Quantitative Evaluation of Hemp-Derived Vape Products for Accurate Labeling, Identification of Unknowns, and Stability

In the late 1990s, several states legalized Cannabis for medicinal use and in 2012 the first states legalized Cannabis for adult recreational use. Currently, marijuana and Δ9-THC remain on the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (US DEA) controlled substances list, although medical marijuana is legal in 39 states and recreational marijuana is legal in 24 states as well as the District of Columbia and Guam as of January 2024. Much of the recent growth in legalization can be attributed to passage of the 2018 Farm Bill that defined hemp as Cannabis plant containing 0.3 % or less of decarboxylated-Δ9-THC and removed hemp from the US DEA controlled substances list. Passage of new legislation resulted in a significant increase of hemp farms in the US bring forth a challenge as the supply of CBD hemp flower outweighed the demand from Cannabis users.

To address the excess of these materials, a synthetic process was developed to convert excess CBD-rich hemp into other cannabinoids such as Δ8-THC accelerating the hemp-derived product market. The 2018 Farm Bill does not address the regulation of these products forcing individual states to establish their own policies that have been slow to develop resulting in a drastic growth of these products in an extremely short period of time. For these reasons, more research is required and proposed to gain a better understanding of the following: (1) the current landscape of commercial hemp-derived vape products across the US; (2) differences and similarity of these products in comparison to their geographic location; (3) identification of synthetic THC isomers; (4) identification of THC related compounds such as THC acetate; and (5) complications that can arise from these compounds on current analytical methodologies.

The overall goal of this project is to provide policymakers, regulators, public health officials, toxicologists, and seized drug forensic laboratories with a better understanding of the chemical composition, stability, and product label accuracy of hemp-derived vape products. This will be accomplished by evaluating commercially available hemp-derived vape products through across the US. This effort will use previously developed sample preparation procedures combined with LC-PDA and GC-MS methods developed through past National Institute of Justice grant awards. At the completion of this study, NIST will publish a publicly available NIST report and journal articles detailing the findings of these studies.