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Measurement Standards Group Approves New Federal Marijuana Guideline On Moisture Loss To Make Sure Consumers Aren’t Ripped Off

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Members of the National Conference of Weights and Measures (NCWM) voted on Wednesday to approved a proposal governing allowable moisture loss in cannabis products, a change that is aimed largely at ensuring patients and consumers aren’t sold products that weigh less than advertised.

The newly approved policy, which will be added to a federal handbook and provide national guidance to both hemp and marijuana markets despite marijuana remaining illegal at the federal level, says that products can lose up to 3 percent of their weight as the result of moisture loss. It’s a recognition that some plant material may dry out during shipping or storage but that purchasers still deserve their full purchase.

“In the retail Cannabis trade, insufficient attention and guidance is given to moisture migration in or out of some Cannabis packaging,” the item on the NCWM agenda says, “and as a result, the contents of some Cannabis flower packaging have been found to be underweight, resulting in the patient/consumer paying for weight they are not actually receiving.”

In Oregon, for example, “underweight complaints are the #1 consumer complaint,” according to the agenda’s original justification for the proposal. “For the fairness and safety of Cannabis consumers,” it says, a weight variance “based on enforcement of acceptable moisture ranges needs to be established.”

Following NCWM’s approval at the group’s annual meeting Wednesday, the new guideline is expected to published in January in a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) handbook on packaged goods. NIST is a technical advisor and nonvoting member of NCWM.

“I’m so impressed by the dedication of the conference and their recognition that cannabis should be treated like any other commodity,” Charlie Rutherford, co-chair of NCWM’s Cannabis Task Group, told Marijuana Moment in an email.

The 3 percent threshold is similar to that for other products, like flour or dry pasta, though the cannabis proposal would allow only moisture loss, not absorption of moisture that would increase net weight. “As written, there would be no limit to going over the declared weight of the package,” Rutherford said earlier this week.

He also said that while some minor details be adjusted prior to publication by NIST, the guideline is likely to remain substantially the same.

The American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp (ATACH), which wrote a letter in favor of the moisture loss proposal, applauded the new change.

“This work may come across as esoteric to the casual observer, but it is foundational and historic becaues it requires the federal government to recognize the determination of cannabis standards and regulation,” Michael Bronstein, the group’s president, said in a statement, “which will eventually form the background for national legalization and trade.”

“Like NCWM does for every other industry where products are sold by weight,” ATACH added, “regulators now have a standard which allows them to ensure that consumers are being treated fairly.”

The 3 percent number is not only consistent with moisture variances that apply to other materials but also aligns with California rules, the NCWM agenda document says.

“Some Cannabis is very susceptible to environmental conditions easily losing or gaining moisture with consequences impacting net quantity, degredation of active cannabinoids, and/or microbial proliferation depending on the situation,” the proposal said. “These are just some of the reasons there are many concerns and uncertainty surrounding the moisture allowance of Cannabis.”

The 3 percent variance allowance—which Rutherford said is better thought of as an “established gray area” than a limit—”isn’t a free pass to package flower at 97.1% of the declared weight,” he said.

CBWM “expects zero deviation on weight,” he said, adding: “The ‘allowance’ or ‘gray area’ is taken in context during the package inspection. For instance, for a package inspected 2 weeks after packaging, losing a couple % in weight while on the shelf could be viewed as allowable. On the other hand, if a package is a couple % low moments after packaging, it would warrant further investigation. If a package is outside the allowance/gray, then a total stop sale could happen.”

NCWM members also considered taking up the issue of a universal label for cannabis products at the meeting but ultimately decided against it.

While several groups have pushed for a universal label for cannabis products in the past, some at NCWM who considered the proposal noted that members weren’t qualified to consider the health-related aspects of the proposal.

Rutherford told Marijuana Moment that the proposal is “permanently dead.”

Another item considered for potential action has to do with what types of scales are appropriate for weighing cannabis products, but that matter was not scheduled for a vote at this year’s meeting.

At its annual meeting last year, NCWM added two new cannabis items to a federal standards handbook—one establishing a definition for cannabis and another dealing with the “water activity” of bulk, unprocessed plant matter.

In 2022, NCWM focused on cannabis potency measurement, packaging, labeling and other issues related to products derived from the plant.

How to reliably test marijuana and hemp have increasingly become key issues nationally, resulting both from the legalization of hemp in 2018 and the growing number of states with legal marijuana markets.

Earlier this month, NIST released a new report as part of a project designed to help testing laboratories ensure accuracy and precision in testing cannabis products. The report focuses on determining cannabinoid content in plant material samples, following earlier reports on moisture content and certain toxins and heavy metals.

NIST also this month announced that it’s begun selling a cannabis reference material aimed at helping testing laboratories more reliably determine the potency and purity of marijuana and hemp. But the material isn’t cheap, with 4.5 grams of the stuff on offer for $783.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also recently clarified that as far as it’s concerned, that threshold includes not only delta-9 THC itself but also the related cannabinoid THCA, which is converted into delta-9 THC when heated—a process known as decarboxylation.

Lawmakers at the state and federal levels have also begun looking at standards for delta-8 THC, a psychoactive compound commonly derived from hemp products. Some congressional legalization, meanwhile, would ban most consumable hemp-based cannabinoid products entirely.

Already many products sold as hemp meet the federal definition of marijuana. A NIST analysis earlier this year found that the vast majority of smokable hemp product samples–about 93 percent—contained more than 0.3 percent THC.

As law enforcement works to better distinguish hemp and marijuana, separate federally funded research published earlier this year detailed two new ways researchers say they’ve discovered to test samples.

Democratic Party Touts Biden Marijuana Reform Actions, But Declines To Endorse Decriminalization, In 2024 Platform

Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.

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Ben Adlin, a senior editor at Marijuana Moment, has been covering cannabis and other drug policy issues professionally since 2011. He was previously a senior news editor at Leafly, an associate editor at the Los Angeles Daily Journal and a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. He lives in Washington State.

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