Tag Archives: Focus Article

October 18, 2017

Ask The Expert: Exploring Cannabis Laboratory Accreditation Part 2

By Aaron G. Biros

In the first part of this series, Michelle Bradac, senior accreditation officer at the American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA), told us about the basics of laboratory accreditation, what it means and why it is such a cornerstone of product safety. In this next piece, we sit down with Roger Brauninger, A2LA Biosafety Program manager, to learn why states are looking to lab accreditation in their regulations for the cannabis industry.

Brauninger has worked at A2LA since 1999. As the manager of their biosafety program, his focus is on developing and maintaining accreditation programs in the life sciences. Brauninger has conducted a number of management system assessments to ISO/IEC 17025 and 17020 and also evaluates other assessors in this role.

Roger Brauninger, A2LA biosafety program manager

He is A2LA’s point person for interacting with organizations working with food and drug safety, human and animal anti-doping, biological and chemical threat agents and since 2014 for issues related to cannabis testing. He is a member of the ASTM D37 Cannabis committee, a group focused on creating standards for cannabis products. He was also a member of the stakeholder panel on strategic food analytical methods (SPSFAM) cannabis potency working group when they were awarded the Official Methods Board (OMB) award for achievement in technical and scientific excellence at the AOAC’s Annual Meeting and Exposition in Atlanta, GA. Brauninger holds an M.S. degree in Cellular, Microbial and Molecular Biology from George Mason University and is a member of the Society for Toxicology, AOAC International and the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP).

In this part of the series, we sit down with Brauninger to learn specific requirements in states, some of the benefits of using ISO/IEC 17025 and the influx of start-up or novice testing laboratories. Stay tuned for part three.

CannabisIndustryJournal: Do all states with legalized medical cannabis require the testing to be performed by an ISO/IEC 17025 accredited laboratory?

Roger Brauninger: No not at present, while most of the states where cannabis is legal do require accreditation; there are some states that have no requirements dealing with ensuring the competence of the testing laboratories, some that require the labs to be accredited to state environmental and drinking water standards, some that require laboratories adhere to Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) requirements and some have no requirements in place currently. Now, there are roughly 13 states that require or recommend accreditation of the testing laboratory to ISO/IEC 17025.

CIJ: If and when cannabis use is accepted federally, how is ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation of testing laboratories beneficial?

Roger: The accreditation process provides a uniform platform to allow for comparability of test results between states. This would also allow for these laboratories to benefit by being able to expand their customer base, if state borders were not an artificially imposed barrier to trade. This could also help to raise the quality of the testing services by allowing for greater participation in realistic accredited proficiency testing programs, which can create greater comparability of methods and results.

CIJ: What are the benefits to the states by choosing to require ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation as a basis for competence of testing laboratories?

Roger: States face the unique challenge, due to the federal illegality of cannabis, that they must craft their own regulatory cannabis program requirements. The ISO/IEC 17025 requirements provides a means upon which to recognize laboratory competence. This saves the states from having to come up with their own laboratory quality management requirements detailing the necessary activities a laboratory must address with respect to documentation, chain of custody, method validation, etc. Because these items are already considered in the standard. ISO/IEC 17025 helps to creates a baseline consistency amongst laboratories between states. And It also helps to provides for the legal defensibility of the test results. If and when cannabis is legalized on a federal level, a uniform 50 state recognition is possible using ISO/IEC 17025 as the basis of recognition. In short accreditation can help to ensure that test results have greater comparability and reliability; It also provides greater trust and confidence in the labels and the stated ingredients.

CIJ: Many of the laboratories are “starting up”, how is A2LA equipped to deal with the influx of novice laboratories in this field of testing?

Roger: A2LA offers many different relevant training classes, including those on the ISO/IEC 17025 standard itself, (as well as ones that also contain cannabis-specific content), internal auditing, documenting your quality system, etc. for the laboratories. A2LA also is knowledgeable regarding various states’ cannabis regulatory requirements and can help guide the labs through some of the many obstacles they face in order to perform testing in their state.

CIJ: Does A2LA provide any technical assistance to laboratories that are starting up in this industry?

Roger: A2LA has numerous technical assessors who are experts in the analytical technology associated with cannabis testing. Assessors can be hired in a consulting role and act independently of the assessment process (and independent of A2LA). As a consultant, they can also assist in setting up a quality management system in compliance with ISO/IEC 17025.

CIJ: What benefits can be gained from a laboratory seeking accreditation or from a state that requires cannabis testing laboratories to be accredited?

Roger: Accreditation can provide legal defensibility and increased confidence in the test results being able to stand up in court. It also may help to lower the cost of doing business because it helps to ensure that the test methods are in control by the laboratory and has been shown to be able to reduce the need for repeat testing. Laboratory accreditation has also led to reduced insurance rates in some cases.

August 31, 2017

The Future of California’s Regulations: Q&A with Josh Drayton

By Aaron G. Biros

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Josh Drayton, deputy director of the California Cannabis Industry Association, has an extensive career in local and state-level politics, with his origins in Humboldt County as a political organizer. As a coffee shop owner about ten years ago in Humboldt, he let city council candidates use his space for community engagement, which eventually steered him towards a career in politics. As a heavily involved resident of Northern California and an advocate in local and state matters, he came to understand cannabis as a strong economic driver for the region and beyond.

Drayton saw firsthand how local economies benefit from cannabis as a source of income, economic activity, and providing occupational opportunities for many families in Humboldt County. After running a handful of local campaigns in the Humboldt region, Drayton served as deputy director for a state senate campaign in Riverside.

Josh Drayton, deputy director of the CCIA

Towards the end of his tenure with the Democratic Party in California, the state legislature began working on medical cannabis regulations. “As we saw those regulations moving through, cities and counties began to ban cannabis throughout the state, which was a very unintended consequence,” says Drayton. “The goal was to put regulations forward that would create a framework for the industry to survive and function under, but they were not very fond of cannabis at the time. It was clear that we had a lot of work to do.” Politicians shying away from cannabis issues and a lack of real representation in the legislature for those stakeholders drove him to leave the state’s senate for the California Cannabis Industry Association (CCIA).

