[DHOG]

Hello all,

I recently opened up a legal medical marijuana dispensary. I have a degree in pharmaceutical chemistry and have been a sales rep for a pharm company since graduation. Recently I have opened up a medical marijuana dispensary and was wanting to do my own testing.

The things I want to test for are:
THC
CBD
CBN
As well as other cannabinoids

I will also like to do a chemical screening for common pesticides to ensure that there are none in the medicine.

Now I have a few questions...
1. Which would be easiest and most cost effective to do this?
- GC/MS?
-Thin Layer?
-Something else?

2. Is there a database online that lists what values I will be looking for in my testing for THC? And cannabiniods?

Some things to consider are THC's sticky nature. The molecule is very very sticky so I would want to use a machine that will not easily get clogged up. I have a budget of about $4000-$6000 to spend on this right now. Can anybody suggest something that would be useful? I can spend more money if absolutely necessary, it will just take me longer to save up money. I have done analytical work before in college, but its been about 5 years.

Thanks all

[Jasim]

GC/MS is going to be the most accurate, it's the standard, but it's also very expensive (especially if you are wanting to procure a GC/MS machine yourself). You can screen for just about anything with a decent MS library. You'll want to do an extraction to clean up the sample (that should take care of your *sticky* concerns).

So many ways to do an extraction, might investigate solid phase extraction (SPE), it's typically used in industry for these kinds of things. You can buy SPE columns that are designed specifically for THC analysis (they use these in drug testing labs).


Alternatively, it might be a lot cheaper and easier to find an analytical lab to do the analysis for you.

[Stepan]

I agree with Jasim. I run 2 commercial labs. Unless you have 10-20 samples a day, you own instrument will not pay for itself. Any accredited lab will do the job for $80-150 dollars/sample. A regular lab will do for 20-30% cheaper. If you are checking stock, you need instrument once a week. Your annual budget is under $2000 dollars and no troubles.