Politics
Measurement Standards Group To Vote On Adding Cannabis Moisture Loss Proposal To Federal Handbook
Members at this year’s annual meeting of the National Conference of Weights and Measures (NCWM) are set to vote this week on a proposal concerning acceptable moisture loss in cannabis plant material, a limit meant to protect patients and consumers from buying packages that weigh less than advertised. If the item it approved, it will be added to a federal standards handbook.
The proposal would provide national guidance to both hemp and marijuana markets despite marijuana remaining illegal at the federal level.
Set for a vote at NCWM’s annual meeting on Wednesday, the plan would establish a 3 percent tolerance limit for moisture in cannabis, allowing the net weight of cannabis packages to fall slightly as the result of moisture loss.
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,” Charlie Rutherford, co-chair of NCWM’s Cannabis Task Group, told Marijuana Moment in an email.
The proposal is aimed at accounting for moisture loss that occurs after marijuana and hemp material is harvested. If it passes at this week’s meeting, the guidance would be published in January in a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) handbook on packaged goods.
“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.”
National Conference on Weights and Measures
The 3 percent number is not only consistent with moisture variances that apply to other materials but also aligns with California rules, the 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 says. “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.”
NIST for its part, said in an executive summary about the change that it’s “not opposed to this item however there are some significant issues that need to be addressed before this item is ready for adoption.”
Noting comments from Walter Brent Wilson, a NIST research scientist who often handles cannabis issues, the agency encouraged a broader market sample of cannabis products over a more extended study period. The study cited by CBWM, Wilson said, covered a 12-week period, but “cannabis can be stored for significantly longer periods of time prior to sale.”
Wilson also noted that package type could affect moisture loss, noting the “direct correlation between moisture loss or gain and how well a seal can be made with a particular type of packaging material.” Glass containers seem to retain more moisture, NIST said, and “therefore, it should not be included in this 3% moisture allowance.”
NIST also recommended that NCWM’s Cannabis Task Group reach out to the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp (ATACH) to better determine “where the industry is on this topic.”
ATACH sent a letter in April in support of “a clear and standardized moisture allowance,” saying it would “enable cannabis businesses to maintain best distribution practices while aligning with regulatory expectations” as well as “facilitate a more uniform regulatory landscape across jurisdictions, enhancing compliance and enforcement efforts.”
If the plan is approved, at this week’s NCWM meeting, which began on Sunday and runs through Thursday, it could still see minor changes before being inserted into the NIST handbook on packaged goods, Rutherford explained to Marijuana Moment. NIST, he added, is a technical advisor and nonvoting member of NCWM.
NCWM members also considered taking up the issue of a universal label for cannabis products 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.”
“The withdrawn item was a proposal for establishing a universal intoxicating symbol,” he said. “I brought it into the process, but as expected, it was voted down by the Cannabis Task Group because it’s outside the scope of what NCWM does.”
Another item considered for this meeting has to do with what types of scales are appropriate for weighing cannabis products, but that matter is 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.
This story has been updated to reference the ATACH letter regarding the moisture guideline.
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Photo courtesy of National Institute of Standards and Technology.