In January of 2016, he jumped on board with the CCIA as their deputy director. Ahead of the California Cannabis Business Conference, September 21-22 in Anaheim, we sit down with Drayton to hear his take on the future of California’s cannabis regulations.

CannabisIndustryJournal: Give us a quick update on the regulatory framework in California and the changes we should expect.

Josh Drayton: One of the biggest challenges that California has faced has been the reconciliation of medical regulations with adult use regulations. Although California had medical cannabis legalized in 1996, we did not get those regulations put forward until 2015. That was called the Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act. That was approved by the state legislature and signed by the governor into law. It was created in the legislature. When Prop 64 passed, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, in November of 2016, it was passed through by a voter initiative. Any time that a piece of legislation goes to the voters, it trumps any legislation or regulations written by the state legislature. The real work has been to reconcile these two pieces of legislation into one regulatory structure. With that being said, we saw the initial trailer bill, attempting to reconcile these regulatory structures. That trailer bill is meant to address the new framework. Currently, we are waiting for the second viewing of the updated trailer bill SB 94 with all current amendments. Then we are anticipating those in the next couple weeks and we will see the regulations that will affect all these changes by November.

CIJ: How strong will local and municipal control be in the future?

Josh: It is incredibly strong and it is meant to be. I will say that California is like its own country. In Northern California, what they are willing to accept is very different in comparison to Southern California. Every city and county still has the ability to fully ban adult use and they can create and draft their own ordinances and regulations as long as it doesn’t go above state requirements. They can craft an ordinance to fit the needs of their city or county. Lets say you are in a rural area, delivery services might be important for patient access. Some areas might not allow brick and mortar dispensaries, and all that control lies in the cities and counties.

CIJ: Will there be a dosing limit for patients buying infused products? What about for adult use?

Josh: For adult use, there is going to be a limitation. Every edible has a maximum potency of 10mg of THC. For example, a chocolate bar can have a maximum of 100mg [of THC] but must be perforated in to 10mg pieces.

We have been advocating for, and what has been a priority for CCIA, is a lift of any sort of limits on medical infused products. Many patients have a higher threshold or tolerance and they may need 100mg and we don’t want them eating an entire chocolate bar to get that. We are anxiously awaiting the new trailer bill to see if we have been able to lift that concentration limit.

CIJ: Some have said the first draft of lab testing rules is extreme and overreaching. Can you speculate how those have been modified?

Josh: The lab testing is a huge educational issue for the industry and regulators. No state right now has been able to fully analyze the effects of different pesticide levels for a product that is smoked. We are basing all of our standards currently on food consumption. A lot of testing labs are concerned they are unable to test at the state’s threshold for some of these contaminants and pesticides; the detection limits seem very low. The testing portion will take years to work out, I am sure we will remove and add different pesticides and contaminants to the list. But again, the data and research isn’t fully there. There is a big push across the board that we will be able to do more research and testing so that the future of regulations can reflect reality, and ensure that consumer safety is priority.

CIJ: What do you think of the lack of residency requirement? When Oregon lifted it, outside investors flocked to the market. How might that impact local, California ownership and smaller businesses?

Josh: Well I do think that is a concern across the board. That is something that cities and counties have been adding to their requirements for the matrix of items needed to get a license. I think there is a very gray area when looking at investors opposed to operators. At what threshold does an investor become an owner? And if that person is from outside the state, how will that reflect on the evolution of the industry? It is a concern. Keeping limitations on the size of outdoor cultivation might help limit folks from outside the state coming into that arena. After living in Humboldt County for years, and living next to Mom and Pop growers for a long time, I don’t want to see them displaced by businesses coming from another area. We have been doing this a long time and I believe we have the best operators in the world.

CIJ: How is the CCIA helping businesses gear up for changing regulations?

Josh: Well one of our biggest areas of focus is education. Educating our own industry is one of the biggest parts in making sure the industry will be successful in this regulated market. Our legislative committee will take a position of support or opposition, which goes to our board, and those recommendations go to the state. The manufacturing committee has worked very closely with Lori Ajax [director of the Bureau of Cannabis Regulation] and her office, to educate on a variety of areas, guiding the way for state departments on how to properly regulate the industry. We have a Diversity and Inclusion Committee, Retail/Delivery, Testing, Distribution and Agricultural committees; across the board our committees create white papers that we submit to the regulatory departments of the state. We take regulatory officials on tours of facilities to get a hands-on view of what they are regulating. They have been speaking with scientists and growers, who often have a better understanding of current industry standards. We see these tours as very helpful. We have brought groups of regulators from LA County, Long Beach, Napa, Alameda and many others on tours of Bay Area commercial manufacturing facilities, dispensaries and nurseries. They have a lot of questions and we want to make sure we are a resource for them. Putting folks in touch with the right people and, in moving forward with this process, in an educated manner. Cannabis is a foreign language to many people and I get that.

CIJ: If you have one recommendation for regulators, what would that be?

Josh: My recommendation to regulators: do not over-tax this industry. Do not make taxation the priority for regulation. Over-taxation will strengthen the illicit market and that is not the goal. We need to make sure the taxes are reasonable to encourage businesses to operate in this market, not in the illegal one. If cities decide to ban, they need to know they can be hubs for illicit activity. Cities with bans might draw the illicit market because illegal operators won’t have to pay taxes or license fees. It is a long play, but responsible taxation is the best path to draw people out of this illicit market. We want to help protect public safety and health, safe medicine, safe products and keep cannabis out of the hands of children.

August 22, 2017

Cannabis-Infused Beer Goes Mainstream

By Aaron G. Biros

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Lagunitas Brewing today unveiled a new beer infused with cannabis, making it the first large national brewery to experiment with cannabis. Lagunitas, now owned by Heineken, announced the launch of their “Supercritical Ale,” an IPA brewed with terpenes extracted from cannabis.

The brewery chose to partner with AbsoluteXtracts and CannaCraft, based in California, for their cannabis extract and will use hops from Yakima, Washington. “We’ve long known about the close connection between cannabis and hops,” reads their website. “Now Lagunitas is excited to partner with a like-minded neighbor in Sonoma County, AbsoluteXtracts, to close the gap further with tandem innovations on the topic.” Hops and cannabis belong in the same taxonomic family, Cannabinaceae, and they also have a number of physical similarities, which helps explain the “close connection” they are referring to. The website says the beer will only be available in California—for now. According to Fortune Magazine, the terpenes come from two strains, Blue Dream and Girl Scout Cookies (known as GSC in some states).

