A biopharmaceutical company hoping to disrupt the cannabis extraction market is claiming some Canadian licensed producers are selling cannabis oils that are tantamount to placebos.
In a nutshell, Scientus is saying the industry standard—using a carbon dioxide extractor to decarboxylate weed and then turn it into oil—has too many variables and as a result some oils don’t have the amount of active THC or CBD they claim to have on the label. That means that a patient won’t necessarily be getting the effects they think they’ll be getting.
“[Patients] are paying $300 to $500 a month for that product and it’s not doing anything for them,”
However, both Health Canada and the organization representing Canadian LPs maintained that LPs are subject to the strictest regulations in the world.
Lakshmi Kotra, a senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, and Hance Clarke, medical director of the Pain Research Unit at the Toronto General Hospital, are both scientific advisors for Scientus. They are in the midst of conducting a clinical trial funded by the company that is in part analyzing samples of cannabis oil given to them by pain patients—all of the oil samples come from licensed producers.
Their preliminary findings show that of 14 THC oils listing full potency, only two actually had full potency. In one of the oils, less than 20 percent of it contained activated THC. Of ten samples of CBD oil that claimed to be 100 percent potent, only three were fully potent. One of them had no activated CBD.
“That’s a placebo,” said Grover.
A Scientus Pharma-funded study shows that not all cannabis oils are fully activated.
Samples of CBD oil from Canadian LPs, including one that has no active CBD.
Kotra noted that with any other medicine, you would take a tablet and find exactly what the medicine is supposed to contain, but with cannabis oils, there are patients “getting 80 percent inactive substance.”
“So it’s totally unregulated and from a patient’s point of view, they have to take five times more of the oil to get the same effect. Next time they go to the shop if they pick up a fully active oil, now the same dosing is not working.”
But how is this even possible?
The doctors both noted that science for cannabis as medicine isn’t advanced enough yet, and that it’s not yet at a place where it can truly be considered medicine because there’s a lack of standardization. They said that when it comes to labeling, LPs include both THCA and THC as THC and CBDA and CBD as CBD—but THCA and CBDA aren’t activated. That doesn’t matter when someone is smoking or vaping, but it does with oils that are simply ingested.
“We have reasonable doubt to say that what’s reported on the label may not match what’s inside the bottle,” said Kotra
In a nutshell, Scientus is saying the industry standard—using a carbon dioxide extractor to decarboxylate weed and then turn it into oil—has too many variables and as a result some oils don’t have the amount of active THC or CBD they claim to have on the label. That means that a patient won’t necessarily be getting the effects they think they’ll be getting.
“[Patients] are paying $300 to $500 a month for that product and it’s not doing anything for them,”
However, both Health Canada and the organization representing Canadian LPs maintained that LPs are subject to the strictest regulations in the world.
Lakshmi Kotra, a senior scientist at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, and Hance Clarke, medical director of the Pain Research Unit at the Toronto General Hospital, are both scientific advisors for Scientus. They are in the midst of conducting a clinical trial funded by the company that is in part analyzing samples of cannabis oil given to them by pain patients—all of the oil samples come from licensed producers.
Their preliminary findings show that of 14 THC oils listing full potency, only two actually had full potency. In one of the oils, less than 20 percent of it contained activated THC. Of ten samples of CBD oil that claimed to be 100 percent potent, only three were fully potent. One of them had no activated CBD.
“That’s a placebo,” said Grover.
A Scientus Pharma-funded study shows that not all cannabis oils are fully activated.
Samples of CBD oil from Canadian LPs, including one that has no active CBD.
Kotra noted that with any other medicine, you would take a tablet and find exactly what the medicine is supposed to contain, but with cannabis oils, there are patients “getting 80 percent inactive substance.”
“So it’s totally unregulated and from a patient’s point of view, they have to take five times more of the oil to get the same effect. Next time they go to the shop if they pick up a fully active oil, now the same dosing is not working.”
But how is this even possible?
The doctors both noted that science for cannabis as medicine isn’t advanced enough yet, and that it’s not yet at a place where it can truly be considered medicine because there’s a lack of standardization. They said that when it comes to labeling, LPs include both THCA and THC as THC and CBDA and CBD as CBD—but THCA and CBDA aren’t activated. That doesn’t matter when someone is smoking or vaping, but it does with oils that are simply ingested.
“We have reasonable doubt to say that what’s reported on the label may not match what’s inside the bottle,” said Kotra
