1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,840 Welcome to the Cannabis Data Science Meetup Group. 2 00:00:07,840 --> 00:00:10,480 Couldn't be happier to have you here today. 3 00:00:10,480 --> 00:00:17,160 Got two giant sets of cannabis data, tons of insights there. 4 00:00:17,160 --> 00:00:19,640 Just going to be doing summary statistics 5 00:00:19,640 --> 00:00:21,880 and see where that takes us. 6 00:00:21,880 --> 00:00:26,440 I've got a couple hypotheses that I want to run by you 7 00:00:26,440 --> 00:00:31,200 and suggest that we maybe explore them in more in depth. 8 00:00:34,880 --> 00:00:40,400 Before I do that, we'd love to maybe hear any of your input. 9 00:00:40,400 --> 00:00:44,960 So basically, I've been wrangling this Maryland lab 10 00:00:44,960 --> 00:00:48,760 result data and the Washington lab result data. 11 00:00:48,760 --> 00:00:54,360 And today, we can look at some of the major cannabinoids, 12 00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:58,320 so the distribution of THC, CBD, of course. 13 00:00:58,320 --> 00:01:02,760 Maryland's interesting because they also have terpenes. 14 00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:07,160 And I went down the heavy metal rabbit hole 15 00:01:07,160 --> 00:01:11,160 because that was one that I don't think we've been down. 16 00:01:11,160 --> 00:01:14,480 We've collected the heavy metal data in Washington state, 17 00:01:14,480 --> 00:01:17,240 and we just glanced at it, saw, oh, there's 18 00:01:17,240 --> 00:01:18,880 a handful of detections. 19 00:01:18,880 --> 00:01:22,160 Nothing looks like it's over the limit. 20 00:01:22,160 --> 00:01:24,080 Let's move on. 21 00:01:24,080 --> 00:01:26,800 So that's all the time I spent on that. 22 00:01:26,800 --> 00:01:28,680 But Maryland's interesting because it 23 00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:33,560 gives us another sight on heavy metal detections 24 00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:34,920 in another state. 25 00:01:34,920 --> 00:01:37,080 So I thought it was worthwhile to at least take 26 00:01:37,080 --> 00:01:38,760 another look real quick. 27 00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:41,080 But that's the rabbit hole I went down. 28 00:01:41,080 --> 00:01:45,480 Before I drone on about this, Yasha, 29 00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:48,500 you have any thoughts that you want to add to this? 30 00:01:48,500 --> 00:01:50,000 Any perspectives? 31 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:51,520 Anything I'm missing? 32 00:01:51,520 --> 00:01:53,440 Anything you want to add? 33 00:01:53,440 --> 00:01:58,120 Very interested in what you have to say. 34 00:01:58,120 --> 00:02:00,000 Heavy metals, I think, is extremely 35 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:02,920 valuable to look at because it could lead to major problems 36 00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:05,080 if it's not detected. 37 00:02:08,280 --> 00:02:09,120 I'm very curious. 38 00:02:09,120 --> 00:02:10,700 One thing, of course, to take into account 39 00:02:10,700 --> 00:02:16,400 is whether the action limits are different in the two states 40 00:02:16,400 --> 00:02:21,080 and whether the two data sets both have just passed fail 41 00:02:21,080 --> 00:02:23,000 or whether they're quantified of how much 42 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:26,080 of each metal is found. 43 00:02:26,080 --> 00:02:30,600 But I'm honestly really excited to see what you have. 44 00:02:30,600 --> 00:02:33,120 I love that that's what you're asking for because I 45 00:02:33,120 --> 00:02:35,600 knew that data point was going to be needed. 46 00:02:35,600 --> 00:02:38,920 And at the last minute, I went and grabbed it. 47 00:02:38,920 --> 00:02:43,120 And they turn out to be interesting. 48 00:02:43,120 --> 00:02:45,440 So I'll tease that. 49 00:02:45,440 --> 00:02:49,280 But basically, the Washington limits 50 00:02:49,280 --> 00:02:53,560 look like they're so high that you'll never hit them. 51 00:02:53,560 --> 00:02:55,160 And then there's some interesting things 52 00:02:55,160 --> 00:02:58,080 about the Maryland limits that we'll get to. 53 00:02:58,080 --> 00:03:01,360 So teaser, super interesting stuff 54 00:03:01,360 --> 00:03:04,800 coming down the pipeline. 55 00:03:04,800 --> 00:03:06,600 How about you, Candice? 56 00:03:06,600 --> 00:03:09,800 I think we're about to dive into the data. 57 00:03:09,800 --> 00:03:13,320 But is there anything that you want to put on the table 58 00:03:13,320 --> 00:03:14,880 before we begin? 59 00:03:14,880 --> 00:03:18,440 Well, interesting about the heavy metals 60 00:03:18,440 --> 00:03:21,120 because I just posted an article talking 61 00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:25,600 about how they're discovering lead and arsenic in cannabis 62 00:03:25,600 --> 00:03:26,320 patients. 63 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:29,680 So yeah, thank you for everything you do, Keegan. 64 00:03:29,680 --> 00:03:30,840 This is going to be so cool. 65 00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:32,200 I'm glad to be here. 66 00:03:32,200 --> 00:03:33,800 Thanks to Riaj. 67 00:03:33,800 --> 00:03:35,680 If I could add one more thing, I'm 68 00:03:35,680 --> 00:03:38,960 going to have to leave right at 12. 69 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:40,320 I hope I get to see a lot. 70 00:03:40,320 --> 00:03:43,760 And I hope you don't take offense at me abruptly leaving. 71 00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:46,680 Or my 12, which is 22 minutes away. 72 00:03:46,680 --> 00:03:48,200 That's 100% OK. 73 00:03:48,200 --> 00:03:50,280 I'll just go ahead and jump right into the data 74 00:03:50,280 --> 00:03:53,080 since we're moving quick today. 75 00:03:53,080 --> 00:03:57,360 And it's interesting that you brought up 76 00:03:57,360 --> 00:03:59,320 both the point of lead and arsenic 77 00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:01,120 because those are the two heavy metals that 78 00:04:01,120 --> 00:04:02,760 are tested for in both states. 79 00:04:02,760 --> 00:04:04,480 And we can look at those. 80 00:04:04,480 --> 00:04:08,160 So let's just go ahead and start looking at this data. 81 00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:11,800 So without further ado, I'll share my screen with you. 82 00:04:11,800 --> 00:04:17,120 And we can have a fruitful meetup. 83 00:04:17,120 --> 00:04:19,960 Oops, that's not what we want. 84 00:04:19,960 --> 00:04:24,560 So just so you know, I'll have this data posted 85 00:04:24,560 --> 00:04:26,800 to GitHub after the meetup. 86 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:29,040 So you can find it there. 87 00:04:29,040 --> 00:04:34,360 And then I'll be making various links available online. 88 00:04:34,360 --> 00:04:36,960 Eventually, in the near future, I'm 89 00:04:36,960 --> 00:04:40,280 going to try to get this data onto Hugging Face, which 90 00:04:40,280 --> 00:04:43,640 would make it really easy to download. 91 00:04:43,640 --> 00:04:45,000 And what do we have here? 92 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:49,160 We've got lab results for various strains 93 00:04:49,160 --> 00:05:01,240 going from 2017 to 2023 and have compiled the various analytes 94 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:03,400 that are being tested for. 95 00:05:03,400 --> 00:05:06,800 So THC, THCA, of course. 96 00:05:06,800 --> 00:05:09,320 Maryland, super interesting because they're 97 00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:14,760 measuring for terpenes here throughout all the years. 98 00:05:14,760 --> 00:05:18,720 So that's stupendous. 99 00:05:18,720 --> 00:05:23,600 And then we're going to look at the terpene data. 100 00:05:23,600 --> 00:05:26,320 Is that percent? 101 00:05:26,320 --> 00:05:27,720 Do you know what the units are? 102 00:05:27,720 --> 00:05:28,600 Exactly. 103 00:05:28,600 --> 00:05:30,960 I am assuming it's percentage. 104 00:05:34,360 --> 00:05:40,200 It lines up with values we've seen before with the terpenes. 105 00:05:40,200 --> 00:05:45,920 But actually, I'll go ahead and share the terpene data with you 106 00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:47,520 since that one's mighty interesting. 107 00:05:51,640 --> 00:05:55,720 Actually, I'll just proceed so that way I don't have 108 00:05:55,720 --> 00:05:58,040 to read back in the data here. 109 00:05:58,040 --> 00:06:01,160 But since we're talking about terpenes, 110 00:06:01,160 --> 00:06:05,600 we can go ahead and look at the terpene data. 111 00:06:05,600 --> 00:06:10,600 So I'm going to go a little out of order here. 112 00:06:10,600 --> 00:06:11,120 Thanks. 113 00:06:17,680 --> 00:06:22,680 OK, so also welcome to the group. 114 00:06:22,680 --> 00:06:26,200 Rajuta, happy to have you here. 115 00:06:26,200 --> 00:06:28,920 We're moving quick and just going through a bunch of charts 116 00:06:28,920 --> 00:06:29,960 and data today. 117 00:06:29,960 --> 00:06:32,000 So feel free to speak up at any time 118 00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:35,760 if you have any input, comments, questions, ideas. 119 00:06:35,760 --> 00:06:38,400 Just forcefully interject. 120 00:06:38,400 --> 00:06:38,960 For sure. 121 00:06:38,960 --> 00:06:41,400 Sorry, I missed the first half because my speakers are not 122 00:06:41,400 --> 00:06:41,880 working. 123 00:06:41,880 --> 00:06:44,920 But happy to be here and looking forward 124 00:06:44,920 --> 00:06:47,280 to this interactive session. 