Happy to have you here. Got so many cool things to talk about. I've got a couple remarks about
an interesting public meeting in Massachusetts that occurred yesterday before I groan on
about all my thoughts. Candice, I know you listened in. Would you be interested in giving
the group a lowdown of what people were talking about in Massachusetts yesterday and maybe
your synopsis? Not to put you on the spot or anything, but you're welcome to share if
you would like. Yes. So the meeting was held at, it was a joint committee on, at the Boston
State House regarding cannabis policy. And they were asking for some data from the CCC.
They were looking for averages, so pass, fail on like pesticides and microbes and what have
you. Whereas I'm asking for absolute values of pesticides detected for every product
sold in Massachusetts, such as what they do in Florida by supplying medical patients with
the compliance reports that show probably 50 pesticide types and with absolute detection,
not just meet state requirement pass fail. And another thing that they're trying to do
too, is they're trying to eliminate vertical marketing so that it's easier for dispensaries
that are recreational to become medical. And there are other items too on the bill. I'm
really interested in the open data sets. And then also too, there are others that are interested
as well. So it was really great that the conversation was opened up and there were other bills also,
such as with medical and what have you. But I did not want to see a physician at every
dispensary. So I'm really kind of hoping that maybe doesn't get pushed through. But I am
pretty passionate about open data sets and that patients need to be aware of the pesticides,
growth hormones, any type of non natural additives added. But it was great. I recorded it, but
so did Keegan.
There may even be a public recording online. So I'll point you all in the direction, but
it was a real interesting discussion because, right, as Candice mentioned, and what has
dominated a lot of the regulatory discussion is just market structure, which as an economist,
I understand is really of utmost importance. That's kind of how the market shakes out.
I'll need to read more in depth to give my two cents on that. And then of course, there's
always some sometimes nitpicky safety regulations that people are talking about. And I think
some are being discussed there. But the predominant discussion, I think, well, at least half and
half was about open data or access to data. And Candice raised several good points there.
Just to look at the glass half full real quick. One thing that we had mentioned in the past
was, OK, everybody's talking quality control, quality control, quality control. What does
that mean? And the people in the laboratory space, they're real big fans of proficiency
tests and accreditation. And why is that? Well, different reasons. But my personal belief
is, well, you know, if the laboratories aren't very scared of proficiency tests and accreditation,
then they must be, you know, that must be like a fairly maybe low bar to jump over.
So that's my personal belief is, you know, most labs can pass a proficiency test. If
you go through and check all the checkboxes, you can get accredited. So there's a lot of
accredited labs out there. And there's a lot of proficiency testing. People are still complaining
like, ah, there's still this kind of sticky issue with the laboratory space. And so we
said, OK, well, we're quants here, right? We're data analysts, data scientists. So couldn't
we try to quantify what quality control even means? And we took a stab at it a few months
ago. And basically, the simplest thing that we could think of was, let's just look at
the outcomes at the different laboratories. And then let's look at the averages and use
statistics, right? See if any of these averages of outcomes are different. And so, of course,
people are interested in how people are measuring THC and CBD. But we noticed, OK, there's a
wide variety, wide variance in THC. It's pretty hard to conclude if anyone's statistically
different on their THC average. So that's one thing. Then we started to look at, oh,
maybe people are measuring contaminants differently, because as Candice was mentioning, that's
of importance to particularly medical consumers. And then we started to just notice right off
the bat, which is what you want to notice in statistics. You don't want to have to really
pull it out. But we noticed that it looked like there were some structural differences
with how people were measuring microbes and mycotoxins. I don't think there was a, I don't
remember, actually, if we looked at this, lab by lab variance in pesticides or residual
solvents. Either I don't remember a big variance there or we didn't look at it. But I know
we specifically looked at microbe testing and people were testing differently, to the
point where certain labs had really high failure rates and some had very low failure rates.
And we even looked at licensees and we saw some licensees even had really high failure
rates. Some north of 50%, I want to say. I think that was atypical. But you would run
into some licensees that maybe had 30% failure rates or some like 60% or more. I think there
were some that had like a 100% failure rate, but maybe they just sent in four samples.