The name “Supercritical” comes from the state that carbon dioxide is best used as a solvent for extracting compounds from plants. Terpenes are responsible for the aromatic properties of plants, giving hops the piney and citrusy flavors that come in IPAs, and giving cannabis the same flavors and smells as well. Limonene, for example, is a cyclic terpene molecule that gives us a citrusy smell and flavor.

They’re not the first brewery to experiment with cannabis-infused beer; smaller craft breweries have been doing it for some time now. Coalition Brewing Co., based in Portland, Oregon, sells a cannabis-infused beer called Two Flowers IPA, with 3mg of cannabidiol (CBD) in a 12oz glass. Dad and Dudes Breweria, based in Aurora, Colorado, also put out a CBD-infused beer last year, called General Washington’s Secret Stash. According to Westword, Dad and Dudes was the first brewery to receive federal approval for a CBD-infused beer, but since the DEA declared cannabis oil illegal last winter, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau rescinded their approval.

The common denominator between these three beers is that none of them contain THC, the popular psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. Perhaps Lagunitas is taking a safer approach with regard to federal legality by only using terpenes, not CBD, and only offering it in state. Coalition’s Two Flowers IPA is also only available in Oregon, but does, however, contain CBD. Check out the video on Lagunitas’ Supercritical Ale below.

August 17, 2017

Biros' Blog

CWCBExpo: Cut Ties with Roger Stone

By Aaron G. Biros

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Update: According to a press release, the CWCBExpo removed Roger Stone as the scheduled keynote speaker for the Los Angeles and Boston shows. We applaud their decision.

Earlier today, the Minority Cannabis Business Association published a Facebook post: “As a result of CWC choosing this guy as their keynote speaker, MCBA has decided to withdraw from attendance and speaking roles at this conference. CWC, you know better so there’s no excuse not to do better.” We at Cannabis Industry Journal would like to voice our support for the MCBA and join them in their withdrawal. We will no longer be a media partner of any CWCBExpo events, unless they remove Roger Stone from the keynote slot.

Roger Stone’s Shady Past

Stone is quite the polarizing figure with a mile-long political career rife with controversy and extraordinary clientele. He co-founded a lobbying firm with Paul Manafort in 1980. In the 1970’s, Stone helped Richard Nixon get elected, the man responsible for the War on Drugs, and proceeded to serve in his administration. In the 1980’s, he never strayed far from controversy. He helped bribe lawyers to help get Reagan elected, and even did lobbying work on behalf of two dictators.

Fast-forward to the 2016 presidential election and Stone’s racism starts to come to light. Although he left the Trump campaign in August of 2015, he remained a loyal supporter. In February of 2016, CNN banned Stone from their network for disgusting tweets about correspondents. He called one CNN commentator a “stupid negro” and another an “entitled diva bitch.” MSNBC subsequently banned him from their network two months later. While he said he “regrets” saying those, he never issued a formal apology. A majority of his tweets are too offensive to republish, but if you need more proof, click here.

Roger Stone
(Photo credit: Barbara Nitke, Netflix)

He accused Khizr Khan, a Pakistani-American whose son was a war hero in Iraq, of being a “Muslim Brotherhood agent helping Hillary.” That is far from the only conspiracy theory he has circulated. He also said Huma Abedin, an aide to Hillary Clinton at the time, was in the Muslim Brotherhood. He’s written a number of books with rampant, false allegations, like Jeb! and the Bush Crime Family, The Clintons’ War on Women and The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ. His role in the Trump campaign is a part of the Russian election hacking congressional investigation. He’s credited with introducing Alex Jones, the falsehood-spreading, InfoWars conspiracy theorist, to Donald Trump. On the night of the election, he tweeted a racist photo that is not fit for republication.

Why is this relevant?

Because all of a sudden he is an advocate for cannabis legalization. In 2013, he started working in Florida to help legalize medical cannabis there. According to a CWCBExpo press release, when he keynoted their New York conference this year, he announced that he was starting a sort of bipartisan coalition to persuade President Trump to follow through with his campaign promises to respect states’ rights with regard to legal, medical cannabis. “I am going to be working with a coalition of Republicans and Democrats, progressives and libertarians, liberals, and conservatives to persuade President Trump to keep his campaign pledge, and to remind the president that he took a strong and forthright position on this issue in the election,” says Stone at the New York show. Dan Humiston, managing partner of CWCBExpo, says, “We are thrilled to have Roger Stone keynote again during CWCBExpo Los Angeles & Boston.”

CIJ reached out to the CWCBExpo for comment and Dan Humiston, managing partner, stands by their decision to keep him booked as the keynote speaker:

“Our objective as a show producer in the cannabis industry is we are trying to do whatever we can to help grant access to this plant for anybody that needs it. And to do that we feel that we have to be as inclusionary as we can possibly be. It is nothing more than that. I think there are some real benefits to the cannabis movement that will be gained by getting as many people under our tent as we can. Its funny how this plant brings people together who aren’t together under any other topic; it creates the strangest of bedfellows. The more dialogue and more opportunities to speak with people we can’t agree on any other topic with, the better. I think he is an asset to this movement. He has raised a lot of money. He is pushing Jeff Sessions really hard and he’s got Donald Trump’s ear.”

CIJ also reached out to Reverend Al Sharpton, who is booked for a keynote presentation at the same conference, and he had this to say: “I was not aware that the minority cannabis business association pulled out from the conference,” says Rev. Sharpton. “I spoke at the conference in New York, and I am working with Senator Corey Booker on the legalization of cannabis. Our communities have been directly affected by the criminalization of the drug.” He said he was unaware of the MCBA’s statements and asked for them to get in touch with him as soon as possible.

There’s no place for racism in the cannabis industry.

Yes, it’s great to have an ally of cannabis legalization who might have Trump’s ear. But no, we don’t want Stone’s help. There is no place for someone like him in the cannabis industry.

