IMPACT OF HEMP FOOD ON DRUG TESTS STUDIED

An upcoming debate in the United States over whether the government should
ban food made from hemp will likely be fraught with rancor and politics.

But Berkeley, California, researcher Gero Leson hopes a recent study on
hemp food will inject some science into the public comment period on the
proposed rules.

The peer-reviewed toxicological study shows people who eat hemp food ­ even
in mass quantities and every day ­ are unlikely to fail U.S. workplace drug
tests, Leson said.

Half of the $50,000 study was paid for by the Agri-Food Research and
Development Initiative (ARDI), a federal-provincial funding program in
Manitoba. Several Canadian hemp companies also chipped in.

"This is really the time when things are getting crucial," Leson said.

He said Canadian hemp farmers need the high-value U.S. natural food market
to stay open.

"If there is a ban in the U.S., there is no need to grow any hemp in Canada."

Leson started the study because of concern over a growing number of U.S.
workers who claimed eating hemp food made them fail routine workplace drug
tests.

The potential for hemp food to interfere with drug tests is one of the main
reasons the U.S. justice department wants the products banned.

In one case, Leson said, a member of the U.S. Coast Guard had to take a
urine test after running a boat aground. He showered with hemp soap before
the test, and blamed the lather for his positive result.

"People get pretty creative, and understandably so, but it really does hurt
the production of these (hemp) products."

Parts of the military and some police forces have blacklisted hemp products
to avoid these types of claims, Leson said.

"This is the type of anti-advertising the hemp industry can do without."

Leson wanted to establish whether the minute quantities of
tetrahydrocannabinol found in Canadian hemp seed products can be detected
by workplace drug tests, causing "false positives" for drug use.

With help from experts, including Harold Kalant from the University of
Toronto, he designed a study where he fed volunteers various concentrations
of Canadian hemp oil for 40 days.

The volunteers gave urine samples at several points during the experiment.

The results show consumers likely won't likely fail drug tests from eating
hemp food, even if they eat a generous six tablespoons of hemp oil or half
a pound of hulled hemp seeds every day ­ "quantities that I personally
could not eat," Leson said.

There are two conditions critical to his conclusions.

The vast majority of employers follow federal guidelines recommending a
two-stage process for drug tests.

The first stage is a quick, cheap, simple screening test. Urine that
screens positive should be subjected to a more detailed confirmation test,
according to the guidelines.

All volunteers in Leson's study came in well under the "positive" cut-off
mark in the more detailed confirmation test, even though some screened
positive in certain screening tests.

People won't fail drug tests because they eat hemp foods, as long as
employers rely on the two-step process, Leson said.

But screening programs that don't include a confirmation stage can pose
problems.

"If the employer is cheap, or they don't care, or they think that anyone
who screens positive should not be working at his workplace … an avid hemp
food consumer may fail that test."

The other critical factor, Leson said, is the quality of hemp seed.

Hemp farmers and processors need to make sure they continue to adequately
clean seed before it gets processed, he warned.

Canadian regulations allow hemp products to have THC levels below 10 ppm.
But with cleaning, Canadian processors are achieving levels well under five
ppm in oil and two ppm in hulled seeds.

Leson is working on a followup study of hemp cosmetics, and hopes to get
more funding from the ARDI program.

Using his conclusions about the correlation between hemp consumption and
drug test results, Leson hopes to estimate the impact of using hemp body
products on drug tests.