And like I said, that would be unfortunate for that licensee because if you sent in four
samples, they all failed. You're going to be in a tough boat economically. We basically
said that could basically be a measure of quality control. Just compare yourself to
the average. So if you're a licensee and you're failing above average, then you may want to
look at your facility and maybe ask some other people, try to find a consultant perhaps,
and try to think about ways that you can maybe clean up your facility or lower your risk
of failing. So that's on the licensee side. And then on the lab side, we said, okay, people
are always talking about standardization. They want standardized results. So similar
thing with microbe testing. So say you're screening for microbes. Maybe you notice another
lab has a really low failure rate or a really high failure rate. Once again, maybe hire
a consultant. Maybe you can call that laboratory up. They may not want to share their trade
secrets or this or that, but you could start to investigate why. We're not saying anyone's
doing anything wrong, but it's just a place to start to look. Maybe the people who have
a really high failure rate for microbes aren't doing it correctly. Maybe they're getting
a lot of false positives. Whereas maybe the people who are getting no detections, maybe
they're actually the ones measuring it the most accurately. Maybe they're laser focusing
it on a particular microbe. So we're not saying anyone's wrong from just having the outcomes
they do, but we just thought, okay, that'd be an interesting place to just start looking.
And the other thing too is that Florida is so transparent. 18,000 COAs they have on their
dispensary websites for patients. Whereas Massachusetts, it took me four months to get
the COAs for the cure relief product purchase. So that's another thing in my testimony too
to the state house. Otherwise, sorry to interrupt.
Well good point. And I'll do the other side of the glass real quick because I've got a
couple of things about Florida. But the main takeaway is ask. So a lot of laboratories
in the state have been asking for the data transparency. I think there is a couple of
testimonials. I think one was maybe the CEO of MCR Labs. But various people spoke, some
pro and some against. But as I said, it's good that the conversation's going there that
you can at least ask. Candice did mention that ultimately these are just statistics.
And so this now gets to the sticky and the interesting part. Once you get the statistics,
things get controversial.
But also too, I'm a medical patient in both states. And in Florida, I can get access to
all the COA and compliance test information for pesticides and the other analytes. But
in Massachusetts, I can't. So I'm really hoping that my testimony might add that medical spin
that adds a snowbird, full transparency in Florida, no transparency really in Massachusetts.
So I'm hopeful.
I'll just quit dancing around the subject and just go ahead and get all my remarks out
there.
Massachusetts. The regulations for the public to see these statistics. Because that's sort
of where the rubber meets the road, with just actually having the public or the move. In
my opinion, the public are the movers and the shakers. Because the policymakers, the
regulators, I think should already have access to these statistics. This bill is just for
the public to see them. So I think the state, if they wanted to, they could already see
if there's a discrepancy between failure rates from one lab to the other. But they don't
have to do anything about it unless the public knows. So it's just like, so the regulators
may know that one lab has a 0% failure rate and another lab has a 10% failure rate. But
unless the public knows, they don't have to act on it. And so then it's basically as soon
as the public knows that, hey, what's going on here? This lab's detecting microbes. This
one's not. Then the regulators actually get their feet held to the fire. And then they
actually have to go look at it. And then the laboratories, there was a really telling remark.
One of the laboratory, maybe scientific officers spoke, and there was a really telling remark
where they may be not paraphrasing correctly. So once again, double check the official record.
But it was basically like, we have to be a little cautious about letting the public see
the data because they may not understand it. And they may put a laboratory on blast, which
is very scary. Well, that's sort of the point. We just mentioned that laboratories aren't
scared of proficiency testing. They're not scared of accreditation. But maybe it's OK
for laboratories to be a little scared that they may actually get called out if they're
not testing properly. And I just think it's a little demeaning of the general public because
I think a good way to go about life is to actually think of others as smart, super smart.
In fact, I think it could even be in Dale Carnegie's, how to make friends and influence
people. But you almost want to approach everyone as if they have something that they can share
with you. They have some bit of knowledge out there. So there's tons of smart people
in the general public. There's chemists, there's biologists. Just because they're not in the
cannabis space doesn't necessarily mean they're not educated. And then it's also sort of like
I talked about the panopticon approach. And I was trying to think of an analogy. And I'm
sure there's better ones. But I was thinking about speeding. So if you knew, say, where
every police officer was, well, then you just wouldn't speed near them. And you would just
speed everywhere else. But the fact that there are some undercover cop cars here and there,
you basically don't know which car is a potential police officer. So there may be no police
officers on the road, but you just don't speed because you just never know who's looking.
So it's not the best analogy. But it's a similar thing with lab results. Washington State,
they're all public. Chances are, very few people are looking at these, right? We're
looking at them, but scantily, right? I've only got so much time in my day. And so I
only do like a really thorough look at the Washington lab results. I don't know, maybe
once every few months, once a year. So I'm only doing a small look, but they don't know.
