Tag Archives: nutrition

November 15, 2022

Expanding Your Cannabis Brand: Plan Your Packaging & Labeling Strategy

By Orna Bresler

38 states with legalized cannabis. 38 versions of cannabis laws. All with the same objective – to ensure consumer product safety. Commonly, state laws point to federal standards that exist for child resistance (Poison Prevention Packaging Act (PPPA)), pesticides (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)) and food handling (Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)).

That said, between the 38 states, there’s plenty of differences and those show up in the nitty-gritty details that appear on the product label – health warnings, regulatory statements, THC symbols, THC limits and more.

Planning for packaging & labeling in advance will help maintain brand integrity, control costs, and ensure compliance across states.

This fragmented regulatory environment creates confusion, cost and risk. It also challenges brand owners and licensees to be thorough in their discussions around costs and responsibilities. Planning for packaging & labeling in advance will help maintain brand integrity, control costs, and ensure compliance across states. Here are some of the nitty-gritty details to consider:

Brand Design/Logo

Building a successful brand starts with giving it a name and designing a distinctive look that speaks to your target market. Are you selling in one state or do you plan to expand? Commonly, state regulations prohibit images of humans, cartoons and children as well as any resemblance to commercially available non-cannabis consumer food, beverage or candy products. But what about images of fruit? Be careful. Be prepared to adapt. In Massachusetts and Illinois, images of apples, lemons and berries on the package are fine, but in Maine and Maryland they’re not. Some states regulate colors and layout.

Font Specifications

Within labeling regulations, some states specify easy-to-read fonts (e.g., Arial, Helvetica, Times Roman), font style (e.g., bold, all capitals), and font size (e.g., 1/16” is the minimum in some, 1/12” in others). Illinois relies on reasonable judgment – “Warning statements should be of a size that is legible and readily visible to a consumer inspecting a package.” If you may have any questions on legibility, think about what an inspector may say.

Warnings & Regulatory Statements

Edible products need to contain nutrition facts, ingredients, allergens and more.

Warnings printed on cannabis labels differ from state-to-state but all contain verbatim statements regarding health risks, pregnancy, breastfeeding and emergency instructions. Most advise caution though some say “impairment” while others say “intoxicating” and “illegal.”

Regulatory statements, like warnings, are usually provided verbatim. The statements can be age requirements, health authority disclaimers or testing disclaimers. Always required is the manufacturer name, contact information and a version of “keep away” from children and animals.

Edible Requirements

Edible labels are regulated the same as consumer packaged foods so must include ingredients, allergens, nutritional values, but some states require more or different information. For example, depending on the state, consumers are warned that edible “effects may be delayed.” In Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey and Maryland, the label specifies the delay could be “2 or more hours.” In Maine, New York, the warning says “4 hours or more.” Other states simply warn without a quantitative measure, or fail to mention it.

THC Symbol

One of the more obvious examples of differing labeling requirements between states is the THC symbol. Starting with CA and CO, each state that legalized cannabis chose to design and adopt a unique THC symbol (with the exception of ME, VT and MA, which share one). In 2020, Doctors for Cannabis Regulation proposed a universal THC symbol, the “International Intoxicating Cannabis Product Symbol (IICPS)”. In 2022, ASTM International recognized the symbol and published the Standard Specification for International Symbol for Identifying Consumer Products Containing Intoxicating Cannabinoids and it’s starting to take hold in the U.S.

Batch Specific Information

This is the label that is printed on site and applied to a finished package. Again, requirements may differ between states but typically, at a minimum, this label will include a batch number, product identifier, manufacture date, weight, package date, test date and cannabinoid potency values, and more.

A growing segment of consumers are becoming more educated and seeking to make informed decisions about the cannabis products they are inhaling, ingesting or applying. Beyond THC and CBD potency, they want to know about other cannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids. For them, QR codes that link to this information are highly valued. Is this part of your brand strategy?

When designing the package for any one state, it’s important to create a template batch label and specify on the label artwork where it will be applied. This way, you will avoid stickers covering your beautiful branding or worse, obscuring regulatory content.

And Finally, The Container

Cannabis packaging suppliers offer a wide range of containers designed to meet federal child resistance regulations. (Request certification documentation for your records.) Other considerations are the brand strategy. What’s the “look and feel”? Simple for the budget-conscious, premium for the luxury buyer? Will you be offering single servings, multiple servings, how many flavors/strains?

