Cannabis Sample Collection: A Collection of Case Studies

Presented by Shannon Swantek, Enlightened Quality
Contact Information: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The cannabis industry is known for being new, disruptive, and very immature. The challenges are derived from the nature of its entrance into our market. Target compounds that were previously illegal to possess are now being studied and formulated into thousands of unique products under dozens of different regulatory structures world-wide. Cannabis and cannabis-derived products are being marketed as pharmaceutical, agricultural, therapeutic, and/or recreational. This makes it difficult to assign the appropriate regulatory oversight on a high level and to choose appropriate references and methods from mature parallel industries when drilled down.

The analytical testing challenges, from a financially motivated customer-base to variable product quality, have already become the spotlight of the industry’s woes. The industry supply chain lacks controls from harvest to manufacturing, meaning the products are often not homogenous within a batch or from batch to batch. This presentation will explore the challenges and considerations of approaching cannabis sample collection in pre-harvest hemp, batches of cured flower, process-control sampling, off-the-shelf consumer safety testing, and in lots of finished cannabis products.

The varying drivers and goals of reaching a “representative” sample will be explored and the “one-size-fits-all” model of other industry sampling will be established as inadequate. The need for statistical design and critical thinking, as should be applied with every sampling event, will be clearly shown to be the most essential piece of obtaining any analytical results in these matrices.