125 00:06:47,280 --> 00:06:47,920 Phenomenal. 126 00:06:47,920 --> 00:06:51,160 And just it will help everybody, especially 127 00:06:51,160 --> 00:06:52,360 since you just arrived. 128 00:06:52,360 --> 00:06:54,160 What are we looking at today? 129 00:06:54,160 --> 00:07:00,280 We're looking at 95,000 quality control lab result 130 00:07:00,280 --> 00:07:08,560 tests in Maryland combined with 69,000 lab results 131 00:07:08,560 --> 00:07:10,160 from Washington. 132 00:07:10,160 --> 00:07:14,480 I'm actually waiting on the latest public records 133 00:07:14,480 --> 00:07:15,520 request right now. 134 00:07:15,520 --> 00:07:18,080 So wish that had have arrived. 135 00:07:18,080 --> 00:07:25,640 But combined, we're looking at around 165,000 lab results. 136 00:07:25,640 --> 00:07:32,360 Total, I figured there must be something of interest here. 137 00:07:35,160 --> 00:07:39,680 You've got 165,000 quality control lab tests, 138 00:07:39,680 --> 00:07:42,760 and you can't figure something out. 139 00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:45,240 You need to call another data scientist. 140 00:07:45,240 --> 00:07:48,200 Because as I said, you put any good data scientist 141 00:07:48,200 --> 00:07:49,880 in front of this data, they're going 142 00:07:49,880 --> 00:07:54,160 to be just walking away with insight after insight, 143 00:07:54,160 --> 00:07:56,680 just scraping the surface. 144 00:07:56,680 --> 00:07:59,440 So for example, here's one. 145 00:07:59,440 --> 00:08:03,080 We rarely get to see a really, really good distribution 146 00:08:03,080 --> 00:08:10,240 of terpenes because terpenes aren't normally 147 00:08:10,240 --> 00:08:15,080 mandated for testing except for in Oklahoma 148 00:08:15,080 --> 00:08:17,720 and apparently Maryland. 149 00:08:17,720 --> 00:08:21,000 I'm going to have to check the rule book. 150 00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:28,760 But for one reason or the other, we've got terpene data here. 151 00:08:28,760 --> 00:08:32,080 And this is helpful because it would 152 00:08:32,080 --> 00:08:36,600 help to know what's just the average terpene concentration. 153 00:08:36,600 --> 00:08:39,800 That way, say you get your cannabis products tested 154 00:08:39,800 --> 00:08:44,240 if you're a producer or if you're buying products 155 00:08:44,240 --> 00:08:49,720 as a retailer or if you're buying products as a consumer. 156 00:08:49,720 --> 00:08:55,600 It would help to know what is a reasonable amount of terpenes 157 00:08:55,600 --> 00:08:57,760 in your product. 158 00:08:57,760 --> 00:09:02,040 Is greater than 1% a lot of terpenes. 159 00:09:02,040 --> 00:09:07,800 Well, if it's got 1% or more, then that's 160 00:09:07,800 --> 00:09:12,000 doing better than about a third of all products. 161 00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:17,560 So not bad, but it is below average, at least in Maryland. 162 00:09:17,560 --> 00:09:21,880 So if you've got a product with 2% terpenes, 163 00:09:21,880 --> 00:09:24,720 that's above average. 164 00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:34,040 And then you see some products just go very, very aromatic. 165 00:09:34,040 --> 00:09:37,280 You're going up to 4% and sometimes 166 00:09:37,280 --> 00:09:41,400 above in a small number of cases. 167 00:09:41,400 --> 00:09:45,480 Just to show you some of these outliers, so check this out. 168 00:09:45,480 --> 00:09:49,200 So it's going up to around 4%. 169 00:09:49,200 --> 00:09:51,400 And so I was just curious, are there 170 00:09:51,400 --> 00:09:58,040 any that are really, really strong here that makes it's 171 00:09:58,040 --> 00:10:02,640 better if I just plot a couple fields here. 172 00:10:02,640 --> 00:10:07,560 So let's just plot terpenes, and then I'll toss in the strain 173 00:10:07,560 --> 00:10:08,600 name just for fun. 174 00:10:11,280 --> 00:10:14,880 But here you can see some various strains 175 00:10:14,880 --> 00:10:19,320 that tested above 6% terpenes. 176 00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:26,240 And once again, this looks like a miscoded value. 177 00:10:26,240 --> 00:10:31,960 So we'll just exclude anything greater than 100%. 178 00:10:31,960 --> 00:10:36,520 So this Cinderella, pink lemonade, painkiller, 179 00:10:36,520 --> 00:10:40,680 those would just get excluded by a simple rule of anything 180 00:10:40,680 --> 00:10:46,080 less than 100% because you can't have more than 100%. 181 00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:57,080 The dosolito is curious because it's testing at 39%. 182 00:10:57,080 --> 00:10:58,960 What's going on there? 183 00:10:58,960 --> 00:11:04,240 Is this, in fact, some sort of distillate, 184 00:11:04,240 --> 00:11:06,200 like some sort of terpene distillate 185 00:11:06,200 --> 00:11:11,080 that's got accidentally marked as flour potentially? 186 00:11:11,080 --> 00:11:13,480 So that's something going on there. 187 00:11:13,480 --> 00:11:14,960 But I don't know. 188 00:11:14,960 --> 00:11:16,840 What I'm curious about here is you 189 00:11:16,840 --> 00:11:24,840 do see these extreme outliers testing at north of 6%, 190 00:11:24,840 --> 00:11:28,480 some testing north of 7% terpenes, 191 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:32,240 in this one testing north of 8%. 192 00:11:32,240 --> 00:11:35,760 So I just wanted to highlight that 193 00:11:35,760 --> 00:11:43,200 because those are some extraordinary high level 194 00:11:43,200 --> 00:11:44,480 terpenes. 195 00:11:44,480 --> 00:11:48,360 And I think it's, of course, interesting to look 196 00:11:48,360 --> 00:11:49,720 at the average. 197 00:11:49,720 --> 00:11:52,040 But sometimes I find it interesting to look 198 00:11:52,040 --> 00:11:54,040 at the outliers. 199 00:11:54,040 --> 00:11:57,920 So I would encourage you all to look at terpene data 200 00:11:57,920 --> 00:12:03,200 from various states and see what is the highest terpene 201 00:12:03,200 --> 00:12:04,680 concentration. 202 00:12:04,680 --> 00:12:09,440 Is 8.4% plausible? 203 00:12:09,440 --> 00:12:11,920 Is this maybe a miscoding? 204 00:12:11,920 --> 00:12:16,880 Maybe that was supposed to be 0.8%. 205 00:12:16,880 --> 00:12:21,360 So it's not impossible that that was a miscoding. 206 00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:24,920 But it's looking to me like that was just 207 00:12:24,920 --> 00:12:26,120 what they measured it at. 208 00:12:29,320 --> 00:12:32,040 But before I move on, any thoughts 209 00:12:32,040 --> 00:12:37,840 about these terpene values? 210 00:12:37,840 --> 00:12:38,680 Very interesting. 211 00:12:38,680 --> 00:12:45,800 I know that in some states I've seen on labels terpenes at 7.5% 212 00:12:45,800 --> 00:12:46,320 to 8.5%. 213 00:12:49,360 --> 00:12:53,360 So I think that all of those, or at least some of those, 214 00:12:53,360 --> 00:12:54,680 are reported. 215 00:12:54,680 --> 00:12:59,040 Not necessarily accurately, but that 216 00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:03,240 is what goes on labels or those melts. 217 00:13:03,240 --> 00:13:03,880 Exactly. 218 00:13:03,880 --> 00:13:09,600 So I think more is to be looked at. 219 00:13:09,600 --> 00:13:12,440 Are they somehow adding terpenes, 220 00:13:12,440 --> 00:13:16,080 like doing some sort of terpene spray or something? 221 00:13:16,080 --> 00:13:26,400 Because once you get that, 8% is more, 222 00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:30,120 it looks like more than three standard deviations 223 00:13:30,120 --> 00:13:31,680 from the meat. 224 00:13:31,680 --> 00:13:35,800 Actually, we can actually find this out. 225 00:13:39,160 --> 00:13:40,840 So what is the standard? 226 00:13:40,840 --> 00:13:42,440 And see, this is what's so cool about it. 227 00:13:42,440 --> 00:13:44,880 And this is population level data. 228 00:13:44,880 --> 00:13:54,360 So because it's not a sample, so we don't really 229 00:13:54,360 --> 00:13:57,960 have to estimate, really. 230 00:13:57,960 --> 00:14:01,400 So long story short, three standard deviations 231 00:14:01,400 --> 00:14:09,960 from the mean is 4.35%. 232 00:14:09,960 --> 00:14:20,720 So anything greater than around 4.5% is definitely an outlier, 233 00:14:20,720 --> 00:14:26,040 that's for sure. 234 00:14:26,040 --> 00:14:28,800 I'm going to move on, because Yasha, you 235 00:14:28,800 --> 00:14:33,680 have limited time here, and I want to show you some of this. 236 00:14:33,680 --> 00:14:34,840 Can I ask really quickly? 237 00:14:37,440 --> 00:14:40,920 Is this data from both Washington and Maryland, 238 00:14:40,920 --> 00:14:42,600 or just one of those two states? 239 00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:45,440 This is just Maryland at the moment. 240 00:14:45,440 --> 00:14:48,360 Got it, because I would love to see 241 00:14:48,360 --> 00:14:53,680 how this histogram aligns, at least visually, 242 00:14:53,680 --> 00:14:56,080 how this histogram compares to the Washington one. 243 00:14:56,080 --> 00:14:57,320 OK, I'll move quick. 244 00:14:57,320 --> 00:14:59,360 So I'll do this in the next 10 minutes, 245 00:14:59,360 --> 00:15:03,240 and then circle back through the cannabinoids for everyone else, 246 00:15:03,240 --> 00:15:05,800 since you've got to go at noon Eastern time. 247 00:15:05,800 --> 00:15:12,360 So long story short, here are the limits for Maryland. 248 00:15:12,360 --> 00:15:17,400 Notice that the limits no longer include 249 00:15:17,400 --> 00:15:24,880 elements like silver, selenium, barium. 250 00:15:24,880 --> 00:15:26,640 And here I'll plot them right now, 251 00:15:26,640 --> 00:15:28,640 so that way you can see these. 