In 2009, I worked for a corporation. During the economic downturn, the CEO promised no one would get laid off. However, my boss offended someone resulting in his reassignment. As his new role didn’t allow for a subordinate, they let me go instead!
I contemplated starting a business analyzing cannabis for potency as many hundreds of entrepreneurs had started dispensaries, legal or otherwise. I received a phone call from Michael, the head of a chain of Los Angeles dispensaries called The Farmacy. He had gotten my number from a mutual friend. We talked briefly to arrange a meeting. I thought that I might negotiate a relationship between my prospective company and Michael’s enterprise. In the meeting, however, I found out that Michael wanted to hire me to operate his still boxed chemical analyzer!
Though taken aback, I needed work and the major recession eliminated most conventional job offerings. The Farmacy owned a kitchen where they made THC-laced cookies, lollipops, and butter. The Agilent brand GCMS (gas chromatograph with mass spectrometer) worked well, and I developed a program to isolate the various cannabinoids.
I enjoyed preparing the samples which exuded the most hypnotc aromas. I developed my own protocols including using standards based on prescription Dronabinol. Dronabinol consists of gel caps containing synthetic THC in sesame seed oil. I still crow that I became the first professional private cannabis scientist in California, and the first to operate a GC-MS for this purpose. San Francisco’s Steephill Lab had a similar machine, but couldn’t get the mass spec to operate, severely limiting their capability.
Besides providing potency analysis, the machine enabled the kitchen to produce the first edibles which had a known strength of THC. We even got a favorable review from Dennis Hopper before he succumbed to cancer.
Heady times (!!) that I much enjoyed as new discoveries emerged every other week! One time, an analysis of concentrate yielded the rare delta-8-THC. It turned out that the chemist had allowed the extract to over-react to the acid used in the conversion process. No one knew much about delta-8-THC in those days other that it didn’t work as well as delta-9-THC.
Looking at cannabis fragrance molecules, the terpenes, these could only be seen as tiny bumps along the baseline ahead of the THC. The testing revealed that each strain (or cultivar) had a particular set of these bumps. While very distinctive to the nose, the amounts were much, much lower than the THC or even other cannabinoids. Based on this, I concluded that the terpenes were far too weak to have a physiological effect. That truth remains suppressed to this day.
Everyone still makes so much fuss over these terpenes as guiding the type of high. Perhaps certain terpenes come with potent minor cannabinoids which could have such guiding effects.
At that time, CBD had just developed into a topic as people reported various beneficial effects. In the literature, so-called Indica varieties of cannabis were touted as helping insomnia. Thus, The Farmacy began to collect Indica samples for my analysis. Indica plants tended to be shorter with broader leaves than those of Sativa. Whether hemp, Indica or Sativa, it is all cannabis and not separate species.
However, while the literature said Indica had a lot of CBD, the analyses of the samples revealed that the Indica specimens had a lot, or mostly THC, rather than CBD. This meant that growers had bred the CBD out of the Indica cultivars! The industry heads mulled over my discovery and decided to start the “CBD Project”. The CBD Project then developed strategies to recover the production of CBD either from the few CBD-bearing Indicas, but also from hemp.
From there, the production of CBD from hemp became a multi-billion-dollar industry providing enormous medical benefits to millions. I feel privileged to have played a small role in this process. However, many more cannabinoids remain untested for their effects and those that do reveal ever more applications and benefits. We have a lot more work to do… ///