机译
进入杂草:管制大麻中的农药
摘要:Outside Sonoma Lab Works’ otherwise ordinary building in an anonymous business park, the distinct odor of pot pervades the air. However, it’s not just any pot. It is the smell of strictly regulated, professionally cultivated, rigorously tested legal cannabis. Past the heavily tinted front door, the airy 8,000-square-foot facility is filled with fluorescent light and the hum of machines. Anyone who has ever visited a university chemistry department will recognize the long, white coats.Located on the outskirts of Santa Rosa, California, Sonoma Lab Works is one of 49 independent third-party laboratories statewide tasked with ensuring that the state’s legal weed is also clean. It is not a simple task. For a price of $890 per sample, Sonoma Lab Works will run a full panel of tests on any cannabis-based product, in accordance with strict new state regulations rolled out over the course of 2018.Using instruments costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each, trained technicians take high-precision measurements of potency, moisture content, residual solvents, heavy metals, mycotoxins, microbial impurities, and pesticides. Products that do not meet the state’s standards cannot be sold—legally, anyway.These rules represent the best efforts of California’s recently formed Bureau of Cannabis Control (BCC) to protect consumers in the state’s multibillion-dollar market. However, people within the burgeoning industry and the environmental health field have widely differing views of how well the BCC regulations accomplish that goal, particularly regarding pesticides. At least one thing is clear: California’s response to the challenge has implications well beyond state lines.