The historical implications of racism in the cannabis legalization movement should speak for themselves, but allow me to try and quickly summarize why this is so important. The word marijuana is actually a dated racist epithet that Harry Anslinger used back in the 1930’s to promulgate myths that the drug was used by people of color and fostered violence. “Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind… Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage,” said Anslinger, testifying before Congress. And so begins the era of “Reefer Madness” when the drug became illegal. Fast-forward half a century and the racism with cannabis continues. According to the Minority Cannabis Business Association, the War on Drugs is the main reason behind the huge incarceration numbers for people of color. “The U.S. ‘war on drugs’ — a decades-long policy of racial and class suppression hidden behind cannabis criminality — has resulted in the arrest, interdiction, and incarceration of a high percentage of Americans of color,” reads their agenda.

There are still a lot of racial problems the legalization movement is working to address. There are dozens of reasons why people of color have been wrongly persecuted due to the illegality of cannabis, but the point is this: The cannabis legalization movement needs to be a diverse, inclusive community that promotes equality and embraces all religions, races and ethnicities.

In choosing Roger Stone to keynote, the CWCBExpo is making a Faustian bargain and we don’t believe this is right. We need to stand by our morals; the ends don’t justify the means. The cannabis industry is no place for racism and we would like to see Roger Stone removed from the keynote position at CWCBExpo.

July 27, 2017

Wana Brands Dominates Oregon Market, Expands to East Coast in 2018

By Aaron G. Biros

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Wana Brands launched their products in Oregon’s market in July 2016, about a year ago. Since then, their brand presence has grown considerably and their products are now in 240 of Oregon’s 375 dispensaries, according to a press release issued this morning.

Wana Brands is an infused products company; they make sour gummies, hard candies and caramels. The business originally launched in Colorado back in 2010 and as of 2016, they own 23% of the market share and had the most sales revenue of any edibles company in Colorado, according to BDS Analytics. The next closest competitor owns 12% of the market share.

Nancy Whiteman holding a batch of cannabis gummies

According to Nancy Whiteman, co-founder and co-owner of Wana Brands, becoming a market leader in Oregon is a result of their product’s consistency and taste. At the end of last year they launched in Nevada and this year they will launch in Arizona and Illinois. In 2018, they expect to make a big East Coast push, expanding into Massachusetts and Maryland as well.

Election Day last year legalized recreational cannabis in a number of states, including Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada. About a week before Election Day, we interviewed Whiteman about those states coming online and her drive to expand. She said she saw a lot of potential in those markets and she was right. Nevada witnessed a massive surge in demand with the opening of recreational sales in the beginning of July and Massachusetts is expected to be another huge market potential.

In that interview, she explained a bit of their growth model: “The model we are pursuing is a licensing agreement where we partner with existing or new license holders in their state,” says Whiteman. “In many ways they are doing the heavy lifting, but we are providing an enormous lift by licensing our intellectual property to them.”

Now that her company has found enormous success in established markets like Oregon, Nevada and Colorado, they want to make a big push in those fledgling markets on the East Coast. “In both markets [Massachusetts and Maryland], we will be working with a partner who will be licensing our products,” says Whitman. “I think the East Coast is a huge opportunity. There are major population centers in New England, New York and Florida and the markets are almost completely undeveloped at this point.” Wana Brands is also currently entering talks with partners in California, Florida and Maine.

June 28, 2017

What’s Happening on Capitol Hill? Cannabis Reform Proposals and the 115th Congress

By Brian Blumenfeld, J.D., M.A.

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As CIJ readers are probably aware, last month Congress passed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2017—the annual budget, in other words. Lying within this 1,665-page document is Section 537, which for one year restricts the Department of Justice from using any funds to prevent states from implementing their medical cannabis laws. Medical cannabis businesses and patients can take some solace in this restriction. Last summer, the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, sitting in San Francisco, confirmed that this appropriations rider prevents federal prosecutors from bringing suit against medical cannabis businesses and users operating in compliance with state law. Two problems remain glaring, however: one, the protection only applies to medical cannabis activity, not recreational; and two, it is only guaranteed to last for one fiscal year.

To be sure, for the 115th Congress to address the profusion of issues emerging from the nationwide legalization movement, they must do something more. Various reform proposals have in fact been introduced during the current congressional session, and in order to fully digest where they stand and what they have the potential to accomplish, it will help to make sure that we know how they fit within federal legislative procedure.

Catching Up to Speed with the Legislative Process

How A Bill Becomes A Law
Photo: Mary-Frances Main

Whenever confronting a question about government and politics, it is never a bad idea to start at the source of authority. In America, that source is of course the Constitution, and in Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2, We The People have given to Congress the power to “determine the rules of its proceedings”. When we remember back to the School House Rock cartoon for How A Bill Becomes A Law, the majority of political maneuvering behind the basic process taught in the cartoon actually happens according to these ‘rules’ or ‘resolutions’. In fact, at the beginning of each new Congress (every two years) each chamber, and each committee and subcommittee within each chamber, votes on the rules that will govern how they are to go about their legislative business. Traditionally, the rules from the previous Congress are carried over by this vote with only minor tweaks. On top of that, both parties in each chamber have their own internal rules and procedures for setting their policy agenda, directing political strategy, and determining which members will be nominated to certain leadership positions and committee posts. Playing the game of politics according to this layer cake of rules is a necessary part of the work of a legislator, and is often as important a factor in how our country is actually governed as is who wins election to office and what substantive provisions are formally enacted into law. So for the purposes of understanding federal cannabis reform, let’s take a quick look into the procedural status of the relevant legislation and who is in a position to influence what happens to it; then, when reviewing the policies they stand to codify, we will also understand the legislative landscape they must navigate.

Rep. Rohrabacher launches the Cannabis Caucus, Photo via Earl Blumenauer/YouTube

A good place to start is February 16, 2017 when Republican Congressmen Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Don Young (R-AK) along with Democratic Congressmen Earl Blumenaur (D-OR) and Jared Polis (D-CO) launched the Congressional Cannabis Caucus. Under House and Senate rules, such a caucus must formally register with the House Committee on Administration as a Congressional Member Organization (CMO), disclosing its officers and members and declaring its purpose. These CMOs are sometimes referred to by different names: caucuses, conferences, coalitions, task forces, etc. The best known of these are the House and Senate Democratic Caucuses and the House and Senate Republican Conferences. By setting party policy, driving legislative strategy, promoting party cohesion and rewarding party loyalty, these largest of CMOs dominate partisan activity on Capitol Hill. Smaller CMOs, on the other hand, advance only specific interests and often cross the partisan divide. The Cannabis Caucus, for instance, was formed to catalyze a federal response to the nationwide legalization movement, and its “Path to Marijuana Reform” is a large part of the spate of bills that have been dropped into the congressional hopper over the past six months.

