What’s in your shoes? I mean, obviously your feet are in there. But what else do you think is in there? Rubber, plastic, foam, leather, canvas, cotton, nylon, rayon, elephant bits? Ok, probably no elephant bits–but it’s possible! What if some dude working the rubber vat wore his favorite elephant skin cap and, as he reached over to check something, that cap fell into the rubber vat, broke down, and dispersed throughout a batch of show-sole rubber? Dude, stuff like that isn’t unheard of. When we take things out of packages or off store shelves, we understand and experience them as new. Unless you’re neurotic, you probably don’t think about whose hands were on that frozen pizza before you pull it from the box. You just see a pristine pizza. That right there? That’s good shit. It’s the apex of our post-industrial, image-based society. Production is so refined that we’re able to remove the human hand. The same products turn up everywhere and anywhere, looking identical every time you buy them, with no indication whatsoever of human handling.

That’s how I live for the most part: ignorant to all of this, or at least ignoring it. With the medical marijuana industry, however, I’ve had a slightly different experience. Before working on farms, not once did I ever consider that my weed had been similarly processed. All those times I crumbled up weed, I never realized how many hands had touched it, and how many variables were uniquely configured before it reached me. On my first farm, all of that obliviousness was disbanded. All of a sudden I was in a room full of people wearing elephant skin hats all standing over their own personal rubber vat, stirring away. Hairs fall down, hands go unwashed, flowers fall on the ground–and that’s just the processing: cultivation’s a whole nother bunch of elephant bits. It’s like a little bubble in time, untouched by regulation.

When it comes to contemporary commerce, the marijuana industry’s in the dark ages. It’s never been regulated or taxed by government agencies. That means, unlike the inspected shoe factory, the marijuana farm that grows and processes your quaps isn’t monitored. That’s not to say there aren’t individuals with implicit–and sometimes explicit–standards, but the industry itself carries no stamp of approval. There are no explicit standards for maintaining safety, or quality. Instead, industry standards tend to serve the production of the flowers most likely to sell.

This isn’t some holy hippy land of free love and earth-conscious health-minded marijuana farmers. I’ve met a lot of great folks, but there are definitely some people who don’t give a fuck for anything but the money. They grow crops without care, they trim without regard, and they’re liable to do anything in the name of selling heavy flowers. Unfortunately for a lot of patients, there is no way to account for these variables of production and processing. There is no committee devoted to standards, and most medicine is packaged and sold with no indication of who grew and/or processed it. So, how does an industry with no standards and a historically hands-off relationship with regulatory agencies learn to change its ways? From the inside.

People in the industry need to decide what’s important. They must learn the existing standards in similar industries, and figure out how to develop their own. In the case of medical marijuana, the regulatory bodies we should defer to are the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the ISO (International Organization for Standardization), and the ELAP (Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program). The FDA and the EPA established standards for the acceptable levels of pesticides in the things we consume. Further, the FDA regulates the drugs available to citizens, so its regulations potentially affect cannabis twice: once as an agricultural product, and once as a drug. Meanwhile, the ELAP and the ISO regulate the laboratories responsible for performing tests that set FDA and EPA standards. Since the FDA won’t acknowledge medical marijuana as a legitimate industry, and thus will not issue standards for it, the industry must learn to test its product and regulate itself. This involves not only figuring out what to test for in the first place, but also finding a method for obtaining reliable results and standardizing. Already, testing labs are opening up to provide this service, but they’re not willing to tell anyone what they’re doing. As with much of this industry, they play their cards close to their chest and operate in secrecy.

That approach makes sense, because it made sense—which is not to say that it’s an effective way of doing things. Most of the older folks involved in this industry have been involved in it for quite some time. Starting out when they did, many who succeeded learned to be secretive, exposing as little information as possible. When the government is at war against you, you don’t go broadcasting strategies. Shit, you don’t broadcasting much of anything. No one tweets from the grow. You lay low, trust few, and share little. That’s how the majority of these businesses operate. I don’t criticize them for it; it’s their business to carry out as they please. Plus, they’re technically still considered enemies of the state in the War on Drugs. I do, however, see how this secretive behavior creates a gap between the industry and the rest of the world. As long as folks need to be anonymous and guard their practices, the rest of the country won’t accept the industry. As long as anonymity is key, there can be no accountability. With no accountability, standards are useless.

