Okay, so I think we can go ahead and get started. Our participants joining have started leveling out a little bit and it is at the top of the hour. So welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us for our semi synthetic cannabis products public health concerns and policy solutions webinar. This webinar is being hosted by the PTC networks cannabis risk workgroup. And we are excited to have you here today and the opportunity to talk to you about this topic. As a quick disclaimer, this event is made possible in part by funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, also known as SAMSA. And it's important to highlight that the views expressed today do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Health and Human Services. Nor do any mentions of names commercial practices or organizations imply any sort of endorsement by the US government. These are the opinions and best knowledge of our presenters today. As discussed previously, the webinar is now live it is being recorded. It will be posted on the PTS website for viewing at a later date along with the slides from today, they will be provided as well. And if you're looking to find those, you would go to the resource catalog at ptc network.org. And I would say that they could be posted in approximately five business days though honestly, I would be surprised if it even took that long. Also people you individuals, you all will be receiving certificates of attendance for today. They will be provided via email approximately 48 hours from the end of the webinar, they will be sent with our post event webinar, webinar surveys evaluation. So it'll come from the same email address that you received your registration information for today. So be on the lookout for that. Any q&a features that you may have for our panelists, please put any questions for the panelists in the q&a and the chat. It's the easiest way for us to keep track of those. And then if you would like to use the chat function to discuss amongst yourselves or share any experiences you might have, please feel free but if you have an official question for one of the presenters, please put it in the q&a function. Just a really quick intro about the PTC network for anybody who may not be familiar. The PTT C's purpose is to provide assistance with improving implementation of substance use prevention interventions, providing technical assistance meaning, providing to you all the tools and resources and education's education materials that you need to go out and do your job. We promote evidence based practices and promising practices. And we work as a network across the United States and even internationally with partner organizations and the PTC as a network. Their expertise. The network is based on different regions. These are the HHS regions for anybody aware of that there are 10 regional PTT C's, and one National Coordinating Office who helps us all work together seamlessly. I work at the National Coordinating Office. I also have with me, Scott Gang on who is with the New England PGC and the chair or the co chair, our cannabis risk workgroup. So he is here with us today as well, when I'm sure there are others out in the audience too. As a quick side note, any questions or comments that you may have that you put in the chat please remember that the PTC uses affirming language to promote evidence based practices words matter. So be respectful and conscious of that while you are interacting. And the objectives for today's webinar are to describe recent shifts in the US cannabis market and their implications for public health and safety. describe various CanAm cannabinoids and their chemical some molarities identify health risks associated with cannabis, cannabinoids critique marketing tactics, and summarize some laws and policies that are in effect. So all of that being said, I'm going to introduce you to our presenters for today and then I will let them take it away. So our first presenter is Dr. Ken Winters. He is a senior scientist at the Oregon research institution which this one that he works at is located in Minnesota, and he's a consultant for the native Center for Behavioral Health at the University of Iowa. He previously was a professor at the University of Minnesota's Department of Psychiatry, where he founded and directed for 25 years the Center for adolescents substance abuse research. He is a board member and co founder of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, Minnesota, an affiliate to the national organ, which is an affiliate to the national organization. Dr. Winters has received numerous research grants to address behavioral health from NIH and various foundations and is a frequent publisher in scientific journals. Of note particularly for this webinar is contemporary health issues on marijuana which was published in 2018. by Oxford University Press. We also have Dr. Matthew Rossheim. He is an associate professor, professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. His work including more than 80 peer reviewed research manuscripts and 100 scientific presentations has helped influence the development of laws from local to federal, and he is a leading public health expert on derived intoxicating cannabis products and their marketing. And then we have Sue bringing it home. Sue is a public policy consultant representing community anti drug coalition of America or CADCA. She is nationally recognized for her advocacy and legislative accomplishments. On behalf of the substance abuse prevention field. She has extensive background in public policy and has held high positions at federal, state and local levels. She was a budget examiner and legislative analyst at the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President for over 10 years. See was a driving force behind the passage reauthorization and full funding of the drug free Communities Act. In addition, Sue has worked to save and enhance funding for all federal substance abuse prevention and treatment programs over the last three decades. She is highly respected as an expert on demand reduction issues by members of Congress and staff on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill. She has an undergraduate degree from Cornell University in Human Development and Family Studies, and a master's degree from Rutgers University in city and regional planning. So welcome all. Thank you all of our presenters, and I am going to pass it off to Ken, do you want to go ahead.
Rachel, thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm kicking us off with a overview of the semi synthetics analog world. So I have four topic areas, a little background, then I'll get into the analogs with a little detail. Some comments about potency, and then summary. Okay, so it's a good question to ask, What expertise do I have about chemistry because there's a little chemistry in my talk, I am trained as a clinical psychologist. So I'm going to be real modest. I just have some knowledge. And that's mostly because I've been reading about plant chemistry and cannabinoids and hemp and cannabis plants. So that's good news and bad news. The bad news is you may have a great question about plant chemistry and I might not have the answer. I'll try to dig it up and send it to you later. The good news is I'm going to talk about that part of my discussion, I think in a way that you'll understand it because I've got to articulate it in a way that I also understand it. So first, some background. I've made two major distinctions of all the various analogs I'm calling them analogs, they could be considered to be semi synthetics. They often are referred to analogs because they're analogous to the so called mothership cannabinoid delta nine. But I'm giving these six the distinction of being in the majors, because there's at least some information about them. And I'll go back to this chart, but you can see that I'm tried to distinguish these six based on their strength, potency, strength, legality, whether they're detected in its user and then their primary source. What do you notice about this grid, there's a lot of question marks. The one category that's kind of uniform is this last one over here, primary source, we'll talk about that hemp, CBD, solvents all part of the, the manufacturing picture. And then there is the the other analogs, they don't sit at the main table in because I couldn't find much information about it. There's not much on any of them. But this is the group that there's even less than a minimum amount. So, two of them are CBs. And then there's several others here from delta-six down to THC x, we'll come back to these two lists in a bit. Second background point is just to remind you that all the cannabinoids whether they are semi synthetic, or not, they bind to receptors in the brain, the natural cannabinoid receptors, endogenous cannabinoid receptors, and we have two primary ones in the body, CB one and CB two. They're located throughout the body, although CB one receptors are heavily prominent in the brain. So each cannabinoid or analogue, it can have a so called expected