All in all there are twenty cannabis reform bills currently pending in Congress. In the House, all but two of the fourteen bills there have been referred to either the Energy & Commerce Committee or the Judiciary Committee, and all but one of the six in the Senate have been referred to either the Finance or Judiciary Committees.

A Note on Committees & Procedure

Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), is on the Ways and Means Committee
Photo: Michael Campbell

Under House and Senate rules, bills are referred to committees by matching the former’s subject matter to the latter’s jurisdiction. In the House, the Speaker may attach time limits for committee action, refer a bill or portions of a bill to multiple committees and determine the sequence in which they are to be considered. The Speaker may also convene an ad hoc committee to consider a bill, and “make such other provision as may be considered appropriate.” As can be gleaned, the Speakership holds substantial procedural powers, and is in fact the only congressional leadership position created by the Constitution. The Senate’s counterpart, the majority leader, has in comparison less discretion in moving along legislative business.

At the next step, both the House and Senate grant each committee the authority to make their own rules on how they are to consider bills. Once referred, committee chairs generally decide to further refer a bill to a subcommittee, hold hearings, subpoena evidence and witnesses, call ‘markup’ sessions to propose and debate amendments, and finally to schedule a vote to report bills back to the chamber floor. If a committee chair wishes to kill a bill, these procedural powers provide wide, though not absolute, authority to do so. Jockeying for a chairmanship is therefore big game in the life of a legislator. Ultimately, members are nominated and elected to their respective committees and chairs according to the rules of their parties’ caucus or conference, and upon a vote of approval on the floor. Seniority is only one factor in these votes, and so because nothing is predetermined, these intraparty contests can explain a great deal about member behavior.

With that background to help triangulate Capitol Hill politics, we should now be better equipped to look into the cannabis bills pending before the 115^th Congress, the committees to which they have been referred, and their procedural status. Stay tuned for the next article in this series when we will begin our bill-by-bill review.

June 5, 2017

Applications for Tissue Culture in Cannabis Growing: Part 3

By Aaron G. Biros

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In the first part of this series, we introduced some relevant terms and principles to tissue culture micropropagation and reviewed Dr. Hope Jones’ background in the science of it. In the second part, we went into the advantages and disadvantages of using mother plants to clone and why tissue culture could help growers scale up. In the third part of this series, we are going to examine the five steps that Dr. Jones lays out to successfully micropropagate cannabis plants from tissue cultures.

Cleaning – Stage 0

Explant cuttings are obtained from mother plants. The cuttings are further separated into smaller stem pieces with a single node.

Micropropagation includes 5 stages. “Stage 0 is the preparation of mother plants and harvest of cuttings for the explant material,” says Dr. Jones. “To ensure the best chance of growing well in culture, those ladies [the mom’s] should be cleaned up and at their best. And hopefully not stressed by insects or pathogens.” She says growers should also make sure the plants are properly fertilized and watered before harvesting explants. “Obtaining the explants is done with a clean technique using new disposable blades and gloves,” says Dr. Jones. “Young shoot tips are harvested and placed in labeled, large Ziploc bags with a small amount of dilute bleach and surfactant solution, then placed in a cooler and taken to the lab.” This is a process that could be documented with record keeping and data logs to ensure the same care is taken for every explant. “Once in the lab, working in the sterile environment of the transfer hood, the cuttings are sterilized, typically with bleach and a little surfactant, and then rinsed several times with sterile water,” says Dr. Jones. Once they reach the sterile environment, Dr. Jones removes the leaves and cuts the stem down to individual nodes.

Establishment – Stage 1

Establishment essentially means waiting for the shoots to develop. Establishing the culture requires an absolutely sterile environment, which is why the first step is so important. “Proper explant disinfection is equally as important is the control parameters of the facility itself,” says Dr. Jones. Mother plants are not grown in sterile facilities, but in an environment that is invariably contaminated with dust, which harbors micro-organisms, insects and other potential sources of contamination, including human handling. We discussed some of this in Part 2.

Explants, once sterilized and placed in the culture vessel, must establish to the new aseptic conditions. “Basically Stage 0 ends when the explants are cleaned and placed in the vessel. Stage 1 begins on the shelf while we patiently sit, watch and wait for the shoot growth,” says Dr. Jones. “Successful establishment means we properly disinfected the explants because the cultures do not become contaminated with bacteria or fungi and new shoot growth emerges.”

Multiplication – Stage 2

Stage 2 involves subculturing an explant to produce new shoots

This stage is rather self-explanatory as multiplication simplified means generating many more shoots per explant. In order to create a large number of plants needed for meeting the demand of weekly clone orders, Dr. Jones can break up, or subculture, one explant that contains multiple numerous new shoots. “Let’s say one vessel, which originally started with 4 explants each developed four new shoots. Working in the hood, I remove each explant from the vessel and place it on a sterile petri dish. Now I can divide each explant into 4 new explants and then place the four new explant cuttings into their own vessel. In this example, we started with one vessel with 4 explants,” says Dr. Jones. “Which when subcultured 4-6 weeks later, we now have 4 vessels with 16 plants.” This is instrumental in understanding how tissue culture micropropagation can help growers scale without the need for a ton of space and maintenance. From a single explant, you can potentially generate 70,000 plants after 48 weeks, according to Dr. Jones. “Starting with not 1, but 10 or 20 explants would significantly speed up multiplication.” Using tissue culture effectively, one can see how a grower can exponentially increase their production.