252 00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:35,880 So it looks like I'll show you this here in a second. 253 00:15:35,880 --> 00:15:38,800 So here's barium, no limit. 254 00:15:38,800 --> 00:15:41,880 I should probably keep the axis longer. 255 00:15:41,880 --> 00:15:45,160 There's selenium, and here's silver. 256 00:15:45,160 --> 00:15:50,480 So note, I could actually extend these distributions maybe 257 00:15:50,480 --> 00:15:54,040 to about 2 ppm. 258 00:15:54,040 --> 00:15:55,760 Actually, why don't I do that real quick? 259 00:15:58,480 --> 00:16:01,120 We'll just do that. 260 00:16:01,120 --> 00:16:05,280 So long story short, you see things like arsenic. 261 00:16:08,680 --> 00:16:09,960 One second, let me see. 262 00:16:09,960 --> 00:16:13,240 One second, we'll just let these plot real quick, 263 00:16:13,240 --> 00:16:17,320 and then I'll talk about them and move on. 264 00:16:17,320 --> 00:16:19,880 So you see, of course, certain elements 265 00:16:19,880 --> 00:16:22,000 aren't pushing up near the limit. 266 00:16:25,920 --> 00:16:31,360 Other things like selenium, this is when it was being tested for. 267 00:16:31,360 --> 00:16:33,720 And so check out this. 268 00:16:33,720 --> 00:16:38,560 So why aren't there limits for selenium? 269 00:16:38,560 --> 00:16:41,160 And sorry to dump so many charts on you, 270 00:16:41,160 --> 00:16:44,360 but I'll basically just generate all the charts 271 00:16:44,360 --> 00:16:46,400 and then talk about them. 272 00:16:46,400 --> 00:16:50,720 So sorry if this is data visualization overload here. 273 00:16:53,800 --> 00:16:57,640 So for example, silver was being screened 274 00:16:57,640 --> 00:17:03,440 for almost 300 detections in 2019. 275 00:17:03,440 --> 00:17:06,960 You see it almost goes away in 2021. 276 00:17:06,960 --> 00:17:11,760 And then there's no detections in 2022 and 2023, 277 00:17:11,760 --> 00:17:15,120 which makes me think they weren't testing for it. 278 00:17:15,120 --> 00:17:20,040 So I think for whatever reason, the heavy metal panel shrunk. 279 00:17:20,040 --> 00:17:25,160 So I think they dropped silver, dropped selenium. 280 00:17:25,160 --> 00:17:31,000 And you see, they're still testing for mercury in 2023. 281 00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:38,880 Note, mercury detections jump in 2021. 282 00:17:38,880 --> 00:17:40,360 Same for lead. 283 00:17:40,360 --> 00:17:45,480 See, lead detections jump 2021. 284 00:17:45,480 --> 00:17:48,920 Maybe production jumped that year too. 285 00:17:48,920 --> 00:17:54,040 It's good to see that there's at least a downward potential 286 00:17:54,040 --> 00:17:56,720 trend here in the lead. 287 00:17:56,720 --> 00:18:02,640 So what one would expect is if producers start failing 288 00:18:02,640 --> 00:18:05,560 products for lead detection, then they're 289 00:18:05,560 --> 00:18:10,080 going to start implementing processes to reduce 290 00:18:10,080 --> 00:18:12,320 their lead contamination. 291 00:18:12,320 --> 00:18:15,840 So you would like to see people figuring out how 292 00:18:15,840 --> 00:18:20,240 to reduce their contamination. 293 00:18:20,240 --> 00:18:25,840 Chromium, a little spike there in 2023. 294 00:18:25,840 --> 00:18:30,440 So that's something a little worrisome. 295 00:18:30,440 --> 00:18:34,040 Maybe they're not getting their chromium under control. 296 00:18:34,040 --> 00:18:38,920 And once again, I have no idea if these metals are good 297 00:18:38,920 --> 00:18:41,840 or bad, but they are being screened for. 298 00:18:41,840 --> 00:18:45,320 And from an economic point of view, 299 00:18:45,320 --> 00:18:47,800 you don't want to be failing your tests 300 00:18:47,800 --> 00:18:51,400 because that's going to increase your cost. 301 00:18:51,400 --> 00:18:56,880 So barium looks like it's no longer being tested for. 302 00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:59,040 And then arsenic. 303 00:18:59,040 --> 00:19:05,680 You see arsenic jumps in 2022, interestingly, versus 2021. 304 00:19:05,680 --> 00:19:08,760 And then you see the levels start to decrease this year. 305 00:19:08,760 --> 00:19:11,600 And remember, 2023 is not over yet. 306 00:19:11,600 --> 00:19:13,440 We're not out of the woods yet. 307 00:19:13,440 --> 00:19:21,120 So these 2023 numbers are expected to rise 308 00:19:21,120 --> 00:19:23,680 by the end of the year. 309 00:19:23,680 --> 00:19:27,280 OK, I can get through all this data. 310 00:19:27,280 --> 00:19:28,920 So now back up to these charts. 311 00:19:31,640 --> 00:19:34,360 This is the first one that I think 312 00:19:34,360 --> 00:19:40,560 is a juicy insight in that, look at this. 313 00:19:40,560 --> 00:19:45,160 We've always talked in the past about discontinuous 314 00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:46,760 distributions. 315 00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:52,520 And it's always curious when a distribution goes right up 316 00:19:52,520 --> 00:19:54,280 to some limit. 317 00:19:54,280 --> 00:19:56,800 In fact, that's what you'd call sensor data. 318 00:19:56,800 --> 00:20:03,680 And so one has to wonder here is, why is this distribution 319 00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:08,200 going right up to the arsenic limit? 320 00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:12,640 And once again, it could just be that maybe producers 321 00:20:12,640 --> 00:20:16,200 have some sort of internal measure of arsenic. 322 00:20:16,200 --> 00:20:18,080 Maybe they're measuring their own product 323 00:20:18,080 --> 00:20:20,440 before sending it off for testing. 324 00:20:20,440 --> 00:20:26,000 So this perfectly thought comment question. 325 00:20:26,000 --> 00:20:29,960 Yeah, so I actually think there might be another reason 326 00:20:29,960 --> 00:20:35,560 to this, a legitimate reason, in that in some states, 327 00:20:35,560 --> 00:20:38,840 flour that is to be sold to the public cannot be sold 328 00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:42,320 with a certain amount of arsenic or whatever heavy metal. 329 00:20:42,320 --> 00:20:46,960 However, flour that is to be used for extractions 330 00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:53,240 or for other purposes, let's say extractions of then edibles, 331 00:20:53,240 --> 00:20:56,840 that flour does not have to be tested for the same panel, 332 00:20:56,840 --> 00:21:01,240 which could also mean that if it tests for arsenic more 333 00:21:01,240 --> 00:21:03,800 than the legal amount, more than the action limit, 334 00:21:03,800 --> 00:21:06,720 then the producer could just decide, OK, that's fine. 335 00:21:06,720 --> 00:21:08,920 I'll send it for the other purpose. 336 00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:13,200 And then they don't have to report arsenic failure 337 00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:17,960 because it's not a failure since the purpose changed. 338 00:21:17,960 --> 00:21:20,000 Yes. 339 00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:22,440 The only comment I have to say on that 340 00:21:22,440 --> 00:21:27,120 is they really should be reporting the values. 341 00:21:27,120 --> 00:21:28,440 They shouldn't. 342 00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:29,000 Fully agree. 343 00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:31,600 I'm just saying there might be, but that's 344 00:21:31,600 --> 00:21:35,640 a question that could be relatively easily found out. 345 00:21:35,640 --> 00:21:36,360 Good question. 346 00:21:39,560 --> 00:21:41,160 That's a really good point. 347 00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:44,280 So basically, my input of that is, 348 00:21:44,280 --> 00:21:49,600 say you detect arsenic at 0.5, and maybe the rules 349 00:21:49,600 --> 00:21:52,520 say that they can just call up the producer. 350 00:21:52,520 --> 00:21:56,160 And the producer says, actually cancel that test. 351 00:21:56,160 --> 00:22:00,000 I'm going to turn this into oil. 352 00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:01,800 Maybe they can do that. 353 00:22:01,800 --> 00:22:05,600 But I think they should still report those values. 354 00:22:10,280 --> 00:22:15,360 If a test was performed, it should be recorded. 355 00:22:15,360 --> 00:22:18,120 So that kind of goes under my philosophy 356 00:22:18,120 --> 00:22:20,760 of never throw away data. 357 00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:24,200 And so if something tested 0.5 arsenic, 358 00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:27,640 and they're going to turn it into oil, so be it. 359 00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:29,880 But I think for the sake of transparency, 360 00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:32,560 they should at least report it. 361 00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:34,600 But that's my opinion. 362 00:22:34,600 --> 00:22:42,880 And I want to move on a bit, because there's, like I said, 363 00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:45,360 whenever you see something like this, 364 00:22:45,360 --> 00:22:46,880 sometimes you think the worst. 365 00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:49,560 But as Yasha pointed out, it could just 366 00:22:49,560 --> 00:22:54,320 be just the way things shook out. 367 00:22:54,320 --> 00:22:58,960 So I would encourage you all to maybe, one, 368 00:22:58,960 --> 00:23:04,520 recalculate my statistics to look at that one more in depth. 369 00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:08,440 Let me just say I'm fully on the same page as you. 370 00:23:08,440 --> 00:23:09,800 It should absolutely be reported. 