acceptable results, but do not have any insight into how the sample was grown, collected, prepared, or transported by the cultivator or manufacturer. The consumers are then confused and do not even know if they can trust the labels,” said Vaillencourt. “The regulators suffer because they don’t know where the true root cause of all this variability is, and again, what acceptable variability is.”
Efficiency, safety, and transparency, when cultivating cannabis plants and creating safe, useful, and attractive products, are the necessary underpinnings of a successful cannabis industry. The industry has to pull up its bootstraps and create a set of consensus standards now, while it still has time to influence regulation globally.
ASTM International, founded as the American Society for Testing and Materials, is a nonprofit organization that develops and publishes approximately 12,000 technical standards, covering the procedures for testing and classification of materials of every sort. In 2017, a diverse group of globally recognized industry leaders came together to form ASTM Committee D37 on Cannabis and began developing international standards for cannabis under the ASTM umbrella. This inclusive group empowers a cross-section of voices in the industry to shape its future through the collaborative development of trusted standards.
Membership in ASTM International offers the opportunity for members to strengthen their expertise through the development of world-class standards. Committees will be meeting June 12-14, 2022, to engage in standards development for the cannabis industry.