In addition to the usual variables such as volume, price and delivery, cannabis manufacturers also need to have an eye on state regulations when making procurement decisions. Some states are considering aligning sustainability goals with cannabis packaging requirements. For example, within New York’s proposed adult-use regulations is a provision for manufacturers to incorporate at least 25% post-recycled consumer content into their packaging. While the law as written may not get adopted, the movement for states to consider sustainability in cannabis packaging regulations has begun.

The variation in labeling regulations between 38 states is in the nitty-gritty details. Brand owners & licensees that take a strategic approach to expansion will minimize cost of goods, maintain brand integrity and ensure compliant labeling in each state they sell.

October 25, 2021

Soapbox

Is There a Place for Perpetual Tele-Monitoring and Clinical Research in the Medical Cannabis Industry?

By Christina DiArcangelo

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As we continue to witness and experience the medical cannabis industry grow and mature, many of us are wondering where the head-to-head clinical studies are, and why aren’t there more clinical research studies taking place?

Cannabis products created with the intention for medicinal use often state that their formulations and products stack up against traditional pharmaceutical treatments. However, without a substantial number of clinical studies being performed, it’s difficult to truthfully make such a claim. It’s one thing to share testimonials from people who use particular products and report what their experiences were like. However, to go head-to-head in a controlled environment where factors such as underlying conditions, height, weight, medication, lifestyle and nutrition habits are taken into account to accurately compare the efficacy of a traditional pharmaceutical product versus a cannabis-derived product are two completely different things.

The Need for More Capital

Wouldn’t you agree that if a company is having tremendous success with a particular product, that they’d reinvest capital into a true clinical study to have data to support their marketing efforts? Investing into proper studies would not only benefit a company working hard to earn market share, it would benefit those who are relying on a particular product to regain a quality life. As we’ve learned over the years from numerous scientists and researchers digging into the cannabis plant at a more granular level, there’s much more to the medicinal benefits than meets the eye. Discovering new information about how cannabinoids such as CBG and CBN combined with CBD and certain terpenes can create specific effects has helped make a greater impact on the medical cannabis community. Bringing these powerful blends of anti-inflammatory, cannabis-derived compounds and other immune boosting nutraceuticals to head-to-head clinical studies could be a huge step forward towards further legitimizing the healing effects that cannabis has to offer.

Measuring Efficacy Goes Beyond COAs & Product Reviews

Determining the efficacy of medical cannabis products should be viewed in the same light as traditional pharmaceutical products. Traditional clinical studies are designed with an Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, subject recruitment, electronic data capture as well as electronic patient reported outcomes. Some companies within the cannabis space have made attempts to conduct surveys with measuring efficacy in mind, but using outdated survey technology that hasn’t been validated only leads to insufficient data collection.

Discovering new information about how cannabinoids can create specific effects has helped make a greater impact on the medical cannabis community.
Image: Peggy Greb, USDA

There is nothing wrong with adult-use cannabis. However, for the medical cannabis space to be taken more seriously, it is time for organizations to step up their efforts and take note of certain practices from traditional biotech organizations when it comes to clinical research and collecting data to correctly quantify efficacy of certain products. Well-thought-out studies designed with clinical endpoints and validated questionnaires is a strategic way for the industry to take big steps towards doing what is right for patients.

Patients Are Asking For More Research

After speaking with patients who are interested in pursuing a treatment that includes the responsible use of medicinal cannabis, the one thing they all have in common is the desire for more information that they can rely on to make better decisions. Is it time for patients to push the envelope and not purchase products from companies that are not willing to perform the clinical studies? If companies suffered a loss in sales as a result, would they reconsider their stance on reinvesting capital into clinical trials with their products?

Equally as important as proper research is perpetual tele-monitoring. The value in perpetual tele-monitoring is the data. We can showcase miraculous, life-changing stories of how medical cannabis has helped people turn their lives around. However, when seeking greater buy-in from groups like the FDA, data is key. Qualitative data can go only go so far. It’s the quantitative data that will help move the medical cannabis community forward. The ability to be able to review data on an ongoing basis would enable medical cannabis companies to evaluate how products are working based on the electronic data capture, along with questions that a company may develop to ascertain individualized product feedback.

Imagine having the ability to see patients’ data based on real-time, daily, through something as convenient as a wearable device. Understanding test results and correspondence with doctors for patients would significantly improve.