potency effect, based on its binding affinity, something called binding affinity. That is how well it connects to either both receptors or one of the natural receptors. And there's two chemical structure features that impact binding affinity one is something called the location of the double bond. And so I'm showing to the right the difference between delta eight and delta nine. And so there's a double bond between car carbon atoms eight, the number nine for Delta eight. Thus, the name Delta eight, Delta nine in the double bond is located between carbon atoms nine and 10. Thus the nine Well, this small difference impacts significantly the binding affinity to CB one, almost twice as much binding affinity for Delta nine than delta eight. There's one other feature that he impacts in that whoops, and that is the length of the carbon tail. And so I'm showing to the right one example. The so called length of Delta nine carbon tail looks like this in an image form, and something called THC v, which is presumed to have less intoxication effects than delta nine is got a shorter comp, Harbin tail, it's a rough marker of potency differences but not a perfect marker because some compounds actually have longer tails but don't have as big an effect. Okay, background number three, this is analog all need something to get started 100 Production The and what's important is the analogs need help in the cannabis plant there is sorry, they all need CBD, and the cannabis plant there's just a small amount of CBD. But in hemp there is a much larger amount so the hemp plant becomes more relevant to the manufacture of these analogues because it's just there's more product there. And it's more efficient to grab it from the hemp plant versus the cannabis plant. So CBD is an important feature. These cannabinoids these analogs, they do exist naturally in the cannabis plant, but there's such a small percent that it doesn't make sense to try to extract it directly from the cannabis plant. So it's an indirect route. You you get it from CBD and the CBD most efficiently gotten from the hemp plant. And then there's this important feature. Background point number four, the analogues need some kind of production from the CBD. And so harmful solvents, acid and other chemical constituents are needed to convert the CBD to the target analog And if the production and the manufacturing isn't careful some of these chemicals and byproducts, they could be ingested when someone is consuming or inhaling the product. So that's an important distinction here of an analog needs hemp, and it needs CBD and it needs chemicals, and then you get the product. The fifth point, the research on the analogs is quite sparse. Scientists have known about these rare compounds. But little if any lab research has been conducted, there's not much interest in it, the occurrence such negligible amounts, it's hard to, you know, extract it and study, it would be quite expensive. So that means the information about their impacts, and their effects is mostly anecdotal. It's not even clear if you understand the chemical structure of an analog, if you can directly predict its impact, its intoxication effects. So it's not as simple. For example, an analogue that has a long carbon chemical tail, is that always going to have a greater impact than one with a shorter carbon tail? Not necessarily. So there's a lot of anecdotes, but it's not clear that there's even a uniform way to describe the subjective intoxication effects of these various products. And then my last background point is just to remind you, as we'll be learning more from Matt, these analogs are showing up as vapes and edibles sometimes they're used as a, as a marketing tool.
And, Ken, if I can interrupt for just a moment before you go too far forward, we had some basic questions, clarifying some of this information in the q&a. I hope that we can circle back to now before you move on to the next session, or section. So I'm just going to throw all three of them out there and let you answer in kind and so somebody's looking for a little bit more information on what binding affinity means. Another individual is looking to know which chemical has or which version has double binding. And another individual is looking to know what differentiates cannabis from the hemp plant. I heard those if you need me, it's
not all that's okay. binding affinity is really just one way of saying how well that particular cannabinoid connects to either the CB one CB two or both receptors. So it's basically how well it it connects, it locks on to so greater binding affinity it in theory, because of its chemical structure, it just activates or connects better to to our natural cannabinoid receptors. And so the double the binding the double bonds to the carbon apparently occurs throughout all of the cannabinoids. I don't have enough knowledge on your chemistry to give you more detail but if you look at difference between delta 8, 9, 6 and some MDH HCS the THC you'll see that you'll the carbon the double carbon is located in different sorry the double bond is located in different spots on the carbon structure. And it looks like that it that translates to binding affinity while the hemp plant is, is very different from the the the two types of cannabis plants, cannabis plants have just are rich in in Delta-9 or what we believe to be THC. Hemp plants, if they're grown legally, have a very small amount of delta-9 or THC. And they have much more CBD. So they're different seeds. They just have a different constitution.
Hey, awesome. Oh, my goodness, we had a few more questions come up in the chat. Um, so in addition to chemicals, solvents are harmful. Why are these products able to be sold to consumers?
The legal loophole is the bottom line. I think we're gonna get clarity on that kind of question coming down street with Matt and Sue. But a lot of the state He's only legalized or define what was legal as essentially a Delta nine product and they left silent on the issue of the semi synthetics and that kind of allowed an entry point for the loophole to to to have its its role in the marketplace.
Um, we have time for one more question sorry, all anything not answered. Now we can bring up at the end of the webinar time permitting. So then somebody was asking our CB one and CB two receptors located in specific organs in the body?
Yeah, I mean, they're rich in the brain. And you'll see in the the lung area and the reproductive or I call the swimsuit area of the human body. So they are located throughout, but most, mostly we are interested when it comes to, you know, the intoxicating effects of, of any of these compounds in by virtue of the fact that we have a lot of CB one endogenous receptors in the brain. And they're located throughout all regions of the brain. That's why when you get high, it can affect so much motion appetite, motor coordination, etc. Good questions. Little bit more on the analogs, I don't want to take up too much time, because we've had some great speakers coming up. So I'm going to go back to the what I'm calling the six majors. So little detail of this somewhat complicated grid, but I listed them both, not in terms of strength, but just sort of numerically and alphabetically. But the strength column is intended to give you a ballpark estimate of what I presumed to be the current knowledge, again, a lot of it's anecdotal, of how these things differ in terms of potency, or strength. So I gave Delta eight, a single leaf symbol of that size, a reminder here that it's half of delta nine. And then so when you look below that you'll see either a leaf symbol that's smaller in size, that means it's less potent, or you might see in a in a box, multiple leafs, because that would suggest that it's more potent. So for example, delta 10, is presumed to be less intoxicating than delta eight, delta 11, more intoxicating than delta eight, et cetera. Question marks mean, the knowledge about potency strength is pretty much based just on anecdotal evidence, the legality column is just to remind you all that many states whether they went legal or not legal with with Delta nine, there were loopholes that often would permit some of these products to stay on the market before anyone could figure out if they were legal or not. My column on whether it's detectable or not, is, is a reminder that some tests can be specific for the detection of Delta eight. But for the other deltas are the ones on this list. It's not clear that there are specific tests, somebody could spike positive if they took delta 10. But they would be probably getting a test that was just generic and falsely saying the person was intoxicated on Delta nine, for example, and then the far right column is to remind you the manufacturing of these analogs starts with hemp, because hemp has a lot of CBD. And with CBD, you solvents and then you can extract and create these different products and compounds. Okay, a little more detail on all of those on the list, Delta eight, often called diet weed because it's yields less of an effect. So it's popular among some it appears