Aurora, CO: Commercially available cannabis products often possess lower concentrations of THC than what is advertised on the products’ labels, according to an analysis published in the journal PLOS One.
Researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health and Stanford University in California assessed the accuracy of product labeling in 74 items purchased from Colorado dispensaries.
Consistent with prior research, many products’ labels made “claims that were significantly different than the values observed” following independent analytical testing. Specifically, labels for herbal and edible cannabis products typically overinflated the products’ THC concentrations, with herbal cannabis products containing the greatest inaccuracies.
“We found that across product types (flower, edibles, concentrates), there were differences between labeled and lab-tested THC concentrations, with a pattern that packages reported higher THC levels than were found in products,” the study’s authors concluded. “This systematic pattern of over-labeling cannabis products found by our study and others suggest that differences between product labels and observed THC may not just be biological variability. Rather, they reflect systematic forces and incentives in the marketplace, which lead to over-labeling. With rescheduling on the horizon, it is imperative to strategize ways to incentivize federal regulators (like the FDA) to create cannabis label requirements. In lieu of federal regulation, it is necessary to engage state-level regulators to facilitate the evolution of policy that requires cannabis labels to be reliable and accurate.”
Full text of the study, “Commercial cannabis product testing: Fidelity to labels and regulations,” appears in PLOS One.