Rooting – Stage 3

“When the decision is made to move cultures to the rooting stage, we typically need to subculture the plantlets to a different media formulated to induce rooting,” says Dr. Jones. “In some instances, the media is very dark, and that’s because of the addition of activated charcoal.” Using activated charcoal, according to Dr. Jones, helps darken the rooting environment, which closely mimics a normal rooting environment. “It helps remove high levels of cytokinin and other possible inhibitory compounds,” says Dr. Jones. Cytokinins are a type of plant growth hormone commonly used to promote healthy shoot growth, but it is important to make sure the culture contains the right ratio of hormones, including cytokinin and auxin for maximum root and shoot development. Dr. Jones suggests that growers research their own media formulation to ensure nice, healthy roots develop and that no tissue dies in the process. “With everything I grow in culture, when it comes to media, in any stage and with all new strains, I run some simple experiments in order to refine the media used,” says Dr. Jones. She puts a special focus on the concentrations and ratios of plant hormones in formulating her medias.

After harvesting and multiplying, these explants are ready for rooting

“We commonly think of auxin’s role in rooting, but it’s also important in leaves and acts as a regulator of apical shoot dominance,” says Dr. Jones. “So having no auxin may not be ideal for the shooting media used in Stages 1 and 2.” Auxin is a plant hormone that can help promote the elongation of cells, an important step in any plant’s growth. “And cytokinins are typically synthesized in the root and moves through xylem to shoots to regulate mitosis as well as inducing lateral bud branching, so again finding that nice balance between these two hormones is key.”

Acclimation & Hardening Off – Stage 4

“When plants have developed good looking healthy roots, it’s time to pop the top,” says Dr. Jones. This means opening the vessel, another risk for contamination, which is why having a clean environment is so crucial. “The location of these vessels needs to be tightly controlled for light, relative humidity, temperature and cleanliness.” In the culture, sugar is a main ingredient in the medium, because the growing explants are not very photosynthetically active. “By opening the lid of the vessel, carbon dioxide is introduced to the environment, which promotes and enhances photosynthesis, really getting the plants ready for cultivation.”

Harvesting explant material from mother plants

The very final step in tissue culture micropropagation is hardening, which involves the formation of the waxy cuticle on the leaves of the plant, according to Dr. Jones. This is what preps the plant to actually survive in an unsterile environment. “The rooted plants are removed from the culture vessel, the media washed off and placed in a potting mix/matrix or plug and kept in high humidity and low light,” says Dr. Jones. “Now that there is no sugar, contamination is no longer a threat, and these plants can be moved to the grow facility.” She says conditioning these plants can take one or two weeks. Over that time, growers should gradually increase light intensity and bring down the relative humidity to normal growing conditions.

Overall, this process, if done efficiently, can take roughly eleven weeks from prepping the explants to acclimation and hardening. If growers perform all the steps correctly and with extra care to reduce risks of contamination, one can produce thousands of plants in a matter of weeks.

In the fourth and final part of this series, we are going to dive into implementation. In that piece, we will discuss design principles for tissue culture facilities, equipment and instrumentation and some real-world case studies of tissue culture micropropagation.

May 3, 2017

Applications for Tissue Culture in Cannabis Growing: Part 2

By Aaron G. Biros

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In the first part of this series, we introduced Dr. Hope Jones, who took her experience in tissue culture from NASA and brought it to the cannabis industry and C4 Laboratories. We discussed some of the essential concepts behind tissue culture and defined a few basic terms like micropropagation, totipotency, explants and cloning. Now let’s get into some of the issues with cloning from mother plants and the advantages that come with using tissue culture for propagating and cultivating cannabis.

Time & Resources

Dr. Hope Jones, chief scientific officer at C4 Labs

Taking cuttings from mother plants is arguably the most popular method of propagating cannabis plants. It is a process that requires significant real estate, resources and labor. “Moms can take up a great deal of space that is not contributing directly to production,” says Dr. Jones. “I know from experience that scaling up production and/or adding new strains to the production line requires significant time and resources to raise and maintain new healthy and productive mother plants.” Each mother plant produces a limited number of clones per harvest period and over the course of her life cycle.

By using tissue culture, a cultivator can generate an almost infinite number of clones from one plant cutting. With so many growers calculating their costs-per-square-foot, micropropagation is an effective tool to save space, labor and time, thus increasing profit margins. “Just to put it in perspective: Holly Scoggins’ book Plants From Test Tubes, cites a Day Lily cultivator who uses micropropagation to produce 1,000 plants in 30 square feet of shelf space each week,” says Dr. Jones. “Using conventional methods, one would need a half-acre to produce the same amount of plants.” Cultivators can produce a much greater number of plants-per-square-foot by using micropropagation effectively.

Damage from whiteflies, thrips and powdery mildew is all visible on this sick plant.

Early Health & Vigor

Most tissue culture methods use sterilized vessels that contain sugar-rich media to support growth of plantlets before they can photosynthesize on their own. “The media is prepped, poured into vessels, and placed in an autoclave (or pressure cooker) where it is subjected to high temps and pressure to achieve proper sterility.”

The sterile environment and rich growth media supplies plantlets with an abundance of everything they need. “When plantlets emerge from culture, they are pathogen-free, with a stockpile of food and nutrient reserves that support rapid growth and vigor, superior to conventional cuttings,” says Dr. Jones.

Stress & Disease

As any grower knows, mother plants can sometimes experience stress and disease. This might come in the form under or over-watering, heat stress, spider mites, whiteflies, mold and viruses. “Any stress or infection that a mother plant is subjected too can impact progeny health and productivity in a couple of ways,” says Dr. Jones.

Powdery mildew starts with white/grey spots seen on the upper leaves surface

Tobacco Mosaic Virus symptoms can include tip curling, blotching of leaf mosaic patterning, and stunting.

For example, diseases like powdery mildew and tobacco mosaic virus are often systemic, meaning that pathogens have spread to almost every tissue in the plant. Once infected, it is impossible to completely eliminate pathogens from tissues. Therefore any cuttings made from a diseased mother plant, even if they look perfectly healthy, will also be infected and can eventually present disease symptoms like reduced productivity and/or plant death, according to Dr. Jones.

How does tissue culture get around this problem? Remember that explants (small tissue samples used as starting material) can be extracted from any part of the plant. Meristematic cells in shoot tips and leaves are the source of new plant growth. Dr. Jones explains that these cells, and the first set of primordial leaves are not connected directly to the vascular tissue, the plant’s transport system by which pathogens spread. Therefore, meristematic cells tend to be disease-free, whatever the condition of the mother. It takes a sharp blade, a dissecting microscope, and a lot of experience to learn, but as Dr. Jones explains, “harvesting explants from meristems is a routine micropropagation technique used by ‘Big Horticulture.’ One example is the strawberry. Viruses and pathogens are so prevalent that the strawberry industry must use meristematic culture to ensure pathogen free progeny.”