because they liked the fact that it has a lower level euphoria and fewer side effects, and also gain popularity because it's not clear that it's regulated properly. In states. If you want to read more about the potential serious health effects of Delta eight, I thought this was a good report from the FDA. If you Google FDA Delta eight, you can see a very detailed PDF. On the left there are the five different chapters, ranging from a discussion of why it's not safe, and all the way down to the danger to children and pets. Keep in mind, we don't know a lot about delta eight because it hasn't hit the research radar. All that much. And so while you might read about a lot of negative effects, maybe it's conservative in that report or and maybe we're going to know more when people are able to study it detected included in the reports delta 10, it's presumed to be milder than delta eight, delta 11. The anecdotal reports are that it's more potent than delta nine. So we got one, that's a bump up from the reference of Delta nine HHC. estimated to have a strike in between delta eight and delta nine, it's tricky to manufacture you have to use hydrogen to be added to the THC molecule to create that THC A may have effects that are similar to Delta eight. So that would mean about half the potency of Delta nine for it to be activated, and to have any intoxicating effects though, it requires heat. So that has been used in vape pens or in baked edibles. But, and thus may be used even as a as a branding technique. And this is the one that's gotten some attention THC p, it appears to have the greatest binding affinity or activating power to our CB one receptors, the chemical structure of it suggests that it's has 30 times greater of the binding affinity to CB one compared to Delta nine. But does that mean you get high and 30 times greater level that's not clear. So this is one of those examples where well, maybe the chemical structures suggest how well it should impact the user. But users are not necessarily reporting that. So the small amount of anecdotal info out there is, is quite mixed on whether you really get all that much higher with it or not. And this is my just my one my effort to talk about the other ones on on the list, I call it the other group. There are two in the CB category. And particularly CB n is getting some attention as being neuro protective. I put a question mark here because Be careful of efforts and thoughts that any of the CBDs including CBD is, is effective for pain relief. Some of the studies show that it doesn't do any better than placebo if you do double blind studies. And then I've got two arrows here, two red arrows THC J, D and THC, oh, I'm just marking those because they may be quite potent one of them, perhaps more potent than even THC P well remembered all that was a really potent 130 times greater binding affinity, possibly, and then THC, oh, also may be stronger than delta nine and may have hallucinating effects. So I just marking those as a couple profile ones. So I just want to talk a little bit about potency. And I think it's common sense to all of us that you can talk about potency, both in terms of how strong a product is. But it also potency is impacted by how much you consume the product. And so regardless of what is consumed what type of cannabinoid or analog is consumed, you can alter somebody's experience of potency at a given point in time. And so while I've got on the with a detailed here, I'm listing a lot of deltas and th is in putting where I think they might fall on a stronger to lighter continuum. Keep in mind, you could take a very light version of a delta, let's say delta eight, well, if you use it heavily, you might have a greater intoxicating effect and even if you just use delta nine in a small amount, so potency is relevant. Now even though some products might claim to be low potent, there is some research on how potency impacts acute and chronic effects. I'm just highlighting three for us here.
Interesting study that looked at the acute affects cognitive functioning as a function of potency. In this report, the author synthesized 87 experimental studies and they compared pre and post results on several cognitive tests as a function of THC concentration. They compared both edibles and smokey THC. And you can see the chart here the data represents the frequency of observed significant impaired test results. So the higher the number, the more impaired tests now there were a range of tests across these 87 experimental studies. I've just noted some of the key tests tracking is bi tracking, reaction time performance, I hand coordination, distractibility, pretty significant relationship, but you'll notice the THC concentration levels are at the low end. And so this is, you know, the type of studies that were done back in the day. Nowadays, with the potency levels so much higher. It will be interesting to see as researchers tried to nail these kinds of relationships down, is there still a significant, you know, linear relationship? Or is there some kind of leveling off when you get into the high potency products, something to watch out for, and then two others. One is set of studies done in Europe that looked at potency and risk of first episode psychosis. So 11 different clinical sites in Europe measured the incidence, or the onset of new cases of first episode psychosis showing up in clinics, and then they collected detailed cannabis use data and they show the relationship. So to the left, I've summarized the big take home from this study, when there was daily use of low potency cannabis, the adjusted odds ratio was 3.2. That meant compared to individuals who didn't use cannabis that were in the study, the odds of having first episode psychosis was 3.2 times higher. For those that had daily use of high potency cannabis, the adjusted odds ratio was 4.8. So almost five times greater likelihood of developing first episode psychosis compared to those that didn't use psych any any cannabis. And then there's a very good review by Petrelli and colleagues. They did a systematic review of published literature on the association of cannabis potency with mental health and addiction. There's the the summary of their findings, a lot of different studies. Overall, use of higher potency cannabis relative to lower potency cannabis was associated with an increased risk of psychosis and cannabis use disorder. Evidence varied for depression and anxiety. So little stronger evidence for the psychosis and cannabis use disorder not as much when it comes to two key internalizing disorders, depression and anxiety. To summarize, three points. The non Delta cannabinoid analogues represent the wild west in the marketplace and mostly unchartered territory in terms of research, the manufacturing process can lead to toxic products being consumed. Regardless of the type of product consumed, heavy use of any cannabinoids likely contributes to more short and long term harms, compared to late consumption. If you want a research publication, I suggest this one by Shahbazi, and colleagues from 2020. And then there's an interesting website. It's a vaping. website. So I, I sent it to you with caution. But it has a lot of information about the various analogs and their presumed effects. Time to turn it over to Matt.
Wonderful. Well, actually, before we do that, Dr. Winter, I would like to just go over a few more questions that are in chat. Just just a few everyone, we appreciate the questions and your engagement. Anything we don't get answered today, we'll try to get answered out to you. Maybe a Frequently Asked Questions page or something to go with this resource. But I have a few questions. I can give you three, and then we'll move on for there. Um, so we have a question asking about overdose with some of these more potent analogues Have there been documented incidences of any sort of overdose, specifically with adults?
Yes. There's actually a lot more than there was even a month ago. If you go to that FDA report, you'll get a summary of it and then several states are reporting it. These are usually reported by poison centers they usually are categorized as you know, an acute overdose or or poisoning in And they range across ages, you're getting some nasty data in terms of the infants and elderly, you could go to Smart Approaches to Marijuana, that website. Learn about sam.org. That's the way the website points you. And they've got a good summary of some of the latest along these lines. But whether it's the US poison center or state poison centers, you're seeing a lot of, of these unfortunate adverse effects. Most of the studies I read indicate it's either the Delta-9 or the Delta- is the source. But that doesn't mean some of the other analogs aren't contributing to that. Problem is, it's difficult to test for it. And people might not know even what they're taking, since things can get adulterated in the manufacturing process.
Thank you. And then we have a question. Is there a such a thing as a safe HHC product? Are there places you can purchase a safer or regulated a THC product?
