It can be easy to convince yourself that concentrated cannabis is cannabis, just more of it. You can argue that concentrates have more of the good stuff and less carbon-based plant material: More terpenes, more THC, more bounce to the ounce (or bam to the gram, whatever). Just taste that surge of limonene and feel the impact on your brain and body as that wave of 80% THC crashes over your consciousness and try to say otherwise!<\/p>\n
But contrary to what your senses might tell you about concentrate superiority,\u00a0science has spoken<\/a>. And science says the extraction process, as sophisticated as it may be, removes significant active ingredients from the plant-based source material \u2014 including the material that, for most consumers, determines what strain is their favorite.<\/p>\n More to the point: If a Jack Herer CO2 cartridge has a different terpene and cannabinoid profile from Jack Herer flower, can the dispensary or brand selling the cartridge say honestly that it\u2019s Jack Herer?<\/p>\n This is a question that\u2019s been mulled over by researchers in and out of the cannabis industry. It was the subject of a\u00a0white paper published by California-based Steep Hill Labs<\/a>, one of the industry\u2019s older and more established testing labs. It was also the focus of\u00a0a research article published in the journal Planta Medica in 2018<\/a>, written by a team of industry researchers affiliated with the\u00a0Center for the Study of Cannabis and Social Policy<\/a>, a Seattle-based cannabis-centered think tank.<\/p>\n A common answer to the extremely common question \u201cWhat strain should I use?\u201d is to let the nose decide: to smell a flower\u2019s terpene profile and gauge by the potential user\u2019s reaction whether they might enjoy smoking it. The reason why this works is obvious by now \u2014 it\u2019s the flower\u2019s\u00a0terpene<\/a>\u00a0profile the user is judging.<\/p>\n About 60% of cannabis users say they apply the smell-test method when selecting their strain, according to the 2018 study in Planta Medica. That simply cannot be done with concentrates, for two reasons: You can\u2019t crack open a CO2 cartridge to sniff the oil, and even if the dispensary let you destroy product in order to buy it, what\u2019s inside has some differences.<\/p>\n For the Planta Medica article, a research team led by Michelle Sexton analyzed supercritical cannabis oil from six different\u00a0chemovars<\/a>. They used liquid chromatography to see how seven different cannabinoids and 42 different terpenes fared during the extraction process. And as they observed, \u201c[t]he relative potencies of terpenoids and cannabinoids in flower versus concentrate were significantly different.\u201d<\/p>\n Most pronounced was the loss of monoterpenes. This makes sense, as terpenes are \u201ctypically volatile molecules that evaporate easily,\u201d as Steep Hill wrote in their white paper critiquing the Sexton study. But it also means that there was a significant difference in the end-consumer experience \u2014 the recreational experience, but also\u00a0perhaps the medical effects<\/a>, depending on the end user\u2019s goal.<\/p>\n \u201cThe results identified a potential disconnect in the experience for whole-flower cannabis consumers and concentrate cannabis consumers,\u201d Steep Hill wrote. That is, there may be a need for cannabis-product producers to explain to users that the Jack Herer concentrate is not just the Jack Herer they like in an easier-to-consumer form \u2014 it is a different product altogether.<\/p>\n \u201cThese results highlight the need for more complete characterization of cannabis and associated products, beyond cannabinoid content, in order to further understand health-related consequences of inhaling or ingesting concentrated forms,\u201d as Sexton put it.<\/p>\n The study was published last fall, and it doesn\u2019t appear that producers or dispensaries have adjusted \u2014 if they have acknowledged the study at all. There are some vape-oil cartridge product lines that advertise a more \u201ctrue-to-the-flower\u201d terpene profile, claims based on post-extraction add-backs of terpenes. At the same time, it\u2019s not clear how close to the original profile the oil products are \u2014\u00a0 or if they can hope to be the same thing at all.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s try for an analogy. \u201cOne might liken the differentiation to ordering a regular soda and being given a diet soda \u2014 while it may look and taste similar, it\u2019s not quite the same and isn\u2019t what you thought you\u2019d ordered,\u201d as Steep Hill put it.<\/p>\n While Sexton\u2019s study focused on supercritical CO2 oil, this is a universal problem among extracts, albeit to different degrees. \u201cNo extraction method has been proven to fully preserve the terpene profiles of cannabis in its flower form,\u201d as Steep Hill wrote.<\/p>\n Extracts\u00a0have slowly eaten away at flower\u2019s market share<\/a>\u00a0for a few years now, a trend that does not appear to be slowing or reversing. This means more and more new and existing users\u2019 cannabis experience will be with extracts \u2014 and it also means that their experience is something different from what the flower heads are getting. There\u2019s no denying this, yet it\u2019s not something the industry is widely acknowledging, in product packaging or product marketing.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you choose your cannabis based on its terps?<\/p>\n The post Got Terps? Cannabis Extracts Lack the Same Compounds as Flower<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
It can be easy to convince yourself that concentrated cannabis is cannabis, just more of it. You can argue that concentrates have more of the good stuff and less carbon-based plant material: More terpenes, more THC, more bounce to the ounce (or bam to the gram, whatever). Just taste thatContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,943,11581,240,1598],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36859,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36858\/revisions\/36859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nRead More: Got Terps? Cannabis Extracts Lack the Same Compounds as Flower<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"