371 00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:12,920 I just want to point out that regulations may 372 00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:14,640 have an effect in this way. 373 00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:18,600 And I hope that we find out whether that's the case. 374 00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:19,120 Yes. 375 00:23:19,120 --> 00:23:22,480 And I mean, just for example, in Washington, 376 00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:30,080 the limit on arsenic is 10 ppm. 377 00:23:30,080 --> 00:23:34,720 Theoretically, we wouldn't see the same incentive 378 00:23:34,720 --> 00:23:38,080 in Washington. 379 00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:44,280 And in fact, let me actually show you that plot right now, 380 00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:47,680 since it's relevant. 381 00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:50,920 So if we just actually go ahead and jump way down here, 382 00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:55,360 we can plot them all together. 383 00:23:55,360 --> 00:23:58,880 And then I'll circle back for some of the other heavy metals 384 00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:00,680 because they're super interesting too. 385 00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:08,080 But since this is the one Yasha's talking about. 386 00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:11,440 OK, so here you see the distribution 387 00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:14,160 of arsenic in Maryland. 388 00:24:14,160 --> 00:24:18,920 And here I overlaid the detections in Washington. 389 00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:23,360 And you see in Washington, even though the limit is 10 ppm, 390 00:24:23,360 --> 00:24:29,280 you're not really seeing anything greater than 0.2%. 391 00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:32,440 So for whatever reason, whether they're 392 00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:38,640 measuring differently in Washington or what have you, 393 00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:42,360 that just looks like around where the distribution is. 394 00:24:42,360 --> 00:24:46,040 So remember, we were talking about outliers earlier. 395 00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:51,400 And anything greater than 0.4% is definitely 396 00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:53,760 going to be an outlier. 397 00:24:53,760 --> 00:25:00,840 So it could just be that that's a reasonable limit. 398 00:25:00,840 --> 00:25:04,720 And then anything greater than that is just rare. 399 00:25:08,120 --> 00:25:11,880 Then just to show you some of these other ones 400 00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:15,360 that I want to hit on the most interesting point, 401 00:25:15,360 --> 00:25:18,080 and then Yasha, you may have to catch the recording on that 402 00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:18,600 one. 403 00:25:18,600 --> 00:25:25,320 But mercury, nothing's coming close to the limit there. 404 00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:28,120 Cadmium, same thing. 405 00:25:28,120 --> 00:25:31,360 Nothing's really coming close to the limit. 406 00:25:31,360 --> 00:25:36,560 Lead, once again, Candice, this may be a good sign for you. 407 00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:41,560 Or potentially policy changes may be in order. 408 00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:45,000 Because it's like, look, lead, nothing's 409 00:25:45,000 --> 00:25:49,160 coming close to the 1% rule. 410 00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:58,400 And so one may want to wonder, would a, I mean, 411 00:25:58,400 --> 00:26:00,800 lead has definitely been demonstrated 412 00:26:00,800 --> 00:26:03,480 to have negative effects on people. 413 00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:10,280 So would it be reasonable to limit the lead to around maybe 414 00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:16,160 not 0.2, but 0.4, or maybe 0.2? 415 00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:17,400 So I don't know. 416 00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:22,560 So that's maybe sort of a policy discussion. 417 00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:27,400 Because remember, we were talking about earlier 418 00:26:27,400 --> 00:26:31,080 how the limits can give producers the incentive 419 00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:33,520 to make cleaner and cleaner products. 420 00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:37,480 So would lowering the limit on lead 421 00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:43,320 maybe be worth talking about? 422 00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:44,880 Because as Candice was pointing out, 423 00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:46,840 it may be ending up in people's blood. 424 00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:51,320 So maybe there is only a minuscule amount of lead. 425 00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:55,760 But maybe it goes right into you for whatever reason. 426 00:26:55,760 --> 00:26:58,240 And it may bioaccumulate. 427 00:26:58,240 --> 00:27:01,800 So who knows? 428 00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:04,760 But the lead wasn't really what I was specifically 429 00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:05,840 going to talk about. 430 00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:08,160 But Candice brought it up. 431 00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:12,600 And just wanted to point out where the limit is. 432 00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:16,720 OK, so now time for some of the juicy bits 433 00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:18,760 that I wanted to talk about. 434 00:27:18,760 --> 00:27:21,720 So back to Marilyn. 435 00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:24,720 Unless, Yoshir, anyone, do you have any final thoughts 436 00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:26,920 on sort of the limit discussion? 437 00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:30,400 Anyone else? 438 00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:32,120 Feel free to chime in at any point. 439 00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:43,840 One thing that kind of struck my mind was barium detections 440 00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:46,080 aren't that outrageous. 441 00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:52,080 But the concentrations, maybe something to think about. 442 00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:53,080 Chromium. 443 00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:57,760 Once again, kind of going right up there towards the limit. 444 00:27:57,760 --> 00:27:58,880 We talked about lead. 445 00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:00,880 We talked about mercury. 446 00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:04,600 Selenium is an interesting element 447 00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:09,200 in that it's come up multiple times in our conversations. 448 00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:15,680 So for example, we use selenium to get data out of COAs 449 00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:17,680 sometimes. 450 00:28:17,680 --> 00:28:21,080 That's something that's been happening for a long time. 451 00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:25,440 Sometimes that's software named selenium. 452 00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:29,120 But it's just a funny word that keeps coming up. 453 00:28:29,120 --> 00:28:33,720 But I think this is maybe an element that's 454 00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:36,280 worth looking at more. 455 00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:43,920 Because there looks like when it was being screened for 456 00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:48,680 in Maryland, it looks to me like non-negligible amounts 457 00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:51,120 being detected. 458 00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:56,720 And so once again, is that a harmful chemical? 459 00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:59,480 Why is it there? 460 00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:01,320 What's a reasonable limit? 461 00:29:01,320 --> 00:29:03,800 Those are all good questions and ones 462 00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:05,400 that I encourage you to research. 463 00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:07,280 But I'm just kind of pointing this out. 464 00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:20,120 But the one I really wanted to point out here 465 00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:24,120 was this silver one. 466 00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:27,680 So if we just look here at silver, 467 00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:29,320 actually, I think I have it right here. 468 00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:36,640 Actually, let's just look at the summary statistics here. 469 00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:43,520 So this is the one that I mostly focused on with silver. 