I don't know of one. So that's, that would be a great question. If somebody has knowledge about it, they could put something in the chat or send something later. But I mean, all all intoxicating drugs have harmful effects to a later, greater or lesser degree, right? Is there a safe level of alcohol? Well, that's actually debated these days, although I used to believe that if you had one or two, it was maybe even medicinal, that's getting now debated. You know? And then of course, you have the problem of well, somebody might take something at a safe level. But what if it has a big wow effect? It creates a cascading of difficulties both neuro biologically and psychologically and then no longer? Is it easy for you to keep taking the drug at a safe level. So it there's risk, anytime you're going to take an intoxicating drug, I think you have to always start with well, what are the risks involved? Now is cannabis medicine. That's a whole nother topic we aren't going to be able to tackle today. I just warn people, states, I got two principles here. One is states have put a lot of disorders and ailments on their medicinal cannabis list for which there is not scientific evidence. The FDA has some limits and limited lists of where cannabis is now. FDA approved, it's very small list of disorders and ailments. And the third part is, be careful of where the if you think any of the cannabis products can have a noise or analogs are helpful for pain, because the major studies that have looked at it with double blind investigations have not found it to be better than placebo effect.
All right. Well, wonderful. Thank you. And again, thank you all for the questions in the chat. Hopefully, we'll have time to circle back around to them at the end of the presentations from Dr. Ross, Haim and Sue. So moving on, I am going to pass it over to Dr. Ross Haim.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining today. I'm Matt Ross. I'm at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. I'm gonna go through some slides relatively quick because I want to make sure to leave enough time for sue to give updates and for questions. But just want to share with you all a few studies about where these products are being sold and what they look like. And I'm gonna start with how how this problem came to be. So in 2018, the farm bill that was passed, the intent was to legalize the non intoxicating part of the cannabis plant hemp. And so the way that they operationalize this was if it had very little delta nine THC by weight. And the reason they did that was because delta nine THC is the most naturally abundant, intoxicating compound in the cannabis plant. Some of these other ones we're seeing now are naturally occurring but in very low doses. And so this is you know, what, what they envision it looking like and in reality, this is what happened. All of these semi synthetic products hitting the market as well as delta nine edibles being sold. And so states have tried to respond some states have banned Delta eight THC, some have tried to restricted or regulated in various ways and there are various, you know, patchwork of laws related to regular delta-9-THC as well. So, one of the big questions our research team had was, where can you buy this stuff? So specifically in which states can you buy cannabis products that are intoxicating? So if you don't have a medical cannabis card, where can you go into a retail store? and purchase a product that can get you high. And so most people would think it's you know, places that have retail cannabis legal, non medical and dispensaries for these. However we called vape shops across the US and found that in most states, 90 to 100% of the vape shops that we contacted, were selling intoxicating cannabis products. 48 of these states every state except Washington and Alaska, was selling these products in vape shops, Washington and Alaska Have you saw legalized recreational cannabis and and bans on these products? So when you look at these together, two things jump out. One is it seems that more vape shops are selling these in places where there's not non medical cannabis dispensaries. But also when you add these two up, this means that you can buy intoxicating cannabis products in stores in every state, all 50 States, Washington DC and Puerto Rico. And so right now we're operating as a recreational cannabis country essentially, but with almost no regulations in a lot of states. And so this this study is not yet published. All the other ones I'll talk about are but I wanted to share this with you. We're revising right now and resubmitting to American Journal of Preventive Medicine. So what it looks like differs in different states. So states that have tried to ban Delta eight they might sell Delta 10 If they put limits on THC content, they sell HHC or delta nine edibles or even THCA. So the Delta nine edibles is because they're the retailers are counting the weight of the food or beverages in calculating the percent by weight. So they're saying it's hemp, even though chemically it's a THC product. And then the THC A issue that's coming up. It's it's marketed as being one of the closest to Delta nine THC because as Ken mentioned when you heat it, either through vaping or smoking or making edibles, it turns into regular Delta-9-THC. So most states have all of them and states that have tried to ban or heavily restrict their availability. Oftentimes, we're just seeing a different type of product that's being sold. Here's a photo from a couple blocks from where my mom lives in Florida. We got the medical marijuana treatment center, and then right next to it a CBD store. You can't see it. One of the flags is delta eight and they sell the drives. So if you got the medical card, you can get it there. And if not, you can go to the store right next to it. Also, interestingly, when we call these vape shops, even within states, there was huge discrepancies in what they said were legal and not legal. And we call folks in New Hampshire. Some of them said all THC products were illegal. Some said only delta nine was illegal. Some said they didn't sell any THC, but they sold Delta eight. So they didn't even realize what they were selling. Others appeared to, you know, potentially know that they were violating laws. One of them said, when I asked about all these different compounds, they said, if you're not a cop, yeah, we sell them. In Delaware, only one retailer said that they only sold Delta nine because it was the only legal and other retailers that the exact opposite. Delta nine was the only illegal ones they sold everything else. A third one said only vapes were illegal Delta nine and HHC because the other ones were mislabeled the edibles. And so even within state there's confusion among retailers among what's legal and what's not. So I tend to study substances from a marketing perspective. And so why do we care about marketing? Well, probably aware that it shapes social norms and makes substances more desirable, acceptable, accessible, and in particular, price, availability, and advertising. We know these are major determinants of use, especially among young people, which makes them very important policy levers for alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, these are the best practices for community level interventions that prevent use, especially among young people. And they're among the best buys best return on investment in terms of policy interventions. So just a few studies we did on retail availability. The first one was right when I moved back to Fort Worth, we wanted to know what types of stores are selling these products. So we contacted every store in Fort Worth that had an alcohol, tobacco, or they call it consumable hemp license. And so out of the 1200 stores that we called 130 of them reported selling delta-8-THC, almost all of them as either flower or vapes. And more than three fourths sold edibles as well. The edibles tended to be less expensive, on average, some of them incredibly expensive, like 299. The outlets that sold delta-8-THC were also disproportionately located in areas with greater socio economic deprivation. And although most of them reported that you had to be 21, 4% said 18, and one of them said there was no minimum age. And that's just what they said over the phone when we actually visited some of these stores in person. Some of them said, you know, yeah, they tend to be 21 but if a kid is having a bad day or something like that, I might sell to them. So this is what these products look like in Fort Worth is with these were photos that my doctoral student at the time Dr. Cassidy LaParco took of the Willy Wonka's nerds ropes and chocolate bars with anime characters and HHC and THC-o vapes that are fruity pebble flavored. So this is what it looks like in our community. And so, you know, we talked a little bit about where the stores sell them where kids getting these products, because we know that hundreds of kids are getting hospitalized from consuming these, and we know that kids are getting access to them. Last year Monitoring the Future data showed that more than one in 10/12 graders had used delt-8 in the past year. And then for this year, eighth and 10th graders are going to be asked as well about delta-8 use. So for one online access, so there was one study where they purchased a Delta eight THC products online showing that it's easily accessible online. age verification methods are self reported and easily circumvented. No contact with the customer. So you know, clearly policies and their enforcement are needed. This has been my experience as well. I've purchased these products online as well, and they just leave them in my mailbox. There's one independent school district in Texas where last school year 65 students were caught with THC vapes, and although most of them wouldn't say where they got it, few of them said that they were using Snapchat and cash apps in order to get access to these products. So one study that we did actually a few studies but we did in order to get a few websites to audit was I Googled buy delta THC on on online and used incognito mode so that it wasn't biased based on search history. I downloaded the top 100 results to Excel. And I ran them all through this website that's called similar web to compare web traffic. So we selected the three websites to document all of the intoxicating cannabis products that they sold on these three websites that were very highly trafficked. The number one had over a million visits in the last month. The other ones had about half a million and a third a million visits. So a lot of them were selling these delta eight edibles and vapes Delta nine again, because of the amount of weight some of them you know, trademark infringe, like the Cheetos bag. You can just see at the very bottom as THC, dolt, delta 10 and H HC products. Again, edibles vapes flavored that type of marketing, cartoon characters and flavors that wouldn't be legal for even tobacco blends blends were very common on this online audit, more than half of the products that they sold were blends containing two to eight different types of these intoxicating cannabinoids in a single product.
