Bloomberg
Follow the money as Tiffany Kary shows you how once-illegal drugs like marijuana and psychedelics are becoming big business.
Welcome to my weekly newsletter on the cannabis and psychedelics industries. I have a special invitation to readers this week as we approach the year’s end and pass six months since I wrote about cashless ATMs: Dispensary owners, please reach out and tell me what’s going on with your transaction technology these days. Still hoping for SAFE Banking? Meanwhile…
Potent problems
High-potency marijuana products, increasingly questioned for their ties to mental health risks for consumers, are creating new regulatory risks as well, according to a leaked report in Washington state last week.
The levels of THC in marijuana have skyrocketed in recent years, from around 4% to more than 15%, according to a report based on government-seized samples. Not only have marijuana plants been bred to contain more of the psychoactive substance, but an entire category of products known as concentrates are often labeled as having 60% to 99%. The cannabis industry says the products are important for medical users and aren’t always labeled accurately. But there are growing concerns about people stumbling into them by accident — as well as the products’ links to addiction and psychosis.
In Washington state, a scientific report to address the public health challenges of high-THC cannabis was supposed to be kept under wraps until around the end of this year. But last week, a draft was leaked by Cannabis Observer, a publication run by a marijuana advocacy group that includes activists, industry professionals and journalists. It posted excerpts in an online article.
The big reveal? The report recommends policies such as preventing new consumers from starting with such products and calls on companies to give consumers more information. According to the excerpts, the report doesn’t recommend a cap on THC levels, though it suggests that could be more feasible in the future.
“It was legalized as a plant, and now it has become something else. So now there’s a burden of proof,” said Beatriz Carlini, who directs cannabis research and education at the University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute. Carlini, who worked on the report, said that there is “robust” science showing that higher-THC marijuana increases the risk of addiction and psychiatric disorders. As with other drugs — even recreational ones — there’s a burden of proof on the companies to show that their products are safe that has yet to be met.
She said the report will recommend tax increases on any product with more than 35% THC and the prohibition of any advertising and promotion of such products. It will also call for increasing the age requirement for their purchase to 25. Carlini said the study also strongly recommends that limits on THC content be defined “in the very early stages of legalization.”
One of the study’s more interesting findings was the perception gap when it comes to these high-potency products. When asked to rate how concerned they were about the risks of high THC concentrations on a scale of 1 to 5, responses from scientific researchers, government employees, health-care providers and prevention agencies (such as those that seek to prevent substance use or mental-health problems) ranged from 3.8 to 4.2. Marijuana industry representatives, however, only ranked their concern level at 1.4, while cannabis consumers were double that at 2.8, according to Carlini.
The decision on what to do with the information is ultimately up to legislators, but it’s a sign that the issue — and discrepancies over how it’s perceived — isn’t going away any time soon.
H/T: www.bloomberg.com
