Bridging the Gap Between Regulations and Science

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Analytical Cannabis

For many industries, the journey from regulations to testing is fairly straightforward due the standardization of testing methodologies and best practices guidelines. For the burgeoning new cannabis industry, these traditional guidelines simply do not exist and the regulatory landscape itself is constantly changing and evolving. The inconsistency and sometimes inadequacy of testing regulations as well as some very short deadlines for alterations pose significant challenges for analytical method development and validation. Analytical method development, when done appropriately, is a time-consuming process that requires a substantial amount of capital and personnel resources. This presentation outlines some of the challenges in bridging that gap between regulatory requirements and analytical method development. Scenarios in which specific regulatory alterations have required laboratories to adopt new instrumentation as well as new methodologies in a very short amount of time will be covered. Including, the real-world problems associated with the abbreviated timeline between development work and implementation in production. This talk will also address the overall impact of inconsistent regulations on testing laboratories and the cannabis supply chain. Finally, strategies that allow testing laboratories to have flexibility in responding to changes and developments in regulatory requirements will be discussed.