So, what happens next? Well, SC Labs happens. They’re a couple of young fellas who, thanks to the expertise of their University of Wisconsin-educated lab director, actually know how testing laboratories operate. Once SC steps in, they’ll begin filling in the gaps that separate the industry from the public. Already they’ve set to work analyzing what the FDA, the EPA, the ELAP, and the ISO look for, and started figuring out how meet those standards. As I’ve said, there’s very little guidance as far as industry standards and guidelines go. Right now, labs don’t perform the tests needed to form complete chemical profile of a marijuana specimen; they only test to see how much of a specific, indicated material is in a specimen. So, let’s say someone is using an obscure chemical to treat a mite infestation. Unless the testing lab knows to test for that obscure chemical, it will go unnoticed. It’s simply not a viable option then to proceed and do things in a pot-head fashion. You can’t just say, “Oh we did some tests, and trust us, our tests were sufficient: this bud is safe dudes.” Any claims that FDA guidelines are being followed would be preposterous, if not downright illegal. What good does it do to follow FDA guidelines for pesticide levels in agricultural food products when marijuana is smoked? Is that even relevant?

While they’ve got a strategy for establishing standards, SC Labs has little in the way of guidance. Before SC, there was Steep Hill, a lab that does little to nothing to validate their results. They refuse to disclose their testing methods, and yet expect the rest of the world to trust them. Meanwhile, the rest of the world looks at them and says, “What are these guys thinking? What if the lab testing infant formula said ‘Just trust us?’” That they’re considered the forerunner certainly speaks to Steep Hill’s dedication, and the fact that they’ve done good things. At this point, the country watching, we can’t do shit stoner style anymore. No one trusts anyone in commerce. Even if you want to give something away you still have to comply with guidelines. This is serious business, and SC Labs realize that. They’re stepping forward, doing the research, jumping through the hoops. Today they’re on their way to surpassing Steep Hill and leading the way for the industry. They’ve made it their priority to get acceptance by the ELAP, and the ISO, which are the right places to start. See, they can meet both the ISO’s internationally recognized standards, and the ELAP’s Californian standards because neither organization is part of the United States Federal Government. The opposite would never be true, even if the FDA and EPA wanted to regulate the medical marijuana industry. First things first: get your lab right.

By gaining these accreditations, it means that any result produced by the lab is scientifically sound and acceptable to scientists and regulatory agencies. That’s step one. The second step is determining what they should be looking for. SC Labs is equipped to perform a number of different tests utilizing HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromography), Gas Chromotography, and Mass Spectrometer readings. These testing methods measure different things. The parameters that SC Labs tests for are potency and composition of cannabinoids, and contaminants. So, they’re testing on one part to comply with what would ostensibly be FDA drug guidelines, and on the other hand they’re testing for what would ostensibly be EPA and FDA agricultural guidelines. They’re also going to be doing general research inquiries because their lab’s goal is to breakdown and unlock the plant. This means that the info they amass will be relevant to medical and industrial researchers.

As responsible citizens, the folks behind SC Labs are stepping up. They’ve found an area where government hasn’t provided regulations, knowing that many in the industry aren’t practicing safe standards. Further, they’re catering to the increasing demand for data on cannabis itself, what it is, and what it does. And because they’re subjecting themselves to the standards of accepted regulatory agencies, scientists will take their findings seriously. They are setting themselves up to be a vertically integrated marijuana laboratory that can fulfill the testing needs of various sectors within the industry–and they’re doing it under the guidelines of respected regulatory agencies. So, while the struggle for right and wrong may continue perpetually, SC Labs is stepping forward to ensure that medicine is safe and to begin unraveling the mysteries of this still-secret plant.

ZACH G. MOLDOF

WEED DEALINGS – SWEETLEAF