They don't know who's looking. It could be Jim McCray, who I think has a company, Straightline
Analytics, and he's been looking at these for a long time. Or maybe it's, you know,
remember a good friend, Isaac, in Massachusetts, maybe he's looking at them, or Candace. So
really anyone all over the world could be looking at these lab results. Maybe nobody
is. But just the thought that, ooh, somebody could look at these and call me out if I'm
not doing it properly. I think that puts the right incentive in place, where the laboratories,
you know, they button up and they, you know, they follow the book, they do everything by
their rules. Because, you know, who knows who's going to be looking at the certificate
and nitpicking it. So, so anywho, let's get to the more fun stuff now, the actual data
science. But I just kind of wanted to call to call this to your attention. Because once
again, this bill may not go anywhere. So just be prepared for that. Because as I said, who
is actually the one who's going to be held to the fire? It's really the regulators, right?
Because they already have that data. This is just a bill for the public to be able to
see that data. And so the regulators may not be thrilled about that. And so we'll see how
things materialize. But we don't, as I said, the public are the movers and the shakers.
So I'll show you basically how the public's moving the ball forward in Florida, and how
there's still a little little room to go. So I'll just share with you real quick. Also,
before I dive into this, I know I've been talking a long time. Robert, May or Rick, would
you all want to chime in or have any thoughts on this? Well, I start to change gears a little
bit.
Yeah, one very brief thing is I looked at the the Washington lab results. And I mentioned
that one technical item where the results column had a list of lists and I use Python
and it took me literally or it took the computer a brand new laptop with the I nine to iterate
through 10,000 records. It took almost 24 hours. So now I have like a million rows of
of that lab result column that's been extracted into a proper database format. So I'll get
either rest of it. But just as an interesting experiment, you know, it took me a while to
loop through all of that. So it should be a lot of interesting data there. And, you
know, so I'll mix it in with my data science classes. So it's good to have, you know, a
second computer going while I'm study on the other stuff. So yeah, I'll get some good info
to you real soon here.
And I love it. So Robert's taking a look at these Washington lab results. And there's
a lot of data there because it's basically every time a sample is sent into the laboratory,
there's so many data points that are generated, right? It's getting screened for cannabinoids,
potentially residual solvents, foreign matter, moisture, water activity, maybe micro toxins,
microbes, and then pesticides. So, you know, between all of these, you could easily get
close to 100 or maybe sometimes more than 100 analytes that were tested. And that's
why I think this is such rich, valuable data that I think a lot of you awesome data scientists
should look at, because there's a lot there. And I don't know, my first take is maybe we
haven't fully understood all of this data. That's what we're after. But thank you for
your noble work, Rick. Basically organizing, standardizing, and making the data accessible
is what it's all about. So you did a lot of the hard work. However, now that you've got
it in a nice, I think SQL table, hopefully you can start doing queries and start asking
and answering interesting questions. Yep, definitely.
Oh, well, on that note, let me share my screen with you and get you 1200 more messy laboratory
samples. And you know, once again, that's probably, you know, north, we're close to
10,000 or more analytes that were tested. Maybe a little shy of that, but I'm barely
getting to it all. Okay. So speaking of lots and lots of data points, in say Florida, this
is what you'd be looking to get. So if you purchased this Polifakush 8 produced by TrueLeave,
I guess we don't know where this sold, but you know, one of the medical dispensaries
in Florida, you'd want to try to get ahold of this as a good data steward. And as Candice
mentioned, Candice is a medical patient in Florida, wouldn't mind, I think, right, trying
to just track your consumption of cannabinoids. And also, ideally, you know, make sure you're
not consuming any contaminants, or at least keeping your contaminant consumption to a
minimum, right? You want to minimize that as much as possible. And we pointed out in
previous meetups how flour in particular, but most cannabis products, I think edibles
are the most stable, but even concentrates, there's a good amount of variability. But
in this 8th, right, so this is 3.5 grams. So we've got milligrams per gram here. So
actually, do I even have a script open here? Let's go ahead and open up a script here so
we can start doing some interesting things while we talk about the data. The first one
is just do a little bit of math, right? So what there is about 314 milligrams per gram
of THCA, phenomenal. So that's, if you purchase this flour, you would be getting almost a
little bit more than one gram of THCA. So we've mentioned in the past that, say you're trying
to regulate your consumption of THCA, or maybe you're trying to regulate your consumption
of CBG. Well, you'll have to basically do a little bit of math. Maybe you've got the
set of scales or what have you. You can allot various portions of this. Or I'm just looking
at daily consumption. So maybe you just want to trend over time. But regardless, the first
step is just getting this data. So like I said, lots of cool things you can do with
it or interesting and enlightening and helpful things that you can do with the data. But
as I said, first things first, you need to get it. So in Florida, people have been asking
for this a lot, a lot, a lot. And now they're starting to put QR codes right on the label.
You scan the QR code. And ideally, you get this certificate. And why do you want this
certificate? Because you've got the cannabinoids. Notice here real quick, terpene summary. So
ideally, you actually want to scroll down here and get the full list of all the terpenes.