September 21, 2016

Cannabis, Soil Science and Sustainability Part II: The ‘Roots’ of Sustainable Cultivation

By Drew Plebani

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The modern chemical agricultural approach is based on the assumption that chemical science has discovered all facets of plant nutritional requirements. It is clear that the traditional NPK approach to plant/soil systems has its limitations, both from an ecological perspective and in terms of its ability to create nutrient-dense food.

Soil and plant systems have existed together for millions of years and have evolved the capacity to coexist in a way that is mutually beneficial. Plants have been fed and evolved with these biological and environmental stimuli over millennia.

Looking to the geologic record for evidence, we can see that it shows that invertebrates, fungi and early vascular plants appeared on land roughly 400 million years ago, the first seed bearing plants about 360 million years ago and the first flowering plants 130 million years ago. What does this mean? The soil food web has been in existence for millions of years and significant evidence exists that plants and soil biology have co-evolved together for millennia.

geologictimescale — The Geologic Time Scale

Between mineral rich soils and the soil food web, this natural system has been able to create and provide significant plant available nutrients, certainly enough to facilitate the successful life cycle of many species. Clearly from an evolutionary context this system has been able to facilitate maximum genetic expression and the ongoing evolution of biologic species.

In the not-too-distant past, agricultural fertilization practices were based on the existence of a diversity of plant and animal byproducts, animal manures, green manures, etc. These were reintroduced to the system and combined with the appropriate biologic populations, resulting in the decomposition of these organic material inputs and their conversion into plant-available nutrients.

An overview of traditional farming practices provides substantial evidence that farming has been occurring for at least 10,000 years. Why, with such a long history of symbiotic interactions between biologic species, are we now witnessing the mass deterioration of arable land, and agricultural commodities containing lower nutritional value?

Mycelium, the vegetative part of a fungus bacteria colony, seen breaking through rock. — Together, indigenous mycelium and plant roots seen turning rock into soil

An interesting common question among the conventional farming community, when the topic of organics or sustainability comes up, is “how are you going to feed the world?” Well that goal certainly will not be well served by the development of shelf stable, but low nutrient-dense foods. A greater volume of low nutrient-value foods certainly does not seem like a winning approach. Supporting agricultural systems that encourage the development of sustainable systems via locally produced, nutrient-dense food is a good start.

And the same holds true for cannabis. In fact, the parallels between the production of high quality nutrient dense foods and high quality cannabis products are quite significant.

Nutrient density in crops results from balanced, mineral rich soils, and a diversity of organic materials and biologic life, these elements provide the framework to facilitate the creation of a highly functional, biologic nutrient cycling system. A highly functional soil system results in more nutrient-dense crops, which contain measurably larger quantities of different phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, flavonoids, and terpenes as compared to a system operating at a lower level of biologic efficiency.

commercialcultivator — Nutrient-dense cannabis flowers

Benefits that have been observed from nutrient-dense crops are: more pest and disease resistance in the vegetative and fruiting stages, greater yield, more complex and intense flavors and a longer shelf life.

Ultimately advancement in any cultivation system means finding and defining limiting factors in the given system. The objective should be ensuring the maximum biologic vitality of the components of said system and its outputs. Practically speaking, in order to enable the full genetic potential of biologic species, this means identifying and working toward the removal of limiting factors. Minimizing or entirely alleviating the factors that limit maximum plant growth will undoubtedly net positive gains and must be an integral component to any sustainable cultivation strategy.

commcultivator3 — Cannabis growing in a polyculture

The Earth has provided us with a highly successful, multi-million-year-old biologic system, capable of providing abundant plant available nutrients on demand, a dynamic which must be integral to appropriate and intelligent systems design.

In the pursuit of sustainability, perhaps it is time to return to our roots and begin to pursue dynamics that are mutually beneficial to all forms of biologic life.

In the next article, we will take a step back from viewing sustainability through the lens of soil and plant specific cultivation methodologies, and focus on the broader context of sustainability in cultivation systems. We will look at sustainability from the context of operational efficiency, and provide a case study from a 400-light commercial indoor cannabis operation. The case study will provide evidence that, in order to achieve higher levels of sustainability, both cultivation strategies and operational efficiency must be factored into the equation. As we will see, true sustainability is created through the efficient design, incorporation, use and management of system elements, all of which can, when appropriately designed, work together to create improved efficiency for the system.