{"id":5379,"date":"2022-04-11T17:33:29","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T17:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/?p=59636"},"modified":"2022-04-11T17:33:29","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T17:33:29","slug":"is-determining-a-standard-marijuana-dosing-unit-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=5379","title":{"rendered":"Is Determining a Standard Marijuana Dosing Unit Possible?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It\u2019s Friday afternoon and you\u2019re leaving work early. You\u2019re ready to ease into the weekend slowly and steadily, opting for mindful relaxation over nihilistic raging. Instead of heading over to a happy hour, you decide to unwind with some cannabis. <\/p>\n

You want enough for the whole weekend. Knowing from experience, at least one other person (who never seems to have any of their own) will ask you to share. So, while your housemate or partner heads into the shop for a bottle of wine or a six-pack, you dip into the dispensary or text your plug and ask for something with \u201cbetween three and five units of cannabis.\u201d Your perfectly reasonable request is greeted with confusion and derision, because\u2014duh!<\/em>\u2014no such thing exists. <\/p>\n

Misunderstood or vilified when it\u2019s not prohibited, marijuana has long suffered from a lack of concrete knowledge. One metric that experts agree is holding cannabis back is an agreed-upon \u201cstandardized marijuana unit.\u201d Most everything else humans put in their bodies that governments regulate and tax can be easily measured, categorized and divided: a \u201cthousand-calorie burger,\u201d a tropical cocktail with the total alcohol equivalent of \u201ctwo drinks,\u201d movie-theater popcorn with \u201ctwo servings\u201d of butter. <\/p>\n

But cannabis isn\u2019t this. A host of factors, including personal tolerance and method of ingestion, as well as complications such as terpenes and secondary cannabinoids, complicate the effects of cannabis and defy easy standardization. <\/p>\n

If a five-milligram edible hits two people differently, and five milligrams of THC inhaled hits an entirely different way from the edible, what\u2019s the purpose of printing \u201cfive milligrams\u201d on the label in the first place? You could be forgiven for declaring the whole exercise futile, except that\u2019s not how science or regulators work.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsensus regarding a standardized cannabis unit is of utmost importance to accelerate research in medical cannabis and enable safe and effective use of cannabis products,\u201d as a research team led by Joshua Brown, a professor of pharmaceutical outcomes and policy at the University of Florida,<\/a> wrote in a recent article published in the journal<\/a> Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids<\/em>. <\/p>\n

But rather than propose one, Brown and his colleagues poured cold water on the concept. <\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, it is unlikely that a \u201cone size fits all\u201d definition will capture both nonmedical and medical use of cannabis and may be insufficient for constructing comparisons between administration routes,\u201d the article stated.<\/p>\n

Rule of Fives<\/strong><\/h4>\n

So far, the \u201cbest available\u201d standardized cannabis unit seems to be 5 milligrams of THC, or about half of the 10-milligram dose that regulators in adult-use states including California and Colorado have hit upon. Adult-use edibles in those states are limited to no more than 100 milligrams per packaged product, and regulations require the 100-milligrams to be broken up into discreet units, with the idea that such careful division will reduce instances of over-intoxication.<\/p>\n

Five milligrams of THC per \u201cmarijuana unit\u201d is the standard first proposed in 2020 by researchers Tom Freeman and Valentina Lorenzetti, who published their reasoning in the journal Addiction<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>arguing that such a value reflects \u201cthe quantity of primary active pharmacological constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n

With concentrates that isolate THC from other constituent compounds such as secondary cannabinoids and terpenes\u2014edibles or pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products including FDA-approved Sativex\u2014the \u201crule of 5\u201d is probably workable, cannabis industry insiders say, but with exceptions that quickly saddle the \u201cstandard\u201d with so many qualifications that it\u2019s no longer standard. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with five milligrams is, how do you get five milligrams in your lungs versus your stomach?\u201d said Mark Lewis who holds a doctorate degree in biochemistry and is the president of Napro Research, a California-based analytics firm. Five milligrams inhaled will hit more quickly than five milligrams ingested, which both hits more slowly and is metabolized differently by the liver. Any \u201cstandard unit\u201d must address questions of bioavailability, the amount of cannabis a person can metabolize over a period of time. <\/p>\n

For all these reasons, \u201cfive milligrams isn\u2019t five milligrams, isn\u2019t five milligrams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Exceptions Apply<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Lewis highlighted some of the most basic impediments to a five-milligram standard: Beyond method of ingestion, there\u2019s secondary cannabinoids including CBD as well as THC-V and terpenes, all of which can help \u201c10 milligrams\u201d hit more quickly or more intensely than 20\u2014a phenomenon he experienced firsthand when trying out a new hemp-derived, Delta-9 THC-based gummy.<\/p>\n

The gummy had five milligrams of THC advertised\u2014a small dose, a microdose for Lewis. However, the gummy also had 2-3% essential oils. \u201cI took one in the morning, and\u2014oof!<\/em> It snuck up on me,\u201d he said. \u201cI was driving, and thought, \u2018Wow, that coffee was strong\u2014I\u2019m talking about conspiracy theories and some weird stuff.\u2019 Then I remembered I ate that gummy. And I was pretty dang buzzed for the next couple of hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other product-makers question whether a standard unit is more necessary than accurate labeling, whatever the unit may be. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the accuracy of the label is more important than the standard,\u201d said Ian Monat, the co-founder and CEO of rhythm<\/a>, which makes hemp-based CBD beverages. Monat said that CBD products in particular are beset with wildly inaccurate labels. And even a precise figure can become inaccurate over time as cannabinoids degrade, processes that are accelerated in the presence of compounds including aluminum\u2014like a beverage can.<\/p>\n

Brown and his co-authors agree. In their article, they call for standardized units to somehow accommodate questions of ingestion as well as CBD ratios and essential oils, and state that patients need to be clearly informed that their product\u2019s concentration and the \u201cdelivered dose\u201d may be different\u2014and, like Lewis said, that five milligrams isn\u2019t always five milligrams. <\/p>\n

Or, in another analysis, outside of THC-only pharmaceutical grade cannabis or strictly-THC-only extracts or edibles, dosage is too complicated and too personal a question to be answerable in universal figures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s Friday afternoon and you\u2019re leaving work early. You\u2019re ready to ease into the weekend slowly and steadily, opting for mindful relaxation over nihilistic raging. Instead of heading over to a happy hour, you decide to unwind with some cannabis.  You want enough for the whole weekend. Knowing from experience, at least one other person (who never seems to have any of their own) will ask you to share. So, while your housemate or partner heads into the shop for a bottle of wine or a six-pack, you dip into the dispensary or text your plug and ask for something… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marijuana_information"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}