Azuca CEO Kim Sanchez Rael is not alone in seeing a huge opportunity on the horizon for edibles manufacturers, particularly in the beverage sector — but consistency remains a challenge among the greater industry.
“The Achilles heel,” she says, “is if the formulations aren’t right. There is very wide variability in what is currently on the market.”
Consistency from one product to the next is vital not just for building brand loyalty, but also ensuring people have a positive experience with edibles or infused beverages each and every time they consume them.
Azuca has done a preliminary study in which 20 cannabis beverages were selected from retail shelves and analyzed for potency. According to Rael, about two-thirds of the drinks tested were 20% or more off-label. Most were much lower than the stated potency, but one or two were much higher.
It’s not hard to imagine how damaging this can be to the edibles industry at large. People who feel no effects may never buy edibles again. People who end up too high may never buy edibles again. People who felt nothing the first time might double the dose the second time, only to end up uncomfortably stoned. The possibilities are somewhat endless. Keep in mind, many of these people are not regular cannabis consumers. They might be first-timers or people with low tolerances looking for a mild buzz. Everybody remembers the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd writing about her experience with an infused chocolate bar in Colorado. Dowd clearly made bad decisions or did not get good advice when she decided to eat the entire candy bar with 90 milligrams of THC. It was worth some laughs and some shaking heads — but also caused a small PR nightmare for the burgeoning industry and probably more than a few readers across the country thinking, “I’ll never eat one of those pot chocolates!”
Tyler Williams, the CEO of ASI Food Safety, is particularly passionate about the importance of consistency, not just for individual businesses, but for the industry as a whole.
“One of the main reasons we want cannabis companies to implement these best practices and audits is because if one person screws up, it’s a black eye to the entire industry,” Williams says. “Every time there’s a recall, we see a dip in all cannabis sales just like we do with food. When there’s a recall on lettuce, people don’t care about the brand of lettuce that is being recalled, they stop buying lettuce altogether for a period of time.”
It sounds basic, Rael says, but manufacturers need to be paying attention to the potency of products when they’re packaged and to the potency in the package over time.
“It’s incumbent on the industry to get that right,” she says.