470 00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:48,000 Because we've never seen any information about silver 471 00:29:48,000 --> 00:29:48,960 in the past. 472 00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:52,760 So I'm just going to go back to the summary statistics 473 00:29:52,760 --> 00:29:53,280 here. 474 00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:59,240 So this is the one that I mostly focused on with silver. 475 00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:03,920 And I've looked at the data that I've looked at about silver 476 00:30:03,920 --> 00:30:05,440 before. 477 00:30:05,440 --> 00:30:12,880 And there were 600 samples where silver was detected. 478 00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:20,200 When it was detected, you're detecting around, on average, 479 00:30:20,200 --> 00:30:23,320 around 0.25%. 480 00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:29,720 But I think there must have been one outlier. 481 00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:34,000 And then you're seeing it go up to about 0.9%. 482 00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:40,360 And the question that I got here was, 483 00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:45,520 why is silver being detected in the products? 484 00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:49,640 And I started to do a little bit of research 485 00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:53,480 and just kind of want to pass this off to you. 486 00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:59,200 Because I think this is maybe something worthwhile discussing. 487 00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:10,400 Is if you look, if you do just a little bit of research here, 488 00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:12,760 a little bit of literature review, 489 00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:19,080 you'll see that these various silver springs 490 00:31:19,080 --> 00:31:22,000 have been known for a long time. 491 00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:25,200 So this one is 1982. 492 00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:30,320 This is a more recent publication of 2018. 493 00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:36,080 But basically, do a Google Scholar search 494 00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:41,560 for collodial silver plus cannabis, 495 00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:47,720 or silver biosulfate plus cannabis. 496 00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:52,480 And it basically looks like this silver spray 497 00:31:52,480 --> 00:32:00,680 is being used to make female plants create pollen. 498 00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:04,000 That way, you can create seeds. 499 00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:11,200 So the idea is, if you're trying to mix various cultivars, 500 00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:16,040 you have a room filled with female flower. 501 00:32:16,040 --> 00:32:19,120 So how do you get male pollen? 502 00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:23,560 It looks like you may find one, a flower 503 00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:26,840 that you want to breed, spray that one 504 00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:32,440 with this silver biosulfate for collodial silver. 505 00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:36,920 And it looks like you can create seeds that way. 506 00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:42,240 So this may be a way that companies are making seeds. 507 00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:44,760 And I was hearing from people that, 508 00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:48,440 if you do do this process, you're supposed to keep, 509 00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,480 and you may start spraying the plants when they're 510 00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:54,960 in their vegetative stage. 511 00:32:54,960 --> 00:33:00,400 You'd want to keep those plants away from your other plants. 512 00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:06,440 And you wouldn't want to harvest those ones and sell them. 513 00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:12,040 And this is kind of what has gotten me thinking, 514 00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:20,840 is this silver just being accumulated through the water? 515 00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:25,760 Is this just environmental silver contamination? 516 00:33:25,760 --> 00:33:30,280 Or is this trace amounts of silver 517 00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:35,240 left over from the application of a silver spray? 518 00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:46,680 And the reason I start thinking about this is silver 519 00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:50,680 was the worst screening for it here. 520 00:33:55,200 --> 00:34:02,000 And you notice there were a bunch of detections in 2019. 521 00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:05,600 In a handful in 2020. 522 00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:09,560 And then it looks like the rules may have either 523 00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:16,400 changed in the middle of the year of 2021, 524 00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:21,840 or at least changed in 2022 and 2023. 525 00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:28,280 And I just wonder, why did they drop silver 526 00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:33,560 when there's still screening for some of the other metals? 527 00:34:33,560 --> 00:34:37,760 It could just be the number of detections here. 528 00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:40,040 So let's look at some of these other ones. 529 00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:46,080 So selenium was around 1,000. 530 00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:51,880 Mercury, you see there's significantly more detections. 531 00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:54,800 Significantly more detections of lead. 532 00:34:54,800 --> 00:35:00,840 Chromium, cadmium, and even barium is kind of high. 533 00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,160 So one has to wonder why did they drop barium? 534 00:35:04,160 --> 00:35:10,120 Maybe barium is not dangerous. 535 00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:13,440 And then arsenic, they're still testing for. 536 00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:20,080 So it could just be that there is very few silver detections 537 00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:22,960 so that they just don't have to be tested. 538 00:35:22,960 --> 00:35:25,640 So they just drop it. 539 00:35:25,640 --> 00:35:28,880 But when you think about it, if the producer 540 00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:32,680 was using the silver spray, there 541 00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:37,800 would only be a very few number of detections. 542 00:35:37,800 --> 00:35:43,440 They wouldn't spray silver on their entire crop. 543 00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:48,160 They would just spray it on one plant here and there 544 00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:50,880 to make seeds. 545 00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:54,280 And so what I'm a little worried about is, 546 00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:59,800 are they spraying this on certain plants to make seeds? 547 00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:06,760 And then are they trying to save costs by instead of just using 548 00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:10,680 that plant for seeds, they'll use it for seeds 549 00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:18,440 and also harvest it and sell the flower guards. 550 00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:21,120 You may have somebody joining. 551 00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:21,600 Oh, Lou. 552 00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:30,960 Lou, you joined at a particularly interesting time 553 00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:34,880 here, so happy to have you here. 554 00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:40,000 Long story short is, I think more research 555 00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:42,120 needs to be done here. 556 00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:43,360 But I don't know. 557 00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:52,480 I just have this worry that, yes, these silver sprays 558 00:36:52,480 --> 00:37:00,640 are being used to create seeds through some various mechanism. 559 00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:06,720 Would a producer have the incentive 560 00:37:06,720 --> 00:37:10,560 to also try to harvest it? 561 00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:13,400 And it looks like maybe they were, 562 00:37:13,400 --> 00:37:16,040 but maybe they were getting some detections. 563 00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:19,040 And that's not going to look good, right? 