Epigenetics

Now let’s talk about epigenetics. We know that plants don’t have the option of physically moving away from stress or predation. Instead, they have evolved sophisticated ways of changing their own biology to adapt to and/or protect themselves. “Consider what happens to a mom exposed to a pathogen. The infected plant will start expressing (turning on) genes and making proteins that contribute to pathogen resistance,” says Dr. Jones. “These changes to gene expression are partly regulated by epigenetic modifications, chemical changes to DNA that increase or decrease the likelihood a cell will express a particular gene, but that do not actually modify the gene itself. Like annotations to a piece of music, epigenetic modifications don’t change the notes but rather how loud or soft, quickly or slowly the notes are played.”

There are more than 1,000 different viruses and mixed infections are very common

This is where it gets interesting. “Epigenetic modifications can be systemic and long lived. Plants infected by a pathogen or stressed by drought will present widespread epigenetic modifications to their DNA,” says Dr. Jones. “For an annual plant like cannabis, those modifications are relatively permanent. Thus a cutting from a mom having drought or pathogen adapted epigenetic programming will inherit that modified DNA and behave as if it were experiencing that stress, whether present or not.”

In the wild, this adaptability is critical for plant survival and reproduction, but to a grower, this is a less-than-ideal scenario. “The epigenetic modifications allowed the mother to tolerate the stress, which is great from the perspective of survival and fitness, but it comes at a cost. Some of the finite energy and resources that usually support plant growth and reproduction are instead channeled to stress response,” says Dr. Jones. This trade off results in reduction in overall plant yield and quality. “Those epigenetic changes result in a new phenotype for that mother,” says Dr. Jones. “All cuttings from her will reflect the new phenotype. This is one major mechanism underlying what many in the cannabis industry (incorrectly) call ‘genetic drift,’ or the loss of vigor over successive clonal generations.”

This is again where tissue culture can be such a game changer. The process of dedifferentiation, as explained in part 1 of this series, can rejuvenate a “tired” mother plant by inducing a kind of reboot– clearing accumulated epigenetic modifications that negatively impact progeny vigor and productivity. In the third part of this series, we will discuss the five stages of micropropagation, detailing the process of how you can grow plantlets in tissue culture. Stay tuned for more!

April 13, 2017

Applications for Tissue Culture in Cannabis Growing: Part 1

By Aaron G. Biros

5 Comments

Dr. Hope Jones, chief scientific officer of C4 Laboratories, believes there are a number of opportunities for cannabis growers to scale their cultivation up with micropropagation. In her presentation at the CannaGrow conference recently, Dr. Jones discussed the applications and advantages of tissue culture techniques in cannabis growing.

Dr. Jones’ work in large-scale plant production led her to the University of Arizona Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC) where she worked to propagate a particularly difficult plant to grow- a native orchid species- using tissue culture techniques. With that experience in tissue culture, hydroponics and controlled environments, she took a position at the Kennedy Space Center working for NASA where she developed technologies and protocols to grow crops for space missions. “I started with strawberry TC [tissue culture], because of the shelf life & weight compared with potted plants, plus you can’t really ‘water’ plants in space- at least not in the traditional way,” says Dr. Jones. “Strawberries pack a lot of antioxidants. Foods high in antioxidants, I argued, could boost internal protection of astronauts from high levels of cosmic radiation that they are exposed to in space.” That research led to a focus on cancer biology and a Ph.D. in molecular & cellular biology and plant sciences, culminating in her introduction to the cannabis industry and now with C4 Labs in Arizona.

Working with tissue culture since 2003, Dr. Jones is familiar with this technology that is fairly new to cannabis, but has been around for decades now and is widely used in the horticulture industry today. For example, Phytelligence is an agricultural biotechnology company using genetic analysis and tissue culture to help food crop growers increase speed to harvest, screen for diseases, store genetic material and secure intellectual property. “Big horticulture does this very well,” says Dr. Jones. “There are many companies generating millions of clones per year.” The Department of Plant Sciences Pomology Program at the Davis campus of the University of California uses tissue culture with the Foundation Plant Services (FPS) to eliminate viruses and pathogens, while breeding unique cultivars of strawberries.

A large tissue culture facility run in the Sacramento area that produces millions of nut and fruit trees clones a year.

First, let’s define some terms. Tissue culture is a propagation tool where the cultivator would grow tissue or cells outside of the plant itself, commonly referred to as micropropagation. “Micropropagation produces new plants via the cloning of plant tissue samples on a very small scale, and I mean very small,” says Dr. Jones. “While the tissue used in micropropagation is small, the scale of production can be huge.” Micropropagation allows a cultivator to grow a clone from just a leaf, bud, root segment or even just a few cells collected from a mother plant, according to Dr. Jones.

The science behind growing plants from just a few cells relies on a characteristic of plant cells called totipotency. “Totipotency refers to a cell’s ability to divide and differentiate, eventually regenerating a whole new organism,” says Dr. Jones. “Plant cells are unique in that fully differentiated, specialized cells can be induced to dedifferentiate, reverting back to a ‘stem cell’-like state, capable of developing into any cell type.”

Cannabis growers already utilize the properties of totipotency in cloning, according to Dr. Jones. “When cloning from a mother plant, stem cuttings are taken from the mother, dipped into rooting hormone and two to five days later healthy roots show up,” says Dr. Jones. “That stem tissue dedifferentiates and specializes into new root cells. In this case, we humans helped the process of totipotency and dedifferentiation along using a rooting hormone to ‘steer’ the type of growth needed.” Dr. Jones is helping cannabis growers use tissue culture as a new way to generate clones, instead of or in addition to using mother plants.

With cannabis micropropagation, the same principles still apply, just on a much smaller scale and with greater precision. “In this case, very small tissue samples (called explants) are sterilized and placed into specialized media vessels containing food, nutrients, and hormones,” says Dr. Jones. “Just like with cuttings, the hormones in the TC media induce specific types of growth over time, helping to steer explant growth to form all the organs necessary to regenerate a whole new plant.”

