Edible marijuana products, such as these cakes, may contain more or less THC than their labels indicate.WIKIMEDIA, STAS2KIn US states where marijuana has been legalized—either for medicinal or recreational purposes—foods, drinks, and candies containing tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound in weed, have become very popular. But buyers beware: in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association yesterday (June 23), researchers show that only 17 percent of 75 the edible medical marijuana products they tested had labels that accurately reported the amount of THC they contained.
Twenty three percent of the products, which were purchased in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, contained more THC than their labels reported, and 60 percent contained less. “We need a more accurate picture of what’s being offered to patients,” Donald Abrams, hematology and oncology chief at San Francisco General Hospital who was not involved in the new study, told The New York Times. “What we have now in this country is an unregulated medical marijuana industry, due to conflicts between state and federal laws.” Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine behavioral scientist Ryan Vandrey, who was first author on the study, agreed. “We don’t have the kind of quality assurance for edibles that we have for any other medicine.”
Mislabeling edible cannabis products—consumed by ...
