UC DAVIS RESEARCHERS' LAB TESTS SAFETY, POTENCY OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Two UC Davis researchers are on a mission to make sure pot is pure.

Chemistry professor Donald Land and university lab manager Kymron
deCesare are running a startup medical marijuana testing facility in
West Sacramento called Halent Laboratories.

Both describe themselves as true believers in the therapeutic effects
of cannabis.

Land, a tenured faculty member at UC Davis, said his mother died from
cancer and his brother died from HIV/AIDS, both in great pain and
without access to medical marijuana. He said he's intent on removing
the social stigma of pot for patients who can benefit.

"Part of what we're doing here is legitimizing cannabis for medical
use by certain people," Land said.

DeCesare, who wears his gray hair in a long ponytail, said he was a
medic in Vietnam and uses marijuana to treat his migraines and
nervous stomach. He said he wants patients to have access to safe and
tested medication.

UC Davis allows its employees to work off campus as long as they
adhere to rules that include time limits and reporting requirements,
a university spokesman said.

Land and deCesare are bringing their scientific expertise and passion
for medical marijuana to bear on a pressing problem:

How can patients, many of whom have compromised immune systems, know
that the pot they're smoking or ingesting is free of pesticides,
molds and toxins that may harm them?

And who determines the marijuana's potency and the chemical
properties that may contribute to its effectiveness as medicine?

"The FDA isn't doing it," said deCesare, referring to the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration. The federal government doesn't recognize
marijuana as medicine and doesn't certify its safety.

With a lack of government oversight, local entrepreneurs and
scientists have stepped in to fill the void and reap profits.

"It's a pretty cool story of self-regulation. The local community is
stepping up to take care of everyone," said Micah Nelson, sales
manager with Sequoia Analytical Labs, based in Natomas.

Halent and Sequoia both started in April as Sacramento's first
marijuana testing labs. They joined about a half-dozen labs already
operating in the Bay Area and Southern California.

Jeff Hatley, Sequoia's founder and president, said Sacramento
dispensaries were waiting up to three weeks to get test results from
Bay Area labs, by which time they'd sold the pot they were having tested.

"The results were basically no good by the time they received them,"
Hatley said.

At the labs, small samples of marijuana arrive from growers and
dispensaries and are put through a battery of tests to look for
contaminants and to determine strength. The testing costs about $110
to $120 per sample.

On a recent day at Halent, located near the Port of Sacramento,
deCesare opened a foil package containing about a gram of marijuana
and put it under a microscope.

He looked for the sticky density that would indicate its potency.
"You can see how well developed it is," he said.

Then he ground up the sample, mixed the powder with a liquid solution
and handed it off to Land, who placed small vials of the mixture into
a bank of high-tech scanners connected to computers.

The chemical components are separated and analyzed using liquid
chromatography and a mass spectrometer, a process that takes hours.
Then the results are displayed in jagged graphs in a rainbow of
colors on computer screens.

Land said researchers, including graduate students who work at the
lab, must decipher the results and translate them into easy-to-read
reports that are given to dispensaries and patients.

Only a fraction of the more than 100 dispensaries in the Sacramento
area currently sell tested marijuana, but consumers are becoming more
educated and seeking out certified-safe pot, Land said.

"For a lot of them," the UC Davis professor said, "it's a matter of
life and death to make sure they don't have contaminated medicine."