TAKING THE MYSTERY OUT OF MARIJUANA

Lab Helps Medical Marijuana Providers Understand What And How Much To
Dispense

When Dean Folda goes to pick up his medicine, he has a choice between
cannabis products with names like "Grunk," "Johnny Rocket," and "Godbud."

Folda, 47, says marijuana helps relieve his pain. He's had a myriad of
health issues over the years, ranging from an accidental gunshot wound
when he was 10 years old to a hole in his aorta that required two
open-heart surgeries.

"I could've probably been the biggest pillhead in the valley," he
said. "But I've found that marijuana did the same thing for me that
the pain pills would do without the side effects."

Folda isn't sure just how or why marijuana works for
him.

But a doctor and a chemist in Bozeman are aiming to take the mystery
out of it.

Dr. Michael Geci-Black, a former emergency room physician, and Noel
Palmer, who has a PhD in chemistry, run the first laboratory in
Montana dedicated to studying medical cannabis, Montana Botanical Analysis.

"If it's going to be a medicine, you've got to treat it like a
medicine," said Geci-Black, who started the lab in 2009. "So, I
thought, 'We've got to do some testing to see what's in it.' There's
no other medicine that doesn't have the active ingredients (listed) on
it."

Even marijuana providers, or "caregivers," aren't always sure why
certain strains of marijuana work particularly well for treating
certain kinds of ailments.

A Kinder Caregiver in Bozeman, for example, sells 27 strains of
marijuana in its plant form. It also has a menu that includes 16 baked
"sweet treats," plus four diabetic alternatives; two tinctures of
liquid cannabis; one tea; and baking basics "cannabutter," "cannaoil,"
"ganja cream," and "sweet leaf honey."

But the head of the company, Robert Carpenter, admits determining what
works best for a specific person is mostly a matter of trial and error.

"It differs so much for each person," he said.

Marijuana providers from across the state pay Montana Botanical
Analysis to test "cannabinoids," chemical compounds in their strains
of marijuana, so they can have a better understanding of how to
dispense it.

"If you don't know what's in it, how can you dose it?" Geci-Black
said. "We're trying to establish product labeling."

The lab tests 20 to 50 different strains each week, he said. Testing
takes about three days and costs about $100 per sample.

"I really feel like the science, it's going to help clarify these
ambiguities that everybody has," Palmer said.

Not everyone wants high THC

On Thursday afternoon, Palmer held the dried tip of a marijuana plant
in the palm of his hand, a sample a provider had given the lab to
test. He was working in the MBA's new lab and offices in the Medical
Arts Building on North Willson Avenue, where the neighbors are
family-practice doctors and dentists.

For a typical test, Palmer dries a raw marijuana plant bud, then puts
it in an "extraction" liquid, where it dissolves it into a lime green
solution.

He puts a few drops of the solution in a vile, and puts the vile in a
3-foot tall stack of automated machines. The machines run the solution
through a series of tubes and beakers, with the results displayed on a
computer monitor.

The process, called chromatography, isolates cannabinoids found in the
crystals on the edges of the marijuana leaves.

For the "OG Kush" strain, a line graph on the computer screen showed
levels of about 25 different cannabinoids, primarily
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN).

A total of about 66 cannabinoids are believed to be present in
cannabis plants, Palmer said.

"That's why we're interested -- because THC is not the only one," he
said. "Patients tend to like lower THC and that often has other
cannabinoids in higher levels."

Cannabidiol, for example is not psychoactive, Palmer said, meaning it
tends to relieve pain without getting the user "stoned."

But it's hard to find CBD in marijuana in Montana.

"It's been an arms race for THC," which is believed to produce the
"high,"

Palmer said. "People have all but bred out CBD from cannabis
samples."

Some providers simply tout THC levels in their products, Geci-Black
said. They don't realize the chemical could have unintended side
effects. People are making shampoos and soaps, he said, but THC may
actually stymie hair growth.

"There's one guy in town, he has lip balm that has like 13 percent THC
in it," Geci-Black said.

Even the most potent marijuana usually has no more than 20 percent
THC.

What about a pill?

In Colorado, marijuana providers put cards detailing test results from
labs like Geci-Black's next to each strain in their display cases.

Frank Quattrone, owner of Pure Medical Dispensary in Denver, told the
Denver Post earlier this month that he hopes the black-market names of
marijuana strains "hopefully, will be come irrelevant."

With knowledge about the chemical makeup of different marijuana, a
provider could tell a patient with irritable bowel syndrome, for
example, to eat a marijuana high in CBD, Geci-Black said. That could
send pain relief directly to the digestive tract where it's needed and
allow them to function normally without having to be high, he said.

Or, if a patient has knee pain, Geci-Black said the provider could
suggest they get a salve and apply that directly to the joint.

The possibilities beg the question: Will there come a time when
patients don't need to smoke marijuana? When chemical components will
be extracted from it in some other more socially accepted form, like a
pill?

Drug companies have already created synthetic marijuana in pill forms,
like the drug Marinol.

"Anybody who argues against the medicinal effect of cannabis is just -
with all due respect - uninformed," Geci-Black said.

Geci-Black, who began practicing alternative medicine in 2007 and
lives part time on an organic farm in upstate New York, said he's
gotten calls from people in half of the 14 states where medical
marijuana is legal asking him for information about the lab.

Recently, he was a keynote speaker at a conference in Humbolt County,
Calif.

In addition to testing for medicinal properties, the lab can test for
mold and pesticides, so patients can tell if they're marijuana is safe
or organically grown.

"There's a myriad of applications for this that are exciting,"
Geci-Black said. "We're just scratching the tip of the iceberg right
now."