That Medicinal Pot Brownie Might Be More or Less Potent Than Promised

There’s gonna be a certain amount of, well, trial-and-error involved in decriminalizing marijuana. For instance: A new study evaluated several medicinal edible products and found that only 17 percent had the right potency info. Oops?

The New York Times reports on findings just published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers tested 75 different edibles from Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and the vast majority weren’t labeled with the right amount of THC. (More delivered less THC than promised, but 23 percent had more. Probably not a fun time if you just want something light for your glaucoma!)

It matters because we’re talking about medical marijuana, here. It’d be bad enough downing a couple shots without a sense of the alcohol content; you really wouldn’t want to be taking randomly labeled prescription drugs from Duane Reade:

“We need a more accurate picture of what’s being offered to patients,” said Dr. Donald Abrams, the chief of hematology and oncology at San Francisco General Hospital, who was not involved in the new study, which was published in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association.

“What we have now in this country is an unregulated medical marijuana industry, due to conflicts between state and federal laws,” Dr. Abrams said.

Said the study’s lead author, Ryan Vandrey of Johns Hopkins: “The point is not to say, ‘Hey, X medical marijuana company, you’re bad.’” It’s that, “we don’t have the kind of quality assurance for edibles that we have for any other medicine.” Very reassuring!