So we identified on this online audit of these three websites 26 Different intoxicating compounds being marketed. Here are the top ones here. Again, most of these products were blends. THC P was the one most often included in blends, it's being marketed as hitting the user very fast, but having a more short short duration of intoxication from it. So they're putting THC P they get, you know, the really quick high and then the other ones to kind of keep it going over time. And it's unclear if you've been some of these are actually different chemical compounds, or a couple of them might just be remarketing, or potentially use to kind of circumvent related laws. So in these 800 products that we found on these, these three websites, there were 185 different combinations of these intoxicating compounds. And as Ken was saying, there's very little understanding of the health effects from most of these individually, almost no research on most of them, let alone all of these different various combinations of these intoxicating compounds, and when they're used with other chemicals and in different modalities. And so, you know, if we're trying to study the health effects of these, going back to your questions about which of these are safe, I mean, there's just so little research on this that it's right now for most of these products, it's very unclear all the different health risks associated with them, we would expect then a lot of the risks to be similar to cannabis but also probably unique harms from the different chemicals, byproducts and just the different effects of all these chemicals. So when we talk to vape shop retailers, I called them last year on for 21 of them said we basically sell the whole darn alphabet and another one said we had more blends and stuff on its own. We also asked them about different events that they were having for for 20 and promotions. There seems to be to two really distinct kind of types of shops that are carrying these outside of licensed dispensaries. It's seems to be like the gas station convenience stores that may have like an edible or a couple brands of vapes, usually at the point of sale, but the place that sells the most of these products and the most variety seems to be the vape shops or smoke specialty smoke shops. And so they often had promotions on for 20 Price discounts. As well as promotional events the the cannabis culture has really changed especially in states that don't have licensed dispensaries. So this was in Fort Worth, Texas. This is from a poke in smoke shop they called it where they not only had 20% discount on all their cannabis products, they were also giving, you know, discounts on outlines related to 420 and cannabis use another store had, you could hit the bongs in the store on 420 to test out the glass before you bought it. And another one had a DJ and food trucks and were handing out edibles for free and things like that. So in terms of the culture of this, it's it's becoming very pervasive in terms of online marketing. Notice that the promotions oftentimes and the websites had images of young females and I went back on Mother's Day, and a lot of them had Mother's Day specials on these products. And even on Father's Day, they still highlighted young women seems to be the marketing on these. In terms of the modality most of the products were disposable vapes or edibles followed by vape carts, pre rolls, flower dabs, there were 118 brands. Here's some of the more common ones Delta extracts herb Treehouse, just the marketing of some of this still shocks me that they have ice cream cake flavored Treehouse vapes, and that's, you know, supposed to be for adults, cake Luber, again with flavors ranging from Girl Scout cookies to Skywalker. So here's some of our recent publications. There's a QR code there on our website, if you use that, we have a couple of different resources, one page fact sheet, there's a bifold that includes even more up to date information. You know, our research team even though these products have only been around for a few years now, our research team has been able to publish a lot of studies mostly on their marketing and in large part to my former doctoral student, Dr. Cassidy, Lowe Parco, who's really taking this on as well as her area of expertise. So here's an example of one of the bifold fact sheets that we have, and highlighting some of the products and and the risks. In general, I'll just kind of close on this before passing it over to Sue. In general, we know what effective regulation looks like. However, the entire purpose of these products is to circumvent regulations intended to protect public health and safety. So they've definitely eroded protections that we've had. And so how can we possibly effectively regulate these products? If we don't know the answer to all of these questions, how prevalent they uses how valid our measures are for assessing use both in surveys and in biological tests, the effects of them their health effects, mental and physical, both long term and short term and specific populations of concern. So, you know, some states, you know, think that a good gray areas just regulating them, but how can you pretend possibly regulate them for the protection of public health and safety when we don't we have no understanding was no understanding of the health effects of all of these. So the 2024 Farm Bill reauthorization is a major opportunity to address this. And then also, state laws are needed. So with that, I'll turn it over to Sue.
Okay, hi, everybody.
Sorry, Sue. Can I intervene for three Q and A's from people before you get started? Sure. All right, we've got plenty of time. So thank you, and I'm sorry. So I saw three overarching themes in the FAQ. So this is where I'm drawing the three questions from for you, Matt. But one individual set in Massachusetts, there are regulations that are not being followed. Are there any best practices for improving enforcement statewide?
Yeah, so I think a few things. One is, again, these products are really hard to regulate, because they're designed to circumvent regulations. If you regulate one, they'll just either use a different compound, or just change the labeling or serving sizes or, you know, there's a massive financial incentive to circumvent regulations. So I would say the best, you know, the states that have been able to address this, the most effectively have just blanket banned all of them, and regulate just regular THC. And so that's for one and two, in order to disincentivize retailers from doing this, there needs to be enforcement and strong consequences to create, you know, so it's not just a cost of doing business to get a small fine, but that and those large fines can also help pay for enforcement of related laws. So I'd say very strong laws and strong enforcement are needed.
Then related to strong laws, which state has the best law that blows the Delta loophole that other states can use as a model?
That's a great question. I haven't looked at the specific laws in Washington and Alaska, but those are the only two states that these aren't being sold in vape shops, so I would look to those.
And then finally, how Have you heard of any proposed policies that could help restrict the marketing tactics that target youth?
Yeah, so I would say that that's more of a question for regular cannabis. I would, in my opinion, these, there's no function for these in the regular marketplace, because we don't know the health effects. So, you know, you know, if the best way to keep these out of the hands of kids is to not have them on the market. Right. So that my my answer to that.