Because remember, a non-detect is in fact a data point. Because, right, there was, for
example, there was no, I think this is, you know, delta 3krin or alpha cedrine or alpha
philandrine or alpha terpenine, right? That's an interesting one. I think you'd want to
know that there's no alpha terpenine in this, right? So if you just look at the terpene
summary, you know which terpenes are in it, but you don't know which ones weren't detected.
So already, you gain a little bit of knowledge by knowing the non-detects. Because maybe
they just didn't even test for alpha terpenine. Because then it may be in there, it may not
be, they didn't test for it. So I think this will be useful data moving forward. Because
as we're, well, as I'm kind of finding out like at these Canvas Science conferences and
things, people are discovering more and more terpenes and, you know, which ones are significant
and interesting to look for. So that's one thing. A data point that's, you know, worth
writing down is the moisture content. Because there are scientists out there who think that
if you were going to, and once again, I think there's, well, like I said, there are scientists
who make the argument that, you know, if you're going to compare different flowers, it's pretty
standard with botanical products to adjust for the moisture content. Because I think
the idea is this 3.5 grams of Caliphakush is, where's that number, is 13.28% water. So,
you know, of your 3.5 grams, is that right? You're going to be getting almost half a gram
of water. That's what it is, right? It's a flower product. So, you know, so technically,
I don't know. Once again, I need to think about this number more. But once again, it's
worth jotting down because now you can at least know sort of the moisture content in
your flower. Thought, comment, question? Yeah, I was just curious, the moisture content,
if anyone knows if there are terpenes that could be lost due to evaporation, and so maybe
that lower moisture content, that terpene wouldn't show up, a higher moisture content
means that it was preserved. Does that make sense? I'm just trying to come up with a use
case of where the moisture percentage would, we compare it with something else to maybe
extract some insight. So, this may not be super reassuring, but from my understanding,
some of these terpenes maybe are readily evaporating at room temperature. So, I think that's even
like what gives cannabis its smell. So, if you, we'll talk about this momentarily, like
someone had mentioned garlic, these garlic strains. From my understanding, you know,
if you smell a really strong garlic strain and it's got a distinct smell, those are the
actual terpenes. I forget what the correct word is, maybe aromatizing, but they're basically
evaporating off of the plant and going up your nose in small amounts. So, I guess the
way I picture it is like almost if you're holding a cannabis flower, you know, you can't
see it, but I would imagine there's just almost just like fumes coming off of the flower,
right? And so, like, you know, dogs can smell the cannabis flower. So, you almost, I guess,
want to think about this as like a snapshot in time. So, it's like they got the flower,
they got it to the lab, the second they extracted it, put it in the diluents, and maybe they
put it in methanol or acetonitrile, or maybe it's just going straight onto the GC. So,
it's just, which is just, from my understanding, I think you just put a little bit of flower
in a little capsule, and then that basically just gets heated right onto the instrument.
So, it's basically, so as to your question, like this actual percentage, I think is a
little snapshot in time. And so, this is probably always going to be kind of diminishing as
time goes on. Does water affect the rate this diminishes? I have no idea. I don't think
like the terpenes would be like in the water themselves, right? The terpenes, I don't know
where in the plant they actually are. They may be in the trichomes. But a hypothesis
is that maybe this is a compact flower bud. Maybe if there's like moisture in there, like
little H2O molecules in there, maybe that just prevents some of the terpenes from evaporating.
But who knows? That's just pure conjecture. And so, that's actually a real interesting
question and maybe room for some research.
Yeah, definitely. The reason I asked is I had talked to some guys that had inside information
on whether or not the moisture content affected THC levels in lab results. Now, this was a
few years back, so this might not be the case anymore. But it seemed that there was kind
of a golden area of moisture when submitting your flower that would yield better or higher
THC results. So I was just curious if there was like something similar with the terpenes
as well.
But it could even be a quirk of the actual lab testing itself. Because it's a non-trivial
thing to actually test cannabis flower because from my understanding, like the flower has
a lot of like fats and lipids. And as we pointed out, it's got out of the 3.5 grams, you know,
half a gram of water itself. So it's when you're testing this, you're basically just
putting the whole concoction of the flower plant itself onto the scientific instrument.
So I think there's techniques you can do to try to get rid of some of the fats and lipids
and things. But it could almost just cause maybe inaccuracies in the testing, maybe.
I don't know.
So I didn't get a very scientific explanation from him. It was almost kind of like a wise
tale type of a thing. But he believed that it worked and went by that. But he didn't
have any actual data that he was looking at or anything. So yeah, like he said, it's an
interesting point for research. So don't want to take us down any further down that rabbit
hole. But yeah, I'll look into it and see if I find anything interesting.
