NEW FIRMS HOPE TO BRING STANDARDS, LEGITIMACY TO MEDICAL POT

BOZEMAN -- In the same medical-arts building with an eye doctor, a
dentist and a traditional pharmacy, walls are being painted for a new
laboratory in Bozeman that aims to test the potency of marijuana.

"There's just so much research that could be done to help validate
and quantify how to use this plant," said Dr. Michael Geci-Black,
owner of Montana Botanical Analysis.

After about five months searching for someone willing to lease space
for the venture, Geci expects the lab to open its doors in the
building on Bozeman's Willson Avenue in mid-April.

Geci, a physician, and chemist Noel Palmer are already analyzing
samples from medical-marijuana growers, using a chromatography
machine to read the levels of the various constituents that give the
drug its properties. They say that measuring the different
substances in the drug could help someone choose the best pot product
- -- and the best dosage -- to treat a given malady.

"For 5,000 years, people have just done this by trial and error, but
it doesn't have to be that way anymore," Geci said.

A surge in the number of medical-marijuana users and providers over
the past year has stunned municipal governments in Montana, leading
many to form task forces to consider zoning restrictions and other
regulatory measures for the nascent industry. Meanwhile, new trade
associations, guilds and labs such as Montana Botanical Analysis are
seeking to bolster quality-control standards and self-regulation
within the industry.

Under Montana law, "caregivers" can have up to six plants and one
ounce of marijuana for each "patient." But the state is not required
to ensure that the medical-marijuana caregivers provide a safe
product, or "medicine," to their patients.

For Montana's 10,000-plus registered marijuana patients, that means
trial and error is the only guide to finding a quality product and
provider. Because the law allows a patient to work with only one
caregiver at a time, it's a process that can take time.

"We believe what will happen is those caregivers that are not
following quality standards will have difficulty maintaining their
business," said Jim Gingery of the Montana Medical Growers Association.

The trade association, which formed in September, claims to have a
membership that serves about 10 percent of the registered patients in
Montana, or about 1,000 patients. Gingery said it soons hope to cover
the whole state with six chapters, each of which will be operated by
an independent board of directors. The association could present
members' views to state and local governments, and the membership
would develop growing standards and a code of ethics.

"Responsible caregivers don't just supply the medicine," Gingery
said. "They counsel their patients. The best caregivers do intake counseling."

Currently, there are no guarantees beyond a caregiver's word that
marijuana has been grown organically, or is free of mold, pesticides
or other toxins. Extracts used to make cookies and brownies -- an
increasingly popular way to ingest the drug -- also could have too
much or too little of pot's main constituents, limiting a patient's
ability to control how they feel with accurate dosing.

"It's very important for the industry to take a proactive role in
regulating itself, otherwise people who have no understanding of this
industry are going to step in and regulate it for us," said Blake
Ocle, a vice president with A Kinder Caregiver Inc.

Surrounded by close to 400 marijuana plants with names such as Pink
Dumptruck and Mountain Skunk, Ocle and president Robert Carpenter
recently talked about their success selling an organic product at one
of the corporation's greenhouses. The company, which is a member of
the Montana Medical Growers Association, has growing facilities in
Belgrade and Norris that serve several hundred patients.

Rows of tubs with six plants each -- the amount a registered
caregiver is allowed to possess for each patient -- fill the Norris
greenhouse. A soft whirring sound fills the space as a ventilation
system stirs the air that is heated from above by grow lights and
from below by a floor warmed with an exterior wood-burning stove.

A lot depends on the consistent maintenance of the right conditions
in the greenhouse; a recent spider mite infestation at the company's
Belgrade facility led to a loss of more than $200,000 worth of
product, Carpenter said.

The team at A Kinder Caregiver also recently discovered that one of
its extracts did not contain enough of the compounds found in
marijuana that are thought to be therapeutic. A Kinder Caregiver made
a mistake in the manufacturing process but learned about it only
because it paid a lab to test the extract.

"Having third-party analysis by a chemist or even an agronomist is an
invaluable tool for your patients," Ocle said.

Testing pot's potency

Aside from discovering such production glitches, proponents of
testing argue that it could help turn marijuana into a better
pain-reliever that could benefit more people.

"There's still so much worry about controlling the movement that I
don't think the practical and medicinal aspects are being approached
yet," said Rose Habib, a chemist who is opening CannabAnalysis
Laboratories in Missoula.

Habib, who said she used to do testing for the vitamin industry,
hopes to soon begin analyzing "cannabinoid profiles" in caregivers' marijuana.

Cannabinoids are compounds in marijuana that may be responsible for
the pain relief it offers some patients. The main ones include
tetrahydrocannabinol -- the much-coveted THC of stoner culture --
cannabidiol and cannabinol.

"I think the ratio between these three chemicals will help patients
choose the strain that they are going to want to take," Habib said.

Patients looking for the right "strain," or variety, of marijuana to
treat their condition are now confronted by names such as Alien
Trainwreck and AK-47. The names are holdovers, black-market sales
lingo that reflects the drug's decades of classification as an
illegal substance.

But many people think there's another holdover from those years
that's even more alienating to potential patients.

They say dealers bred marijuana to have high levels of THC, the
psychoactive compound in marijuana that makes people feel high. The
argument continues that in the process the plant's other therapeutic
cannabinoids, which do not have as strong an effect on mood and
perception, were weakened in many strains.

"I have patients who are in their 80s and they're not interested in
staring at a lava lamp or listening to the Grateful Dead all day,"
Geci said. "They are interested in the therapeutic effects."

Geci, Habib and other lab operators think they can make money by
helping growers breed strains more people will want to use. By
measuring cannabinoid levels in both regular marijuana and tinctures
that can be ingested, they think the medicine's potency could be
standardized, allowing for better dosage control and bringing more
doctors on board.

"I think that chemists have a tremendous opportunity to add a lot of
legitimacy and consistency to this business," Habib said.