Okay, great. Thank you. Well, then, sorry for that brief introduction, Sue. But now we will pass it right on to you. Thank you.
Okie dokie. See, I can? Yes. Okay. Can everyone see my screen?
Yes, ma'am. Thank you.
Okay. Great. And now, of course, I'm having trouble advancing my slides. Okay, I'm going to skip a whole bunch of my slides because they've been handled before. So this is really going very slowly. Start with this interesting one. Americans can now ship legal THC to their home. This is hilarious. Yeah, the Farm Bill, really, you know, this stuff gets you high. It's not any CBD crap, you can really feel this. So I both Ken and Matt did a great job, explaining that this stuff is everywhere. It's impossible to regulate it. And they've taken great advantage of the loophole that was created in the 2018 Farm Bill. This is fascinating. This is a beverage soldier in Iowa, a state that has not legalized cannabis in any way. But because in fact, it is from the cannabis in hemp. They're selling it all over Iowa, which is totally illegal. But nobody is enforcing anything when it comes to this. And that's one of the other problems not only do we have a legal gray area here, but it's not clear to enforcement that if they put any time and effort into this, they're going to get anywhere. So this is the marketing of Delta nine drinks that are made from the point 3% THC in hemp, they're saying that they're legal. They're they're answering questions like, will this show up in a drug test? Well, yeah, how much should I drink to start? If you're new to the game, start with Delta light, that's five milligrams of THC. If you're feeling bold, do our delta 20 milligrams of THC in one drink mean, and then people are going to drive after this. I mean, this is another thing we haven't talked about. It's not just the health effects of using these. It's the external problems that are involved with people using this getting high, and then not understanding that they really shouldn't be out, you know, doing much in society. And so you know, Delta drinks and edibles they're saying, Oh, this has much faster acting THC. So you might as well drink your you know, drugs rather than eat them or smoke them. Okay, and this is just an example of a four pack of the 10 milligram THC drink. And this is the five milligram lower, you know, THC content, but again, five milligrams if it comes in a four pack, if you drink well, for that's 20 milligrams, and again, you're going to be stoned out of it. Matt showed some of these, it's impossible to tell the difference, especially for kids, which is why the poison control issue has gone really way off the charts. The Federal Trade Commission, the FTC has gone after some of these companies recently because of the trademark infringement but honestly, this is what's happening. Kids are bringing this stuff to school, sharing it with other kids and they're going to the hospital and you can see why kids don't understand. These aren't really Doritos. See? ext i and I'm just going to say I'm going to skip over a lot of my slides. I'm including them for you just so that if you know you want them or need them. This is the delta eight candies again, they look exactly like no nerds and Skittles. Matt did a great job of showing most of what the products look like. Okay, so the Delta eight drinks here's a problem. The Texas retailer specs, wine and spirits is going to be entering the cannabis beverage business. They've struck a deal with the TA See brands, seltzer high Seltzer, the beverage has no calories, no sugar, no alcohol. So for people who are trying to do dry January, this industry has said, Oh yeah, don't drink alcohol. But this is safer, you should drink these drinks. And of course, as Matt and Ken said, no one really understands what's in these, how they affect the body, how they affect the mind. So here, here's what Hi seltzer looks like this is watermelon, zero calories, 00, sugars, Delta eight infused and it has quite a bit of Delta eight in it. And this is another one of them has 10 milligrams of THC. And that was the Girl Scout Cookie one that Matt also had shown. The gummies I think Matthew had this slide as well. There's a continuous engineering of these. And this is introducing THCA I love this marketing, the strongest federally lawful cannabis anywhere, discover the future of legal THC and get 10% off your purchase. So, um, is this lawful? Well, it's a legal gray area, Matthew and I in the beginning of our discussions, and we've worked really closely together for a while now. He's saying, Well, this is scheduled by DEA and I'm like, it isn't really NDAs and enforcing any of this. So these people really are operating in the wild, wild west total. Wild West. Okay, this is really interesting. So you asked about where these have been banned. And if there's a great law to follow. So these synthetic cannabinoids are available in all states, as Matt said, but states like New York, New York has specifically banned these synthetic cannabinoid products from being sold anywhere in that state. And before and I'll get to the farm bill, they're marking it up in the house as we speak on this webinar right now. We've spoken to all of the members of the Agriculture Committee in the House and the Senate and Senator Gillibrand from New York is on the Ag Committee, and New York is a state that has banned all of these products. So what did we do? We got all of our coalition leaders across New York state in every single region of the state to go and see if these products were actually available in their towns and in their regions. And what did we see? Every single county in New York State had these products, everywhere, gas stations, convenience store, head shops, smoke shops, and there's absolutely no enforcement what's so ever and I can just keep going. That's Nassau County, Westchester County, Putnam County, these are every single county or state can show you that they basically have them. And I think that you already know that there's Okay, this one is wrong. Mac Park, blah, blah. Okay, I'm skipping a lot here. A lot of this. Matt has also shown you. Yeah, a lot of poison control because of this. So let me sort of skip forward now to say, we've been working on trying to close the loophole in the 2018 farm bill that opened all of this up by basically saying the only exclusion in the definition of hemp was that it couldn't have more than point 3% THC by dry weight. Okay, that that was it. This whole industry sprung up in two areas, specifically, one is the synthetic cannabinoids that are not excluded whatsoever anywhere on the definition of hemp. And the other one is that it's point 3% THC by dry weight in the entire plant. And when you take the THC out of the plant and put it in a small gummy point, 3% of a very small thing can become 510 or 20 milligrams of THC in an edible or a vape. So we know that these are gigantic problems. And the minute we found out that the Farm Bill was going to be reauthorized, it was actually expired last year and they extended it for a year. We started working to totally close the loophole not to try to regulate this in any way. I think Matt did a really brilliant job explaining it's almost impossible to regulate things that if you change one molecule they fall out from under what you're trying to regulate. And number two, these products never should have existed in the first place this synthetic cannabinoids. One of the reasons that they are so proud The fact is that people thought they were going to make millions of dollars by growing hemp for industrial purposes. And so many people got into the hemp growing business that There ended up being no market for that. Most of hemp is now used to either produce CBD that cannabidiol you see in every product in every grocery store in every drugstore across America, that should be another webinar, because that's not really being regulated either.
