Other
February 4, 2024 - Threat, Distract, and Discredit: cannabis industry rhetoric to defeat regulation of high THC cannabis products in Washington State, USA. The authors (Carlini, B. H., Kellum, L. B., Garrett, S. B., & Nims, L. N. 2024) analyzed the recordings of 41 pro-industry officials from three hearings in Washington State’s House Commerce and Gaming Committee (2020, 2021 and 2023) and one work session of the committee (2020) concerning THC concentration/potency regulations (e.g., potency caps, potency-based taxation, and age-based potency restrictions). Recordings were coded by the authors for agreed-upon topics and these topics were reviewed to identify overarching themes.
Three such themes were identified and used by cannabis industry officials to oppose THC content regulation.
1. Threat. As the most common theme, this involved threats to economic benefits, public health, and the will of the people.
2. Distraction. By introducing a tangential topic, this tactic sought to distract from the bill’s focus.
3. Discrediting. The focus of this approach was to discredit the science that supported regulation of high THC concentration products or to those advocating for regulations.
The paper’s Discussion section is a fascinating read. One segment (pp. 17-18) caught this reviewer’s eye:
“Planting doubt by nit-picking evidence-in-the- making is central, discrediting even the most salient findings. For instance, in 2020, WA state scientists produced a brief report and a consensus statement about health risks of high THC products, given the increasing availability of these products in the state (Prevention Research Subcommittee Cannabis Concentration Workgroup, 2020). They concluded that available research consistently showed a dose-response relationship between THC concentration in cannabis products and adverse health effects. The caveat of this conclusion was that most studies selected were conducted before the recent widespread availability of products with 40-90% THC and typically compared THC content of less than 10% vs. higher than 10%, defining it as “high potency” cannabis. However, the authors of this report adhered to the precautionary principle that emphasizes that, when serious harms are indicated but scientific uncertainty still exists, decisions must be resolved in favor of prevention of such harms (Goldstein, 2001). Maybe not surprisingly, the limitation of these findings has been repeatedly used by cannabis industry actors to invalidate the dose-response argument that is central to such reports, by strangely arguing the comparison of cannabis concentration in these studies are not valid given that current products are much more concentrated than 10% THC.”
-Reviewed by KCW.
May 6, 2023 - A Tale of Two Cities: Racialized Arrests Following Decriminalization and Recreational Legalization of Cannabis. The study authors (Joshi et al. 2023) examined the impact of changing legal status on arrest disparities by obtaining publicly available deidentified cannabis arrest data from the District of Columbia (D.C.) Metropolitan Police Department (2012-2019) and Los Angeles (L.A.) Police Department (2010-2019).
They compared the differences in average monthly cannabis arrest rates for each city and each outcome (possession, possession with intent to distribute, distribution, and public consumption) across racial groups.
The main findings from this comparison of Washington DC and Los Angeles was that post-decriminalization and post-legalization there was a reduction in the absolute arrest disparity for illegal cannabis-related possessions. Yet in Los Angeles, the relative disparity of arrests increased (proportionally more Blacks arrested). Also, in both cities there was an increase in the number of arrests for public consumption.
March 29, 2023 - Association of Recreational Cannabis Legalization With Cannabis Possession Arrest Rates in the US. The authors (Gunadi & Shi, 2022) used a repeated cross-sectional design to assess during 2010-2019 the association of arrest rates in recreational cannabis legalization (RCL) states that had or had not decriminalized cannabis before RCL. This association also examined subgroups for age (adults vs youths) and race (Black vs White).
As predicted, RCL was associated with a sizable reduction in cannabis possession arrests among adults. There was a greater reduction in states that had not already decriminalized cannabis compared to states that had decriminalized cannabis before RCL. The passage of legislation to recreationalize cannabis was not associated with changes in arrest rates among youths, nor changes in disparities in arrest rates among Black and White individuals.