564 00:37:19,040 --> 00:37:23,280 So if you're a producer, you use silver spray. 565 00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:24,920 It's being detected. 566 00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:30,840 That's going to have you worried. 567 00:37:30,840 --> 00:37:39,160 So I've got a bad feeling that perhaps the producer 568 00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:45,040 in Maryland may have lobbied to get silver dropped 569 00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:47,320 from the required testing. 570 00:37:50,680 --> 00:37:55,880 Once again, that could just be a completely illegitimate worry. 571 00:37:55,880 --> 00:38:00,240 It could just be the case that the scientists looked at it. 572 00:38:00,240 --> 00:38:05,560 They realized there's not that many detections relative 573 00:38:05,560 --> 00:38:09,280 to other compounds like mercury. 574 00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:13,360 It could be that ingesting silver, once again, 575 00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:14,920 I'm just conjecturing here. 576 00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:16,840 I encourage you all to research this. 577 00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:20,760 But it could be that ingesting silver is nowhere near as 578 00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:23,480 dangerous as ingesting mercury. 579 00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:27,040 So there could be a risk factor. 580 00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:29,960 But I don't know. 581 00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:32,240 Those were just my thoughts for today, 582 00:38:32,240 --> 00:38:37,720 was for whatever reason, Maryland 583 00:38:37,720 --> 00:38:42,520 had a more extensive heavy metal panel. 584 00:38:42,520 --> 00:38:48,840 And then around 2021, they dropped a few elements. 585 00:38:48,840 --> 00:38:52,520 And some of the ones that they dropped 586 00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:56,280 are ones that, from looking at the data, 587 00:38:56,280 --> 00:38:58,560 actually are some of the ones that I think 588 00:38:58,560 --> 00:39:00,320 they should be testing for. 589 00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:08,680 So silver, and then we saw above selenium. 590 00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:11,840 Once again, is there a risk factor there? 591 00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:13,360 Maybe, maybe not. 592 00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:17,400 But to me, it seems like it would be more worthwhile 593 00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:24,680 almost to test for selenium and silver versus some 594 00:39:24,680 --> 00:39:28,600 of the other metals, like mercury, 595 00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:31,680 and potentially lead, even though those ones may 596 00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:35,960 be more dangerous chemical or more dangerous elements. 597 00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:41,960 We're not really seeing that concerning levels. 598 00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,440 But once again, it could be the proper incentive. 599 00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:49,440 Maybe if there wasn't a 0.2% limit here, 600 00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:53,000 there would be tons of mercury in the product. 601 00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:56,080 Maybe because there is a limit, particularly 602 00:39:56,080 --> 00:39:58,920 in taking various preventative steps, 603 00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,800 and are doing a good job at limiting the mercury 604 00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:04,320 in their samples. 605 00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:09,320 So a good engineering philosophy is, if it's not broke, 606 00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:10,960 don't fix it. 607 00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:16,480 So the mercury limit, that one looks like it's fine. 608 00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:18,720 Cadmium may be fine. 609 00:40:18,720 --> 00:40:21,800 The lead one, it's not really a problem. 610 00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:26,520 It's not really a problem, but it's not really a problem. 611 00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:28,480 So that's a good thing. 612 00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:30,680 Cadmium may be fine. 613 00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:35,720 The lead one, like we said, is debatable, I think. 614 00:40:35,720 --> 00:40:41,680 Would a 0.2% limit on the lead provide an incentive 615 00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:44,000 for people to do better there, or would that 616 00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:46,480 one not be reasonable? 617 00:40:46,480 --> 00:40:51,760 And then once again, arsenic is 0.4% too stringent, 618 00:40:51,760 --> 00:40:53,600 but for debate. 619 00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:55,720 But I think this one's super interesting. 620 00:40:55,720 --> 00:41:00,160 I would love to see some arsenic data from other states. 621 00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:02,440 So as I mentioned before, there's definitely 622 00:41:02,440 --> 00:41:03,720 more to that picture there. 623 00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:14,400 But I think that's it for my thoughts on heavy metals. 624 00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:15,960 How about any of you? 625 00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:18,120 Hopefully I didn't scare you to death. 626 00:41:18,120 --> 00:41:20,880 I know out of all of the contaminants, 627 00:41:20,880 --> 00:41:24,120 the heavy metals are some of the scariest. 628 00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:27,560 But the good news is the detection rates 629 00:41:27,560 --> 00:41:29,520 are really, really low. 630 00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:36,320 Remember, there's, say, 600 detected for. 631 00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:44,280 Whoops, one second. 632 00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:52,880 So the detection rate for silver is a fraction of 1%. 633 00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:03,560 But keep in mind, they stopped testing for it in 2022 and 2023. 634 00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:09,280 So once again, am I getting an old word and bent out 635 00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:11,480 of shape over nothing? 636 00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:13,000 Or is that something there? 637 00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:14,440 Or is there something there? 638 00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:19,160 So that was sort of the lesson of the day today, right? 639 00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:25,680 Was quality over quantity and looking at the outliers. 640 00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:31,120 And so basically, is there anything to the outliers? 641 00:42:33,880 --> 00:42:38,200 But those are my thoughts, comments, questions for today. 642 00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:43,200 Does anyone want to chime in with any thoughts on this one? 643 00:42:50,800 --> 00:42:54,840 This is very interesting, Keegan. 644 00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:57,680 The article that I saw this morning 645 00:42:57,680 --> 00:43:00,560 is from Environmental Health Perspectives. 646 00:43:00,560 --> 00:43:03,800 It's actually on the NationalInstituteOfHealth.gov 647 00:43:03,800 --> 00:43:05,080 website. 648 00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:09,720 And they use a National Health and Nutrition Examination 649 00:43:09,720 --> 00:43:10,320 Survey. 650 00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:17,360 It's called NHANES, N-H-A-N-E-S, between 2005 and 2018. 651 00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:19,520 And there were 7,000 participants. 652 00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:23,400 And they completed a drug use questionnaire. 653 00:43:23,400 --> 00:43:25,240 So it's self-reporting, right? 654 00:43:25,240 --> 00:43:28,400 And like Lewis said, probably garbage in, garbage out. 655 00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:34,480 But the interesting thing is that they found that, hold on. 656 00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:37,120 Let me get the numbers in front of me. 657 00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:41,520 They found that 30-day cannabis users have higher cadmium 658 00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:47,800 at 25% higher in the blood, 18% higher in the urine. 659 00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:50,720 The lead was 27% higher in the blood 660 00:43:50,720 --> 00:43:54,240 and 21% higher in the urine than non-users. 661 00:43:54,240 --> 00:43:58,920 And too, it could very well not be state cannabis 662 00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:00,960 that these self-reported users were using. 