Hey folks! Welcome back to another (hopefully) thought-provoking edition of the Circa 1818 blog, where we help you stay in the know. A little while ago, I wrote a blog addressing how cannabis is tested and whether or not some of the cannabinoid levels that we’ve been seeing are being inflated or not. As we found in that prior blog, it does appear that some of the cannabis brands are inflating their numbers in order to keep up with the high THC craze that Ontario has been experiencing. Well, it appears that the government of Ontario agrees, cause they’re going to be rolling out a temporary third-party testing process for cannabis that is brough to the OCS. This means that anyone who has been fibbing about their potency is about to get caught red handed. So, this week we’re going to talk about what that means for the industry and what that means for you, our happy little cannabis consumers.
What this mean for the Industry
Everyone hates tests. Well almost everyone. I knew a girl in high school who always got excited when we had tests. While the rest of us were wondering how quickly we could develop fever symptoms in order to get sent home, there she’d be, sharpening her number two pencil with a gleam in her eye. You see, she always did really well in the tests, so it made sense that she looked forward to them, it was an opportunity for her to strut her stuff and show her achievements.
In much the same way, cannabis growers who have nothing to hide and have been doing their due diligence in terms of making sure that their flower is being tested using accurate methodology aren’t perturbed by the prospect of additional testing, cause it’s just going to confirm their claims and make them look awesome.
However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, those companies that have been fudging their numbers for the sake of competing with the high testing titans of the industry are going to be holding their thermometers up to their figurative lamps. Which is good for the industry! Accurate testing means more realistic THC levels which also means that growers can stop focusing on chasing high THC potency and focus on all of the other aspects of cannabis growth like terpenes and flavonoids.
What this means for you.
For you, the noble cannabis aficionado, this means only good things. It means that you will see more realistic THC numbers that reflect the truth about cannabis: THC is just a part of the whole. You’ll be shocked to learn that the 38% THC flower you’ve been smoking is actually closer to being 25%, but that will only help to open your eyes to the reality that quality of grow means so much more when it comes to experiencing cannabis than numbers on a label.
How did we get here?
Between you, me and the massive water cooler that is the internet, THC potency inflation only really became an issue because the OCS more or less demanded high THC flower from growers in order to accommodate what they thought the market wanted. This left many growers with little option but to begin to obfuscate their flowers potency levels in order to be able to list their product on the Ontario cannabis market. To put it bluntly, it’s another case of the government bodies overseeing the cannabis industry having little to no knowledge of how cannabis works. Things will get better though, and the additional testing that they’ve put forth is a good step in the right direction that will hopefully lead to improvements across the industry.