November 30, 2022 - Impact of Cannabis-infused Edibles on Public Safety and Regulation. The National Institute of Justice funded a study (Peralt et al., 2022) evaluating the THC content of hemp-derived products from 5 online stores. Analyses indicated that of the 53 samples examined, 49 were incorrectly labeled as hemp because they technically fit the federal classification of cannabis. The article provides action items for law enforcement officials in light of the mislabeling of hemp-derived products.
Thanks to Don Marose for providing this article.
October 27, 2022 - Comparison of State-Level Regulations for Cannabis Contaminants and Implications for Public Health. The aim of this study was to “assess the current landscape of state-level cannabis contaminant regulations”. The researchers examined the regulatory documents for medical and recreational cannabis in all legalized U.S. jurisdictions and catalogued a complete list of regulated contaminants, namely, pesticides, inorganics, solvents, microbes, and mycotoxins. They also examined the compliance testing records of ~ 6% of 5,654 cured flower and 3,760 extract samples from California’s legal cannabis production in 2020–2021. Finally, the researchers reviewed the publicly available medical cannabis use reports to tabulate the susceptible patient populations.
The study’s main findings were the following:
1. As of 18 May 2022, 36 states and the District of Columbia listed a total of 679 cannabis contaminants as regulated in medical or recreational cannabis, including 551 pesticides, 74 solvents, 12 inorganics, 21 microbes, 5 mycotoxins, and 16 other contaminants. Jurisdictions varied significantly regarding regulated contaminants and action levels.
2. A failure rate of 2.3% was identified for flowers and 9.2% for extracts in the California samples. Insecticides and fungicides were the most prevalent categories of detected contaminants, with chlorpyrifos (insecticide) and boscalid (fungicide) being the most common.
3. The contaminant concentrations fell below the regulatory action levels in many legalized jurisdictions, indicating both a high risk of undetected contaminant exposure and the need to revise regulatory action levels.
4. Cannabis use reports indicated usage in several patient populations susceptible to contamination toxicity, including cancer (44,318) and seizure (21,195) patients.
The authors' main conclusion is that “this study demonstrates the urgent need to mitigate the public health risk of cannabis contamination by introducing national-level guidelines based on conventional risk assessment methodologies and knowledge of patients’ susceptibility in medical use.”
June 5, 2022 - Cannabidiol (CBD) Product Contamination of THC in Commercially Available CBD products. The study investigators sought to document the potential problem that “regulation has not kept pace with the growth of the hemp-derived CBD market.” The researchers obtained local and national brands of hemp-derived oil products; some were purchased via online and some from local retailers in central Kentucky. Samples were analyzed for THC levels by liquid-chromatography tandem mass-spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) using a validated method.
Among the 80 samples, more than half (52) of the samples had detectable THC levels (ranging from <1% to ~2% THC level). Among those 21 products labeled as “THC-free”, 5 contained detectable levels of THC, although all of these had THC levels well below 1%.
As the authors note, detectable THC levels in a CBD user may have adverse health impacts, as well as creating unintended consequences in terms of “employment, military, and sport eligibility status.”
May 24, 2022 - The phytochemical diversity of commercial Cannabis in the United States. Commercially sold cannabis contains dozens of chemical compounds with potential psychoactive or medicinal effects. The legal Cannabis industry heavily markets products to consumers based on widely used labeling systems purported to predict the effects of different “strains.”
The authors analyzed the cannabinoid and terpene (compounds found in the cannabis plant that impacts smell and may influence psychoactive effects) content of commercial Cannabis samples across six US states.
By comparing the observed phytochemical diversity to the commercial labels commonly attached to Cannabis-derived product samples, it was found that commercial labels do not consistently align with the observed chemical diversity.
September 27, 2019: Contribution of Marijuana Legalization to the U.S. Opioid Mortality Epidemic. Opioid mortality data obtained from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were used to compare opioid death rate trends in each marijuana-legalizing state and D.C. before and after medicinal and recreational legalization implementation. 78% had evidence for a statistically-significant acceleration of opioid death rates after marijuana legalization implementation at greater rates than their pre-legalization rate or the concurrent composite rate in non-legalizing states.
January 7, 2019: Did Marijuana Legalization Really Increase Homicide Rates?