Please look into it, Rick, because obviously this was of importance to the producer, right?
This was something they look for when they're trying to send their sample in for testing,
which is pretty important to people. And so why it may work, it could be a couple factors.
One, it could actually be something structural, right? Maybe there is something about the
water and the turpines. And then there also could just be maybe there's some quirk in
testing where maybe there's the way the labs calibrate their instruments. Maybe they can
handle certain levels of moisture better than others. But anywho, as I said, the jury is
still out. So that's why I get the data so that way you can do some statistics on it.
And I always found this interesting because I actually tested moisture content in the
laboratory and it can be quite variable. And it's one of the things that the analyst knows
that, okay, this is going to be quite variable. And so the analyst takes into consideration
that, okay, you may want to give a little bit of wiggle room to this 13.28% number,
but the producers, they put so much faith into these numbers sometimes. And so sometimes
that's where there's a little miscommunication, I think. Because maybe the producer is putting
a lot of weight into the 13.28%, but from the laboratory's point of view, it's not
really statistically different than the, say, 13% because they may have an internal laboratory
margin of error. So anywho, that's a tiny little data point, but when you want to get...
Let me let in a guest real quick. Oh, Hector's joining us. So anywho, want to get the moisture
content? We'd like to go ahead and get the microbes and microtoxins. It's interesting
kind of where I stand on these. Once again, you don't want moldy cannabis and that's,
I think, definitely something you want to watch out for. Personally, I think... I don't
know. I'm thinking the microbe screening is maybe going a little overboard, like a little
overkill, because basically, from my understanding, microbes are just ubiquitous. I think they're
on the table, they're on the food, they're in the air. So I think there's always maybe
a small amount of them, but it's just like you don't want a lot of mold. So I think there's
a give and a take. So I guess you can't be too stringent, maybe because you'll be kind
of getting maybe like a false positive in the sense that it's maybe not like positively
dangerous. But once again, I'm going to kind of defer this to some microbiologists and
things. But I think it's at least looking at this data. But this is a landscape that's
still developing because there's pretty strong stances on both sides. But as I said, the
one thing that we can do is just get the data and then people can look at it. And then the
final thing are the pesticides. And this is a data point that I feel pretty strongly about.
I personally just am trying to avoid pesticides. I know they're out there. We talked about
how these DDT breakdown chemicals are just still out there and they're just kind of hard
to avoid. So I understand that there's maybe some background contamination here and there.
So you just like to keep that to a minimum. The main thing is maybe somebody's spraying
a lot of one of these pesticides and another producer's not. Personally, I don't know if
these are permitted or completely banned. So in fact, I think even pesticide use in
cannabis is maybe a contentious topic because some people feel that you're not even supposed
to use pesticides because they made an argument that cannabis is such a gray area. But I think
maybe the FDA may have to approve or maybe there's some regulatory body, maybe the Department
of Agriculture. I don't know who does it, but I think somebody approves pesticides for
use in various crops. So for example, I think the way they do this in Washington State is
I think the Washington State Department of Agriculture has said that, okay, cannabis
policies are approved to use this subset of pesticides. And so I don't know if they're
allowed to technically use all of these or if maybe they're just screening for some of
these for safety sake. So once again, that's sort of where my knowledge ends and then I
encourage you to kind of do your own research to fill in the gaps.
Okay, so why am I droning on about all these data points? Well, because Candice said that
people have been asking for these. Well, one thing you have to look at the fine print for
is this is a compliance test. So this was a test that was submitted to the state of
Florida to say that the laboratory performed all of these tests. One thing I've noticed
as we've gone about collecting these lab results is I keep seeing, and once again, this may
be just a quirk of this one laboratory. However, I notice, and I don't know if they all use
this language, however, I want to say I noticed at least three or four laboratories doing
this practice where, look, this is the patient COA and it does say that it was tested for
these contaminants and they do list the cannabinoids and the terpenes that were detected.
But notice this. We don't have the results, right? All it says is pesticides were passed.
You know, it says the moisture was passed, the microbes were passed, but we only have
one page here. So unfortunately, this is sort of where, you know, we're not over yet. You
know, the struggle to get lab results is not over because if, say, the laboratory submitted
this COA to the state of Florida, I don't think the state of Florida would accept that.
They would be like, great, but you're missing all the results. So this is, I think, sort
of why people have described it, I think, in the Reddit forum is pulling teeth to get
these lab results because it's just like, you know, the patients are like, we're demanding
them like, come on, we want the lab results, we want the lab results, we want the lab results.
