Confusing cannabinoids
Decomposition during GC–MS analysis can thwart efforts to determine if a product is legal
Among the world’s oldest cultivated plants, multi-purpose Cannabis sativa has been used medicinally for thousands of years across various cultures. Parke-Davis, a US company once hailed as ‘the largest pharmaceutical company in the world’ advertised an extract of cannabis ‘grown in our own botanical gardens’ in the 1930s. The same decade saw cannabis prohibition laws spread across the US, which turned the one-time staple crop into an outlawed plant. This status shift was called necessary by proponents citing safety concerns, while other scholars detail the role bigotry played in criminalisation. Today, research into cannabis-derived treatment is again seeing tremendous growth despite a myriad of complicated and ever-changing laws worldwide regulating cannabis, its cannabinoids, and related products. One cannabinoid has become the chemical dividing line between the legal and illegal ⎼ Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).