663 00:44:00,960 --> 00:44:05,520 But it could also be some state cannabis in there. 664 00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:08,880 And as a medical marijuana patient 665 00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:12,600 in Massachusetts and Florida, it could very well 666 00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:16,320 be state cannabis too, because they rush and corner cut it 667 00:44:16,320 --> 00:44:19,640 and put all kinds of growth hormones, pesticides, 668 00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:24,800 insecticides, herbicides in it without full disclosure. 669 00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:27,360 But anyway, that's all I have. 670 00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:30,080 You'll need to pass this article along to me, because this is 671 00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:31,600 going to put it into the chat. 672 00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:32,600 Super interesting. 673 00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:34,400 I'll review this. 674 00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:39,200 And I think this one's come across my radar. 675 00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:41,960 This was only published September 25th, 676 00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:43,200 so it is pretty new. 677 00:44:43,200 --> 00:44:45,120 So it was published on the 25th. 678 00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:46,560 It kind of started leaking out. 679 00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:50,880 I only just received it, I think, this morning on LinkedIn. 680 00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:52,960 So I didn't give you a chance to look at it. 681 00:44:52,960 --> 00:44:56,000 But you just have to be picking a great subject today, 682 00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:57,160 as always. 683 00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:00,600 This speaks to many things. 684 00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:04,120 One, the trickiness of statistics. 685 00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:07,760 Two, the importance of the scientific process. 686 00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:12,520 Because we mentioned one study is good. 687 00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:18,440 But remember the chart about how the law of large numbers. 688 00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:20,320 And I think the law of large numbers 689 00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:23,800 applies to the scientific process. 690 00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:26,800 So the first person they do their study, 691 00:45:26,800 --> 00:45:30,600 they may be wildly right, but wildly off. 692 00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:32,960 They may be wildly wrong. 693 00:45:32,960 --> 00:45:34,480 They could be all over the place. 694 00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:36,800 And then there's a lot of variance. 695 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:39,680 But the idea is the more and more studies that are done, 696 00:45:39,680 --> 00:45:42,040 they'll narrow in on the right number. 697 00:45:42,040 --> 00:45:46,200 So one, we'd love to see more studies. 698 00:45:46,200 --> 00:45:51,720 And two, once again, when there are statistics 699 00:45:51,720 --> 00:45:54,440 that are meaningful, they should jump out at you. 700 00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:57,480 So maybe this number jumped. 701 00:45:57,480 --> 00:45:59,640 It's a large variance. 702 00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:03,520 So maybe this number jumped out to the researchers. 703 00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:11,760 Two, correlation is not necessarily causation. 704 00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:15,960 And this is the problem with a lot of the health studies 705 00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:19,440 and doing controlled studies in general. 706 00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:22,000 Well, I'm not sure if this was a controlled study 707 00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:24,880 or just general aggregates here. 708 00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:30,240 Maybe it is the case. 709 00:46:30,240 --> 00:46:34,200 But is it the cannabis that's causing it? 710 00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:40,400 Because I think there's been studies in the past that, 711 00:46:40,400 --> 00:46:42,080 I mean, I'm sure of it, right? 712 00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:48,200 That it's hard to control for everything under the sun. 713 00:46:48,200 --> 00:46:51,280 So there could just be something systemically different 714 00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:55,960 about the people that were willing to say that, yes, 715 00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,360 they consume cannabis. 716 00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:03,200 So one, I think it's worth noting. 717 00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:06,400 As I say, any data is better than no data. 718 00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:10,440 So here's one data point. 719 00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,520 It's not a glamorous data point. 720 00:47:13,520 --> 00:47:17,760 But I think we should take it into consideration, 721 00:47:17,760 --> 00:47:20,760 knowing that it may not be the end-all, be-all. 722 00:47:20,760 --> 00:47:28,480 It definitely means that more scientific studies 723 00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:30,360 are in order. 724 00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:32,200 So definitely something to look at. 725 00:47:36,040 --> 00:47:38,200 So like I said, we could dismiss it. 726 00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:40,800 Or maybe there is something there. 727 00:47:43,440 --> 00:47:45,760 As we were pointing out today, there 728 00:47:45,760 --> 00:47:50,400 sometimes is what I think are non-negligible limits 729 00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:52,200 of some of the heavy metals. 730 00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:55,720 It looks like they're typically under the limit. 731 00:47:55,720 --> 00:47:58,080 But maybe the limits are too high. 732 00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,800 Because remember, the Maryland limits, 733 00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:03,920 they were rarely coming close to those, 734 00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:07,640 except with certain compounds like arsenic. 735 00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:11,880 And then the Washington limits are on a whole scale magnitude 736 00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:12,480 greater. 737 00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:19,760 And then once again, somebody brought up the comment 738 00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:23,440 that that's through the regulated system. 739 00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:26,040 So you think, oh, through the regulated system, 740 00:48:26,040 --> 00:48:30,240 people have the incentive to use clean water 741 00:48:30,240 --> 00:48:33,560 and regulated fertilizers. 742 00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:37,240 Because that's a way that heavy metals can sneak in. 743 00:48:37,240 --> 00:48:42,160 If you get poor quality nutrients, poor quality 744 00:48:42,160 --> 00:48:49,480 fertilizers, you're just using poor sources of water. 745 00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:52,240 All of those can be sources of contaminants. 746 00:49:01,040 --> 00:49:03,600 And then the other interesting thing about this study 747 00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:06,960 was the time scale. 748 00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:16,920 Because it covers the time from well before adult use markets. 749 00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:23,160 So 2005, that's back in the medical cannabis days. 750 00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:28,680 And then it wasn't even really till Washington and Colorado 751 00:49:28,680 --> 00:49:29,840 permitted cannabis. 752 00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:34,440 I think at the end of 2012 that the adult use markets really 753 00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:36,600 started cropping up. 754 00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:41,800 And as we've pointed out, it took a long time for testing 755 00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:46,280 to really start to become even, it's not standardized yet, 756 00:49:46,280 --> 00:49:50,240 but even close to what it is now. 757 00:49:50,240 --> 00:49:54,720 So testing's come a long way since then. 758 00:49:54,720 --> 00:49:57,160 So long story short is I think there's 759 00:49:57,160 --> 00:50:00,480 a ton more to research here. 760 00:50:00,480 --> 00:50:02,480 Want to share the data with you. 761 00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:05,280 So look for an email. 762 00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:08,120 I'll make sure it gets onto GitHub. 