And then they're like, okay, here are the lab results. But, you know, unless you're
like, you really, you know, know your stuff about laboratory testing, you wouldn't really
know right off the bat that this isn't in, from my understanding, you know, this isn't
like the actual COA that was submitted to the state of Florida. From the look of this,
this is once again, my conjecture and we're basically, there's like an advocate in Oregon,
his big complaint is the laboratories at the end of the day, they make their money from
selling this certificate or selling this analysis. And anyone who's in business knows that what
do you do in business, you try to make your client happy. So people are pestering TrueLeave
for lab results. TrueLeave notices, okay, you know, other companies. And once again,
I don't want to pick on TrueLeave because here it actually is a full TrueLeave COA by
ACS laboratory. So I don't know what exactly is going on here. And this one's even pretty
recent. But like I said, I've seen this at other laboratories too. And so I'll point
you in the direction of those COAs. And then I'll get on to some fun stuff here in a second.
So I don't really want to pick on them for any reason. But my hypothesis of what may
be going on here is people in Florida are asking for COAs. Some producers have started
to provide those because there's pressure for them. Other producers want to provide
them but they don't necessarily want to just show patients in Florida all of the contaminants
because there may be a trace amount of abamectin or there may be a, this one doesn't see this
is a clean green. This is what I would like to look for. But once again, you know, it
may have a tiny minuscule amount of one of these pesticides, you know, it still passes
and you know, that's okay. And you know, once again, patients may or may not care. But the
point being is, I don't think there's like a law in Florida that says that you have to
provide this to patients. And so what it looks like to me is they're kind of trying to pass
this off as the official COA, because it kind of satisfies what the consumers are after
because most people they just want to know the cannabinoids in the top terpenes. So this
is phenomenal. So as I said, on the glass half full side, I'll take it right. I've said
in the past, any data is better than no data. So you know, bravo for, you know, at least
providing us with you know, the cannabinoid and the terpene summary. Thought comment question?
It's Hector. Does the fact that cannabis is illegal federally cause problems on improving
the pesticides? Yes. It's a gray area. Someone in Oregon who was a organic farmer, so you
know, they're clearly biased towards no pesticides. But they made the argument that because it's
federally illegal, like I said, I forget what the accrediting body is, if it's the FDA or
the Department of Agriculture, I think it's probably one of those, but it could be another.
They basically approve certain pesticides for various crops. And from my understanding,
it's not approved by them, you know, you're not allowed to use it. I think basically,
you know, just like cannabis, right, cannabis is not federally permitted. Certain states
like Washington have stepped in to say, at a state level, our state is permitting it.
So in Washington, I think they say, okay, we're permitting licenses to use these pesticides.
So once again, the state may permit them to use the pesticides. Technically, the FDA or
maybe the USDA could maybe go make a fuss about it. I don't think they've done that
from my understanding, but they may. Once again, it'd be a whole can of worms and I doubt
like any regulator wants to step in that. But from my understanding, people are using
pesticides. But as you pointed out, Hector, it's not clear if it's just like cannabis
itself, you know, it's not really clear if it's permitted.
Thank you. But anywho, like I said, I think it's important to see the data. Because it's
like pulling teeth, you know, the companies realize, okay, you know, we can we can let
people know the cannabinoids and terpenes without that affecting our bottom dollar.
And in some cases, you know, may actually be a marketing tool. But it still seems that,
you know, the producers and and via the producers, maybe the laboratories themselves, because
at the end of the day, you know, like, I don't want to say that this is the case, I'm trying
to be careful with this, but could be that maybe the producer said, Hey, could you make
us a COA that just has the cannabinoids and terpenes and the overall status and the labs
like, Yeah, sure, we can do that. It's not breaking any rules. We'll still submit this
compliance test to the state. And then you can show your patients this COA. Once again,
it may be perfectly by the book. But in my opinion, like Candice said at the very beginning,
I think you should be able to see a very granular breakdown of what's in your products. So I
think you should be able to get this full COA. Some cases you can. And once again, it's
sort of the panopticon approach. Maybe nobody ends up looking at your pesticide screening.
But just the fact that they can look at it will make you check all your, you know, dot
all your I's cross all your T's make sure you're doing everything by the book, because
maybe nobody's looking. But you know, maybe maybe they will check. So once again, I so
so just to go ahead and just show you, you know, a little data with with the time that's
left. And then maybe I'll actually save, save some of it for next week since since we only
have like five minutes left, I don't want to rush through it all. And it's too much
cool, good material. So I'll post it all to GitHub. So that way, maybe you could look
at it over the next week, because I've got some cool open AI, API queries that we can
do. But they're, they're not really on topic with what we were doing today. So I can at
least show you these Florida lab results, since that's what we were actually talking
about. And so once again, this is the most recent, actually, probably the most recent
ones one at the top. And this is just the most recent observation I've collected from
Florida. And if any of you're interested, you know, can lytics has been writing these
coa parsing algorithms. And we recently started with Florida. And written in out a crude algorithm
for Keisha labs. And see Keisha, and then one for ACS laboratories. This Oh, yeah, I
don't have many. So here's a cake face flower. And you know, we're just collecting various
data points about these may have the that's not the right one. And they have the actual
certificate here, I'd like to try to pull it up. If we can real quick. And so here's
just a random one, we'll see if this is a full coa. See, this one's just a patient coa.
