Recent reports have shown how contaminated cannabis products found their way onto store shelves. The most egregious example was the LA Times report on California cannabis products that raised the alarm in the state's cannabis industry. Since then, more states have conducted similar tests, with similar results - to put it bluntly. Just recently, a report from New Jersey highlighted a similar issue in the Garden State.
Powdery mildew resistance as a possible solution
Within this context, Aurora Cannabis, one of the largest cannabis companies, shared that they have discovered a novel source of genetic resistance against powdery mildew. "To develop the PM2 genetic marker took approximately two years of work," says Jose Celedon, Principal Scientist of Breeding and Genetics at Aurora. This innovation may help fix the quality problem that persists in some state-legal markets - provided this will actually be commercialized. "While the development of this proprietary genetic marker technology is now in use in Aurora's breeding program, the discovery is set to produce powdery mildew-resistant cultivars that will be explored for commercial launch this year and beyond," Jose points out. Being a genetic marker, PM2 is a natural source of resistance, meaning that it is completely compliant with health and environmental regulations.
However, while the market waits for such discoveries to be commercialized and thus become widely used among growers, there's always the issue of customer confidence. Paige St. John, one of the LA Times journalists who worked on the contaminated cannabis report, pointed out how sales figures in California reflected the loss of confidence in regulated market products. However, it's hard to come to such a conclusion without considering all the other factors that affect sales. Certainly, the contaminated cannabis scandal somewhat impacted sales, but it was hardly as impactful as Paige St. John depicted it in a previous interview.
Consumer confidence in regulated products
At least, the results of a consumer poll conducted by NuggMD paint a completely different picture. The poll aimed to assess whether cannabis consumers in regulated markets trusted regulated products. Conducted from March 3 to 6 with a ±4.5% margin of error, the poll shows that consumer trust in regulated products is quite high.
© NuggMD
While it is certainly nice to see that consumer confidence didn't dip as much, Andrew Graham from NuggMD points out that it's better to take these results with a grain of salt, as the situation in the market isn't the best when it comes to consumers' health. "One can read this poll with either optimism or pessimism. Knowing that consumers have trust in the integrity of a market is generally a good thing. But there's mounting evidence that suggests the regulated markets don't uniformly provide products that are clean, safe, and free of contaminants. I don't think that would be tolerated in any other consumer market," he points out.
According to him, one of the root causes of this problem is federal prohibition. After all, the White House can't legalize cannabis via executive order. At the same time, it could order the relevant administrative agencies to develop and issue uniform federal guidance on state-legal cannabis markets in a way that does not add new regulations - as there are quite a lot of them already. "It doesn't have to deschedule or reschedule to give states a playbook to follow," he remarks. "People who use cannabis lawfully deserve the same consumer protections as everybody else. This poll is yet another example of how federal prohibition is needlessly putting the health and safety of millions of Americans at risk."
For more information:
NuggMD
www.nuggmd.com
For more information:
Aurora
auroramj.com