But the really, thing here was that if it wasn't for the Farm Bill, these synthetic cannabinoids wouldn't exist. And it's almost impossible to regulate them, as you've seen in New York. They are illegal there. And yet, they're everywhere. And there's nobody doing anything particularly to enforce the law that they passed. So we've met with every single member of the House in the Senate Agriculture committees, to talk about the need to close the loophole that has allowed for the proliferation of these semi synthetic and synthetic cannabinoids that are derived from the CBD in hemp. Today, that house is actually marking up their farm bill, the underlying bill that they introduced, did not include a provision to close the loophole on this. But there's, as we speak, and I hope it's happening now. There's an amendment being offered in the markup by Mary Miller, Republican congresswoman from Illinois, that basically would close this loophole. We're praying that it it passes because it would be amazing to have that in the House bill. The reason that it might not pass is that the hemp industry yesterday sent out a gigantic alert basically saying that the way that this was drafted would basically close their whole industry and it would affect even CBD because the way that they drafted the amendment includes that. If there's any similar effect on humans to THC, then that would be an exclusion. But we're, we're excited we'll let the whole field know if and when we have word about whether this amendment did pass or not. The Senate has released their version of the Farm Bill that is not moving right now. There's no provision in that right now in the underlying bill, either. But we've strongly urged the agriculture committees to include language that we drafted in this reauthorization to exclude synthetic and semi synthetic cannabinoids from the different definition of hemp in the Farm Bill. And this is the language we proposed. It's actually not the language that is in this amendment. But we've looked at the amendment, both Matt and I looked at it yesterday. And if it passes, it would do an amazing job in closing this loophole. And also for making sure that there are not quantifiable amounts of THC in products that are manufactured and sold. So it goes further than we would have thought that it would have gone because it actually deals with the fact that a lot of these products as we said, take the point 3% dry weight out of the plant and put it in a product and then you end up with products and edibles that have quite a lot of THC that can get you high. So with that, I will stop sharing my screen and and see if we have any questions. I probably went too fast, but all of my slides are available.
We have questions so that works. Um, okay, so we have a question. Currently any at all just published an article looking at themes presented by cannabis lobbyists in Washington State fighting stronger regulations around high potency THC. Part of what was remarkable was how the playbook was drawn from the alcohol and tobacco industry, threatened. Exam examples of loss of jobs, health tax funding, distract some examples, parents need to do a better job of and discredit science is still developing. We don't know about the harms. Do you have any suggestions about how to address these themes at a legislative level?
Yeah, I think the thing to do we need to have more trained youth involved. We need youth to actually be messengers ers on a lot of these issues. They need to talk about what's going on with their peers, the kids who are using this. How are they doing? What are they doing? This is ridiculous to put this just on parents when you have, as Matt said, access availability, very high potency, relatively low cost, a lot of marketing, availability in stores everywhere. How do you put that on parents? A lot of this has to do with societal norms are changing. This is a gigantic industry with a lot of lobbyists. And there's almost no public health voice in any of this. So that's the other joke if this, you know, the marijuana industry isn't really being regulated in states that have legalized so why would anybody think that that synthetic cannabinoids, which are the Wild West would ever be done anyway, but my two cents is I think we really need to do a better job educating people about the impacts on you know, mental health problems. You have a lot of really great spokespeople in in your state. The penny and Diane Carlson, one chance to grow up I know are working on, on that these businesses are out to make money and to get customers young. And I don't know, I think our best bet is to put a face on it through the parents who have had children who have had psychotic reactions and breaks from high potency cannabis, from getting youth involved to talk about the effects on their peers. And, yeah, and then telling people that you intend to vote not for people who support this. I mean, some of this becomes really political. The industry has a lot of money, a lot of lobbyists, and they give a lot of campaign pay and campaign contributions, which we don't have in this field. And I'd say also use the media and social media, if people are willing to stand up and speak about how this has severely impacted their families, their, you know, their spouses ability to function and make a living I would get above domestic violence and child welfare i There's a lot of I'm sure kids who are in that system, because their parents are chronically using high potency THC. I think we have to do a better job coming up with making the case against this being good for anybody and really bad for families and communities. I don't know, I hope that's a decent answer. I would welcome if Matt, if you'd like to add anything, or Scott or anybody else. Perfect. Okay. Rachel, is there any other question? Oh, can I follow?
Yeah, if anybody has follow up or more to add to that one, go for it.
I just couldn't agree with you, Sue. Yeah. Very good point.
Then, um, there was another question one of your slides, Sue had a comment down delta-8 is a bathtub gin of these products and can contain lead. Is that the case with most of these synthesize synthesize products?
I'm going to answer that and then I'm gonna let Ken and Matt most other than delta-8, which actually has been gone through some chemical testing and analysis and that is what the people who looked at it said it's, it's the bathtub gin in that can explain. There are heavy metals and harsh solvents that are abused to turn the CBD that's taken out of the hemp plant into these synthetic cannabinoids. And a lot of those heavy metals and these basins They're poisonous and they're left over in the final product. But because these are totally unregulated, nobody is testing them to see what's in them or what if what's in them is harmful or even if what's in them is delta eight THC and some of what they tested the stuff being sold sold as delta eight THC wasn't even Delta eight THC. It had Delta nine THC, you can definitely fail a drug test taking this and there were poisons This is really similar to when people were made making meth in soda bottles using harsh solvents, Drano and other things, this is exactly the same thing. But other than delta eight, I don't think anybody's tested very much of any of this. But they're all made with the same types of processes that Ken was explaining. But you didn't go into a lot of detail can they really do use very harsh chemicals, metals, solvents, acids, bases, things that are totally contrary indicated to be in the human body? No, unless ingested and inhaled into the lungs, but get Go ahead, Ken.
I just, reiterating, one would probably find some of these chemicals in a garage in your hardware store stuff you put on the lawn. And while there are claims by producers of some of these analogs, that they are purifying the product after use of these materials, as Sue is indicating, and I would agree, it's hard to know, they can brag about it, but because they probably realize they're under the radar screen of testing, they don't have to really be careful about it.
Absolutely, I agree with all of that. The other thing is the ones that have been tested like the Delta eight products have been found to not only have chemical contaminants, but delta nine THC mislabeled in various regards. Some of the products now will have QR codes to results of lab tests. And some of those have been found to be inaccurate with what's actually in the product, whether they're falsified, or they've cherry picked the, you know, sent it to a bunch of labs, and cherry picked the findings that were most favorable. So it's just a mess, the perfect storm in terms of products that are and we know the outcome kids getting, you know, poison the spike in poison control calls, mostly among pediatric under five. So we know that it's it's poisonous. Yeah.
And, uh, yeah, I want to say to that in all of the calls that we did with members of the House in the Senate Agriculture Committee, we had members from across the spectrum in our coalition's and we had the, the SROs, the school resource officers and the school nurses on these calls, there are kids being taken out daily foaming at the mouth, being taken to the emergency rooms, because they're using these products on school grounds and giving them to other kids. So that's not anecdotal evidence, I don't know that the ers are actually keeping track of how many kids come in, we need to sort of start working to get emergency room Doc's to start collecting data and information, you know, on who's asking the question what they use, so that we can have more information about the negative effects, but it the anecdotal stuff is every single call, we had people saying kids are being like, taken out of school by the the emergency medical people. An original any other questions?