So as I said, I've observed a mix of them in Florida. Ideally, we would like to get
the official compliance coa, the compliance test for this cake face. Because that way
we could know all the pesticides and everything in it. But okay, that's okay. Once again,
as I said, we'll, this is an observation. So we can at least observe this data. So okay,
so this is a cake face, flower, various levels of cannabinoids, you know, 28% total THC,
almost 3% terpenes. So this is probably a flower that you would smell when you open
the jar. I would assume. So so anywho, you know, lots of cool data points. Here, as I
said, you know, we're missing a bunch of the pesticides and things. But in some of the
terpenes, but this is a work in progress. So I'm going to share this data with you right
after the meetup. And I'd encourage you all to look through it because you know, this
is basically the cursory look I've been able to do. I've only really been able to basically
just I mean, you you've already seen all the stuff I figured out, I basically figured out
that, okay, some are compliance tests, and some are patient COAs. So that's as far as
I've gotten. So that's what's, what's interesting about this is, although these are public,
there's only so much time in the day. So, so maybe they're the ACS laboratories, and
truly maybe they're scared to death about these lab results being out there. But it's
like, you're maybe scared for no reason, because it's like, I haven't even had time to barely
look at these. So once again, I encourage you all to take a look because like I said,
there's no need to, I guess, in fact, I even kind of applaud truly even ACS labs for just,
just getting these out there. Like I said, right, they're doing a lot of things running
the H running the I don't even know what this instrument is the LC UV. But you know, they're,
they're running these, you know, the ICPMS that's I want to say those may cost north
of 200,000 or $300,000. And you probably need a specialized chemist to operate it. Right.
So so that's what they're doing. They're running these scientific experiments. So or tests,
so they only have so much time in their day. True leave is growing the actual cannabis.
So they only have so much time in their day. So okay, you know, this is what they can do,
they can post it online. Awesome. Then we can run the final mile. As Robert is finding
out sometimes it's a bit more than a mile. But we can run this last little distance,
you know, get the lab results. And now we can actually do something interesting with
it. So someone was mentioning garlic. Well, we know about the beta pionene to D limonene
ratio. And so this is just the first thing that I look at when I'm trying to understand
a variety. I'm sure there's a lot more to this. So I encourage you all to look at these
garlic strains. But it's like, okay, I look at the beta pionene to D limonene ratio, but
it looks like they're kind of clustering around here, maybe 0.05 to 0.5. Okay, 0.05 to 0.5,
about 0.1. Or this line, maybe 0.15 to 1.5, 0.15 to 1.5, once again, close to about 0.1.
So about a 1 to 10 beta pionene to D limonene ratio. So right off the bat, my Bayesian hypothesis
is this is a super strong indica, or what people would think of as an indica. So I kind
of had a sneaking suspicion that may be the case. But now we actually have not many, but
we've got 12 observations. So before, well, we maybe had some in different states. But
in Florida, we had before this 0. Now we at least have 12 observations. And once again,
these are rosins. So you'll have to look at the sample types and things like that. But
already, I've never seen a ratio that low. Remember, I was telling you that I thought
maybe the strongest indica was around 0.15. So now, this is now, I think, the strongest
indica that I have personally observed. So now, that could maybe be an insight. Once
again, take it with a grain of salt. And I encourage you all to do your own analysis.
But now I kind of know. So it's like, okay, now when somebody says they've got garlic
cake or garlic pop or garlic butter, before, I had no idea if that was more on the sativa
side or indica side. Now I'm kind of thinking, okay, maybe it's more on the indica side.
This one may put you to sleep. So once again, it may not. There's tons of more data exploration
to do. But this is just a way that we can start making some rhyme or reason out of this.
So once again, maybe various patients in Florida can augment this data. So maybe they're using
all these samples. And then for each sample, maybe they're journaling, okay, you know,
I had a good effect with this one. I had a bad effect with this one. I had a good effect
with that one. Right? And then the patients could do their own personalized statistics.
