New York medical cannabis company Curaleaf has been forced to pull tens of thousands of units of cannabis from dispensary shelves after it switched to a new way of labeling product potency without approval from state regulators, Syracuse.com reports. Curaleaf began using “dry weight” measurements on its products in July but the company had not received Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) approval.
While all medical cannabis products sold in New York show “wet weight” measurement, the “dry weight” method shows significantly higher THC percentages, the report says. For example, using wet weight measurement, a product could show a 20% THC percentage but that same product could show a THC percentage as high as 37% using dry weight testing.
Stephanie Cunha, a Curaleaf spokesperson, told Syracuse.com that dry weight “is considered the most accurate metric for THC content on any type of cannabis sample.” She added that Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maryland also use the dry weight method.
Bob Miller, the COO of ACT Laboratories, told Syracuse.com that from a laboratory perspective, dry weight allows more accurate product-to-product or lab-to-lab comparisons but said the “downside of the approach” is that the method inflates potency which “is misleading to the patients.”
In late July, the OCM said that dry weight measurements “are for informational purposes only and cannot be applied to approved product labeling until such time an approved method is available.” The agency ordered the removal of the products that used the dry weight method but said they could be redistributed “with the New York mandated wet weight measurement,” Cunha said.
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