We do have a few more. So this webinar is slated to end at the half hour. So we've got about 10 more minutes now. And I can continue to go through questions that we have from previous presenters as well. Just a quick reminder for everyone, because I'm seeing quite a few of these questions as well. This webinar is being recorded. It will be posted on the PTC website under the products and resources section in about a week. The slides will be provided with that as well. If you're looking for CES for today, we don't have anything formally approved through any accreditation bodies, but we will be providing a certificate of attendance for 1.5 hours, which most certification or licensing entities would review and approval on their own even without our formal application process. And then you'll also be receiving an email tomorrow with a survey and evaluation for today. Please take a moment to complete that when you get it I know we get survey fatigue but it helps us continue to build our program and continue to be funded to provide these valuable resources and opportunities for you all. Um, so that general house cleaning taken care of I will open up questions to whoever is interested in answering them because these are all over the place from the various different speakers. But going back there were some slides that showed some products like specifically Doritos and Skittles that THC companies are using that kind of marketing, but they're not created by Doritos or Skittles. How is this not a trademark issue?
It is a trademark issue. Absolutely. And as I said the Federal Trade Commission, which is the federal agency that looks into trademarking infringements, and the Food and Drug Administration jointly did send some cease and desist letters to a couple of the most egregious examples of this. So I think the Doritos there were four or five letters sent out. But unfortunately, I don't think it's stopped a lot of the semi synthetic cannabinoid, people who are a little bit more under the radar screen than the THC companies that are supposedly legal on some of these states. It is a trademark infringement. Absolutely. But you know, so far, these people have not really had to have any consequences for because they're not regulated. So you know, what I'm saying it's, and that's why we're saying let's, you know, sort of exclude these from being legal, so that we can take care of them the way that we took care of k two spice and bath salts, that was the same problem with those substances that were being sold in gas stations, convenience stores, they said not for human consumption, but then they was wink wink, they really they were, and they're not available anywhere anymore. Because once a store that, you know, really cares about whether it's going to be closed down or not know something as illegal at the federal level, they're probably not going to be selling it anymore. I think the only way to get K through spice and bath salts would be online from the dark web at this point. So anyway, I'll be quiet and let Matt and can jump in.
Anything to add about our trademark infringement, it's
it's it's difficult to get unlicensed stores to close up in some states and cities that have gone legal, because law enforcement is busy doing something else, they don't give it a priority. And the those that want to go outside the rules are incentivized and motivated and have the time and money to do it. And so you've you know, New York City, I know has been tackling that problem, all kinds of unlicensed unregulated shops are showing up in neighborhoods. So regulating the business didn't necessarily mean that we'll have all kinds of wonderful controls and an ability to monitor and to rule out the black market.
I see the trademark infringement as just another symptom of the bad actors exploiting this area that they're circumventing all regulations, whether its potency, marketing, quality, safety standards. They're just doing everything they can to sell these products without caring about the outcome.
And so far, they haven't had to pay a price. I mean, that that's part of the issue. These guys are not closed down. They're not in jail. They haven't been cited, they haven't, as Matt said, paid big fines, because it's the Wild West. There's sort of, you know, outside of any system that is, you know, actually capable of doing anything about them, including law enforcement. I mean, a lot of our members have the Cabinet members have called law enforcement in to say, hey, like in New York, these are illegal on law enforcement. It's like, well, what are we supposed to do about it? And what are the penalties like? What is it and what are we supposed to do with the products if we confiscate them? It's still a lot of unknowns on how to deal with this. Can I see you shaking your head? Would you like to?
Just, yeah. It's, it's just well, wild, wild west kind of rings a bell. Before there were a lot of law enforcement regulations rules there was there's a lot of opportunity for people to take advantage of that.
Another question, are we seeing fentanyl lace in any of these products?
Matt could I can't answer that one.
Yes. There have been cases of it. Yes.
There have been cases of it. Thank you. And then somebody was wondering, why are we calling these products semi synthetic and not just synthetic? Go ahead, Matt.
So the distinction was made in some of the legal language, the fully synthetic ones are rare that we refer to are the ones that don't exist in nature. They're not in the cannabis plant things like the THC, oh, that are just newly created chemicals, or the semi synthetics are ones that do occur in nature that are natural cannabinoids in that they're available in the plant, but in such low quantities, so they're being chemically created as the same chemical that exists in nature.
So they're based on tiny bits of the CBD that actually comes out of the plant. And then they're converted chemically into these semi synthetic products. So the reason that they're semi synthetic is because they do have a component of them that's coming out of the plant. That's natural.
And we have time for one more question. I'm so sorry, I've lost it. Okay, have you found any resources that specifically test which extraction methods have the highest contaminants, for example, are 13 for a can decompose at high heat, if not properly processed, and produce things like hydrogen fluoride, etc, etc? I'm trying to find something to explain the harms of each method, but cannot find much evidence.
That's a good one. Yeah, my paygrade?
I don't know either.
All right. So sorry, that was a little too advanced for us.
Can I just say, interestingly, that American Chemical Association did look at this they did a paper would be very interesting, can mat to try to partner with those people who were the chemists. And we're sort of maybe even in your university, like, get some chemists involved to figure some of that out? Because it's a great, great question, and I think it deserves an answer. But I think we'd have to work with people who literally were very high level chemists.
I agree. I think that the underlying issue is even if there aren't chemical contaminants, we still don't know the health and safety effects of the short or long term of the chemicals that they're trying to create. So rather than going like how can we safely make these chemicals that have unknown health effects?
Making something potentially dangerous, not even less, just a little less dangerous, if you take out all the contaminants is still got harmful? impacts?
Okay, all right. We'll do one more question. So can
I saw a good one in the chat box does issue of schedule three and whole political thing? Does that change any of the picture with the Farm Bill? Or with our whole issue of these analogs and semi synthetics?
No, because they're rescheduling marijuana, THC Delta nine THC that has absolutely nothing to do with these semi synthetic cannabinoids, or the synthetic cannabinoids, they're unrelated issues.
They wouldn't be rescheduling these synthetics or semi synthetics because they're technically not legal to begin with. Correct?
Yeah, they're not it has to do only with Delta nine THC.
Okay, well, we are at the end, Mark. So again, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Our panelists. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your information. We're so happy to be able to have this partnership and expertise that we're able to share with all the wonderful people out there doing this prevention work. You keep us moving. So as a reminder, you'll be getting a follow up email tomorrow with more information about accessing slides, and certificates of attendance, etc, etc. And if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to the PTC Network Coordinating Office at ptc network at PTC. network.org. All right. Thank you everyone. Have a good day. Bye