Having existed for decades, but still so new to cannabis, tissue culture is an effective propagation tool for advanced breeders or growers looking to scale up. In the next part of this series, we will discuss some of issues with mother plants and advantages of tissue culture to consider. In Part 2 we will delve into topics like sterility, genetic reboot, viral infection and pathogen protection.

March 31, 2017

Opening a Dispensary on an Island: Overcoming a Barrier to Business

By Aaron G. Biros

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Martha’s Vineyard is renowned for its beautiful beaches, quaint whaling towns and picturesque rolling countryside. The island is well known as a popular vacation spot for the rich and famous, including the Obamas, the Clintons and Larry David. The movie Jaws was filmed there and the infamous Ted Kennedy-Chappaquiddick incident took place there in 1969. Its summer population of 115,000 drops to about 17,000 as the island slows down for the winter. It is also home to roughly 120 registered medical cannabis patients and a dispensary that will have to deal with the complexities of operating on an island.

In 2012, Massachusetts became the eighteenth state to legalize medical cannabis and in 2016, the state legalized adult use of cannabis. Geoff Rose, co-founder of Our Island Club, a local organization that offers discounts to full-time residents, saw a great need for a medical cannabis dispensary. Rose was granted a provisional license to both cultivate and dispense, as required by the state, on the island. Rose’s nonprofit that received the licenses, Patient Centric of Martha’s Vineyard, plans to operate in West Tisbury, a small town located in the center of the island.

Travel to and from the island is restricted to either boat or plane with the vast majority of traffic occurring on ferries operated by the Steamship Authority. But Rose cannot transport any cannabis on the ferries or even a smaller, non-commercial vessel because the waters are under the jurisdiction of the Coast Guard, a federal agency tasked with enforcing The Controlled Substances Act. The same goes for aircraft under FAA jurisdiction. Transporting cannabis products on the ferries, or any vessel for that matter, would be a felony.

Coast Guard vessel conducting training exercises off the Vineyard

Martha’s Vineyard is not just a physical island, but also a jurisdictional island where all cannabis growing, lab testing and dispensing must occur on the island. Currently, those 120 medical cannabis patients living on the island have no legal method of obtaining medical cannabis, unless they grow it themselves. Rose and his nonprofit, Patient Centric, hope to change that. We sat down with Geoff Rose to learn more about his mission to bring medical cannabis to the Vineyard and some of the legal implications associated with running a cannabis business on an island.

Cannabis Industry Journal: How did you get started with the idea to open a dispensary on the island?

Geoff Rose: Well I moved here almost sixteen years ago and as I have often said, when you move here you have three options: you can contribute to the community, you can hide and stay reclusive or you can leave. It is a very unique community and I chose to contribute. We started Our Island Club, which is a service program for year-round residents that helps them save on essential products and services as a means to cope with the high cost of living here. Clearly there is a need as there are 7,000 year round residents participating in that program. We have donated over a half-million dollars to 175 or more charitable organizations on the island. In addition to that, because of the membership fee, anyone who can’t afford it can still receive the membership.

I have come to launch the dispensary in the same manner. There is a need. [Legal medical cannabis] has now been law since November of 2012. Over four years later and still no dispensary on the island- I have continued to persevere because I know that there is a need.

CIJ: It is a pretty tight-knit community; did you meet any local opposition?

Geoff: Dukes County (the Vineyard) voted in favor of medical marijuana by a wide margin and 82% of West Tisbury voted in favor of medical marijuana, one of the highest in the state. Well I am currently waiting on my special permit application that I am required to apply for in West Tisbury. It has been sent to the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) for review.

There have been concerns, including from the local school. But state law requires that a dispensary be located beyond 500 feet from a school. The current location that I am asking for approval is over seven times that distance. There is a perceived concern about that. The first round of applications in 2013 included a score-based application process and while there were four competitors, none of us met the minimum score. In the second round, it moved to a compliance-based application process, and I was the only one who kept the effort alive and was awarded the license.

CIJ: There is a bit of an opioid problem on the vineyard, and multiple scientific studies have suggested a causal relationship between cannabis legalization and a reduction in opioid overdose-related deaths; do you see this as part of the solution?

Geoff: I have seen studies, particularly one by Johns Hopkins that does show a correlation between medical cannabis and the reduction of the use of opioids. I think it is a byproduct of opening the dispensary, so yes. I shared these findings with the Superintendent of Schools. I think education is the key to really develop awareness. The state has mandated that schools are required to develop a drug education program, it’s part of the school curriculum, and I see that as a critical component in our outreach effort to the community. We have a responsibility to the community in many ways, whether it’s law enforcement or education.

I recently announced that we would allocate a percentage of our net profits for grant money to programs involved in drug education. Community outreach and education are very important. There also needs to be some positive education. There is a clear understanding that children need to be educated about the misuse of cannabis, which is true. But they also need to be educated about the medical value of cannabis. For example, many in the medical community will acknowledge the benefits of cannabis as it relates to cancer patients, whether it is helping nausea, appetite, pain management or being used as a sleep aid. This is an important message that needs to be disseminated to children. How does it help your family member, friend or neighbor who is suffering from the effects of cancer? That is one of the messages that would be helpful for children to receive. We can address the impact of all drugs including cannabis on the developing brain; I understand and agree, and publicly support that in an educational context. I want to be part of the solution.

CIJ: What problems do you run into trying to open a cannabis business on the island?

Geoff: I received my provisional cultivation license in September of last year. Part of the issue is the fact that cultivation has to occur on the island. The Coast Guard regulates everything surrounding the island including all the ferries, or any watercraft.

As part of my provisional license, I am required to have an independent cannabis-testing laboratory on the island that will perform the requisite testing mandated by the state. I am currently in conversations with Ph.D. chemists consulting for the laboratory. I have had numerous conversations with lab directors in other parts of the state, including Proverde Labs and MCR Labs. The Coast Guard has stated that cannabis is a Schedule One substance and therefore any transport is illegal. Unfortunately the law is very specific and not exactly written with Martha’s Vineyard in mind.

Editor’s Note: If you have further questions relating to Patient Centric of Martha’s Vineyard, you can reach Geoff Rose at geoff@patientcentricmv.org