The drug has become a corner store industry worth billions of dollars in just a few short years because of the changes in legislation.
Entrepreneurs, banks, advertisers, and public officials struggle to find common ground on the kinds of red tape that are necessary for striking a balance between safety and profit as this rapid rise has had its teething problems.
According to a study led by researchers from the University of Colorado, one area of the market in desperate need of an update is regulation over the way we label our weed.
It is a small detail that we might take for granted when it comes to our weekly shopping. Laws governing the sale and marketing of food mean that when we pick up a pack of cookies, we won't find them full of cheese-flavor crackers.
We can read a nutrition guide on the packaging that tells us how much sugar the product contains, or whether it might harbor substances we're allergic to.
Is it for pot? Not much.
A farmer cannot just pick up an apple and call it Red Delicious. A beer manufacturer cannot just label their product a DoubleIPA. There are standards. Nick Jikomes, co-author and director of science and innovation from the cannabis marketplace Leafly.com, says that is not the case.
Jikomes worked with a team of researchers to analyze over 87,000 marijuana samples from six US states.
Terpenes can influence the way cannabis affects a person's body.
Different kinds of marijuana are usually set apart by cannabinoids. For cannabis to be considered a plant, it must have less than a third of the amount of cannabinoid in it.
The chemical group that interacts with the endocannabinoid system is critical to the effects of the products. The effects of the two renowned Cannabis types are said to be caused by differences in levels of individual compounds.
It is believed that combinations of these and other plant chemicals work together to give the desired effects of weed.
Ideally, consumers would have a sound idea of the ingredients in their particular strain, cultivar, or brand of weed.
This is not necessarily the case. When it came to the types of terpene they contained, samples were categorized into three different categories. It is difficult to identify what you will get based on this classification alone, because none of these correspond to the same labels.
If you need to pack up and move state, a good dispensary might not know your products, leaving consumers to rely on consistencies in strains.
According to the researchers, most of the strains of cannabis were the same regardless of where they were sold.
There was more consistency among strains than I had expected. Jikomes says that it tells him that the cultivators may not be getting enough credit.
It's one thing to give credit to cultivars for self-regulation. Ensuring consumer protection is one thing.
A national approach to regulating and marketing marijuana might be more pressing now that a bill to end a federal ban on cannabis is moving through the US House of Representatives.
Having the same kind of confidence in knowing what is in your weed as you do your beer, bread, or even aspirin could be a major first step.
The prevailing labeling system is not an effective or safe way to provide information about these products, says co-author Brian Keegan, an assistant professor of Information Science at Colorado University Boulder.
This is a real challenge for an industry that is trying to professionalize itself.
The research was published in a journal.
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