Because remember, 12, you only need eight observations to, once again, I may be butchering
this, but from my understanding, if you can predict all eight of eight perfectly, then
I think you can be 95% confident. I may be butchering those statistics. But, you know,
if you were just reading these, you know, zero to one, you know, I like it or I don't
like it. And you could then build a model that perfectly predicts that if you like it
or you don't like it. And you can do it with a sample size of eight. I mean, you can do
that, right? Maybe. Once again, it's always good to get your sample size large. And we're
going to be working on that. But you can do a lot with a small sample. So I'll save some
of this this cool AI material for you for next week, because there's no way I'll be
able to, to get through it all today. And it's, it's, it's too much cool, good material
to rush through. I know I spent forever just talking about COAs and data this time. So
maybe not the funnest time ever. Hopefully found it interesting. Any thoughts, comments,
I'll at least share the data set with you for coming in the code.
It's kind of strange that they would have two different types of COAs available, that
they would even split the market that way by not giving everyone all the information.
Well, patients in Florida have to request compliance reports. I haven't found that online.
But I found the compliance report on the like Facebook group for the medical patients. And
you know, there's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of data there. The patients are, you know,
kind of getting smart too. Plus, you know, people are wondering, are their pesticides
causing my stomach pain? Are the pesticides causing my lymph node issues? Right? I get
it because there's some state weed that really makes my lymph nodes react and it never happens
with my homegrown that's legal in Massachusetts. So, you know, as a patient, we really need
to know about this, what's going on, how, you know, because there's a lot of rushing
and corner cutting, you know, with the state weed, Florida has a real problem, you know,
people open it up and it's moldy. And it's just, you know, there are people that like
keep saying, maybe we should stick with legacy, it might be healthier. But I don't do legacy,
you know, in Florida. So I have a card. Well, the glass, the bong half full on this one
is the squeaky wheel gets the oil. And it's just like, you just have to keep trying. And
I think I applaud all the patients in Florida, right? They've been squeaky. So they've,
right, first they were squeaky, squeaky, squeaky, they got medical cannabis. And they're awesome.
Well, they'll let's be squeaky, squeaky, squeaky, we want to know what's in our medical cannabis.
And like, it's kind of like pulling teeth, you know, it's slowly, but in the night, to
get to Hector's point, you know, oh, it's surprising that, you know, they're, you know,
trying to withhold some of the lab results. And, you know, to me, it's not super surprising.
And kind of like the, the Massachusetts public discussion, where, you know, even the, maybe
the laboratories who are doing things correctly, they're just a little bit scared of people
actually looking at the data. And so, you know, the labs aren't thrilled about the idea
of their data being out there. The producers aren't super thrilled about having their screening
tests out there. But as Candice pointed out, you know, it should be something that the
consumers can at least see, right? They may not all look into it in depth, you know, they
may not all be parsing COAs and applying statistics to them like we are, but you should at least
be able to, you know, scan, or at least put your eyeballs over the COA. And this is where
we get back to just keep being squeaky and keep asking, because unfortunately, it may
come down to the kind of like in Washington, where there's actually just a state rule that
says yes, if a consumer asks for a COA, you do have to show it to them. So I think that
may not be a law in Florida. So it just may be people are asking for them. The producers
realize there's that pressure there, and they're trying to, trying to pass that one off. But
we're smart, right? And that's where we get back to at the beginning, right? The public
smart. And so it's, you know, we, we figure that one out. It was like, it took me a second
to, it was sort of a nice try. You know, it's like, thank you, you know, we do appreciate
the the cannabinoids and terpenes. But ultimately, I think, you know, the rate, it's up to the
patients in Florida, you know, if they want this, keep asking for it. But that's the thing
is, make sure to ask for the, we want to see the compliance test.
And that way, we could pick maybe a pesticide that we're not as allergic to, because you
have to remember, patients, patients are where all this cannabis legalization were rooted
from. And, and we just need to know, we need to know the additives put in, you know, the
unnatural anything other than cannabis, is it in the weeds? Let us know. I don't know.
I agree. I agree with you. And as I said, it's just, it's a sticky issue, sticky subject.
And the only thing I know to do is just keep asking, keep collecting data, keep using statistics.
It's a slow, slow process. But if anything, I think the the meeting in Massachusetts was
sort of, you know, it's quite reassuring that we're on the right track. We're at least adding
our voices to the conversation. And, you know, helping people learn and find out more and
encouraging people to ask questions. So well, too cold. The lesson of the day today may
be, make sure to read the fine print. Or especially read the fine print. That's where a lot of
the interesting details are hiding. Well, thank you for staying extra long today. Thank
you for coming, lending your eyes, your ears, your thoughts, questions, and keeping the
conversation going. Thank you. Thanks, Keegan. Bye, everybody. See you next week. See you
next week. Be productive.