The Dosing Project Story, Part 5
Cannabis Scientific Underwriting
Does the Cannabis Industry need scientific underwriting? It’s a redundant question. Let’s count the ways. The multi-billion-dollar Cannabis industry has flooded the market with new, yet poorly validated Cannabis products. Many of these newer products are introduced into the marketplace without legacy data to support their safety. Isomers of THC, like delta-8 or delta-10, can be produced as Hemp to side-step state and federal THC restrictions. Government departments and the media have raised concerns about the safety of high potency Cannabis products. Despite the safety concerns, there is good news. Congress may finally pass the SAFE Banking Act. The move will introduce mainstream banking services and allow a more mature industry to validate products. Banking and insurance due diligence will likely direct the need for product certification.
Cannabis Science is an exciting and relatively new field. Scientific explorations of Cannabis have ranged from contributions to original science (e.g., the discovery of the endocannabinoid system) to investigations from the cognitive mind to the psychedelic experience. Applying the collective wisdom of the Cannabis-using community, the CESC does its part to certify community-accessible Cannabis products. Our approach incorporates five selected integral steps into the scientific underwriting of any Cannabis product.
The CESC believes in assessing outcomes based on a realistic potency analysis of Cannabis product actives. This entails using bioassays, such as those routinely used in pharmacology and biotechnology, that permit the assessment of potency quantified by both actual activities and by weight-based analytics currently used in the industry. The appropriate bioassay describes potency as International Units (IU) with metrics that can be standardized worldwide. The approach considers a broad spectrum of actives and answers questions about the relative potencies of various cannabinoid isomers, increasingly finding their way into the marketplace.
Process Control Charting permits the assessment of product variances obtained through 3rd party testing services and helps to ensure batch-to-batch consistency. Control Charts were created about a century
ago by Walter Shewhart and implemented early on at the Motorola corporation. This statistical quality control technique is used to determine whether a measurement or manufacturing process is in control and can be used to interpret trends needing correction. The Control Charts are foundational to Six Sigma analysis and a key element of the ISO 17025 standard.
The Flight Concept derives from an in-depth CESC analysis of Cannabis chemotypes carried out over the last decade. Flights permit a categorical correlation of product effect and safety outcomes with defined Cannabis flowers. This approach is fundamental to predictable outcome models for all Cannabis product categories. The long view of the Cannabis industry necessitates scientific underwriting to mitigate the risks of evolving products.
Proper characterization, categorization, stratification, and correlation enable the certification of Cannabis with batch-to-batch comparisons. Potency Bioassays Process Control Charting and Flight Concepts are several corrective approaches used by CESC in evaluating safety and efficacy. The CESCunderwrites Cannabis products with a scientific approach to solving safety and efficacy questions intrinsic to the accessibility and liability of products in the marketplace.
The CESC is a non-profit organization that relies on community support for its ongoing investigations.
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For more information visit the CESC at www.thecesc.org.
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