763 00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:10,120 As I said, I'll put it on Hugging Face. 764 00:50:10,120 --> 00:50:13,080 I'll just have it in as many places as possible. 765 00:50:13,080 --> 00:50:15,840 That way you can try to get your paws on it. 766 00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:19,440 Take a look at it because there's a lot more data points 767 00:50:19,440 --> 00:50:20,840 that I haven't even looked at. 768 00:50:20,840 --> 00:50:23,720 So there's all the pesticides. 769 00:50:23,720 --> 00:50:30,720 The microbiology is interesting in Maryland. 770 00:50:30,720 --> 00:50:34,040 And then I completely skipped over them today. 771 00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,880 But you could also look at the cannabinoid data, 772 00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:39,600 which is of interest. 773 00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:40,880 It's cannabis after all. 774 00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:45,560 So lots going on there. 775 00:50:45,560 --> 00:50:49,640 Just kind of looking through your questions here. 776 00:50:55,200 --> 00:51:05,000 So long story short is as a consumer, 777 00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:14,000 I think personally, I think that cannabis consumers, 778 00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:16,920 medical consumers should be allowed 779 00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:20,920 to grow their cannabis at home to make sure it's really clean. 780 00:51:20,920 --> 00:51:23,600 And that topic of homegrown came up. 781 00:51:23,600 --> 00:51:27,680 And one has to wonder, is growing at home actually 782 00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:31,280 cleaner than what some of the producers are doing? 783 00:51:31,280 --> 00:51:32,280 We don't know yet. 784 00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:35,120 We'd love to get some data on that. 785 00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:38,080 So I know heavy metal testing is super expensive. 786 00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:43,400 So that may be a little too much for patients 787 00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:48,120 to get a funny topic on this. 788 00:51:48,120 --> 00:51:50,000 There's a new bill. 789 00:51:50,000 --> 00:51:51,800 I don't know if it will pass or not. 790 00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:56,560 I think in DC for the District of Columbia itself, 791 00:51:56,560 --> 00:51:59,800 where they're trying to produce a new drug, 792 00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:03,720 where they're trying to permit medical consumers there 793 00:52:03,720 --> 00:52:06,960 to get lab testing for free. 794 00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:11,080 But I don't think that one will pass because that's just, 795 00:52:11,080 --> 00:52:13,640 I think, too costly. 796 00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:21,280 A cannabinoid test, I don't know, may cost $20 to $80. 797 00:52:21,280 --> 00:52:27,040 A heavy metal test, I want to say maybe up to $300 or more. 798 00:52:27,040 --> 00:52:27,560 Maybe not. 799 00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:29,360 Maybe you can get a deal on one of those. 800 00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:32,120 But that's an expensive test. 801 00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:35,880 And so that's another reason why all this data, I think, 802 00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:37,720 is super valuable. 803 00:52:37,720 --> 00:52:43,440 This data has been generated from expensive tests. 804 00:52:43,440 --> 00:52:51,240 Each one of these observations may run us, say, $100 or so, 805 00:52:51,240 --> 00:52:54,400 maybe to $200 or so in Washington state, 806 00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:58,040 to I know in California, a quality control test 807 00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:02,120 may cost $800 or more, maybe somewhere 808 00:53:02,120 --> 00:53:04,280 in between for Maryland. 809 00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:07,520 So these are not cheap tests. 810 00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:10,920 The data is readily available. 811 00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:13,080 Why throw it away? 812 00:53:13,080 --> 00:53:16,000 Here, I'll do the math real quick. 813 00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:25,360 Let's say each Maryland test costs $200. 814 00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:40,480 Then this data set, wow, would have cost $19 million. 815 00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:46,440 So I mean, that's just at back of the envelope calculation. 816 00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:52,480 But there may have been as much as $19 million spent just 817 00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:55,640 on lab testing in Maryland. 818 00:53:55,640 --> 00:53:58,640 And then let's just say it's $200 as well for all 819 00:53:58,640 --> 00:54:02,200 the Washington tests. 820 00:54:02,200 --> 00:54:15,480 Then that is going to be another $13, close to $14 million 821 00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:18,000 in Washington. 822 00:54:18,000 --> 00:54:23,120 So there could be close to around $35 million 823 00:54:23,120 --> 00:54:26,280 that have been spent on lab testing 824 00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:28,520 to generate this data set. 825 00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:34,160 And thankfully, due to the fortunate laws 826 00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:36,480 of Washington and Maryland, these 827 00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:40,800 are available through Freedom of Information Act requests. 828 00:54:40,800 --> 00:54:46,480 And I think that people can learn and benefit 829 00:54:46,480 --> 00:54:48,720 from this knowledge. 830 00:54:48,720 --> 00:54:53,720 If you're a cannabis consumer or a producer or a retailer 831 00:54:53,720 --> 00:54:57,880 or anyone interested in the cannabis space, 832 00:54:57,880 --> 00:55:02,120 wouldn't it be awesome to get some statistics, some knowledge, 833 00:55:02,120 --> 00:55:04,720 some data in your hands? 834 00:55:04,720 --> 00:55:11,160 So anywho, this is what I happen to be interested in. 835 00:55:11,160 --> 00:55:15,840 As I mentioned, just the topic of the silver spray 836 00:55:15,840 --> 00:55:18,040 came up across my mind. 837 00:55:18,040 --> 00:55:21,880 We actually have some data, actually wanted to look at it. 838 00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:27,760 So it's been this quick, easy, heavy metal analysis for Maryland. 839 00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:32,240 Saw that silver was being detected here and there, 840 00:55:32,240 --> 00:55:35,040 but then they stopped testing for it. 841 00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:37,160 And so that just makes me wonder, 842 00:55:37,160 --> 00:55:39,440 why did they stop testing for it? 843 00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:44,240 And is a silver spray being used on products 844 00:55:44,240 --> 00:55:47,720 that then ends up being sold to consumers? 845 00:55:47,720 --> 00:55:51,720 If so, is that even dangerous? 846 00:55:51,720 --> 00:55:54,280 Is it only happening in Maryland? 847 00:55:54,280 --> 00:55:58,240 So that's why they're not testing 848 00:55:58,240 --> 00:55:59,760 for silver in Washington. 849 00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:03,560 But I would love to know, are there any products that 850 00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:05,480 may test for that? 851 00:56:05,480 --> 00:56:09,560 Is silver an expensive element to test for? 852 00:56:09,560 --> 00:56:14,560 Would it break the bank for labs to add silver 853 00:56:14,560 --> 00:56:18,520 to their panel of heavy metals? 854 00:56:18,520 --> 00:56:20,800 So I don't know, food for thought. 855 00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:29,360 But anywho, I can't thank you enough for attending. 856 00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:33,080 It's your eyes, your ears, your brilliant ideas 857 00:56:33,080 --> 00:56:35,720 that make the meetup happen after all. 858 00:56:35,720 --> 00:56:39,440 So can't thank you enough for attending. 859 00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:43,640 Please take the opportunity, explore the data. 860 00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:46,800 And if you come up with any insights, 861 00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:49,600 have any cool statistical analyses of your own, 862 00:56:49,600 --> 00:56:51,640 then you're always welcome to come and share them here 863 00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:54,320 at the meetup. 864 00:56:54,320 --> 00:56:56,120 Thank you, Keegan. 865 00:56:56,120 --> 00:57:02,040 On that note, I'll let you all go have a productive day. 866 00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:03,400 Bye. 867 00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:05,400 Conquer the world. 868 00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:07,080 Thank you for helping, and thanks Cannabis Science, 869 00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:07,600 everyone. 870 00:57:07,600 --> 00:57:09,600 Thank you.