![\"\"](\"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/1000x-1-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a><\/span> Pot plants grow at a medical marijuana dispensary in San Jose Photograph by David Paul Morris\/Bloomberg<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n Months after her biotechnology company sold for $40 million, Jessica Tonani is on Seattle\u2019s Highway 99, where Kurt Cobain in his final days shot heroin in cheap motels. She\u2019s scoring a gram of Blueberry Kush.<\/span><\/p>\n Tonani doesn\u2019t plan to smoke the pot. Her typical procedure is to isolate some of its DNA and bank it, sequence its genetic profile, and test it for bacteria. After her stop at Choice Wellness, a medical marijuana store in one of the states where pot is newly legal, she buys the same strain in three more places (often collecting a \u201cnew-patient gift\u201d of pot-infused gummi bears or goldfish). The goal for her new company, Verda Bio, is to build a database bringing order to billions of potential DNA combinations and, eventually, create stable strains that people can grow like a Red Delicious apple. Right now, Tonani says, people using pot for health conditions\u2014legal in 23 U.S. states\u2014are doing the equivalent of rummaging through their medicine cabinet blindfolded. One day they might get Tylenol; another, mouthwash. Even when they buy the same strain from the same place, it might not have the same effect because of differences in how each plant is grown. The variety Harlequin, for example, is sometimes recommended for children with epilepsy because it\u2019s high in cannabidiol, or CBD, a non-psychedelic pot compound that appears to limit seizures.<\/span><\/p>\n Tonani analyzed more than 20 samples of Harlequin along with Analytical 360, a Seattle testing lab, and found that 22 percent were high in the psychedelic tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, and had almost no CBD. Any kids taking it were likely just getting stoned.<\/span><\/p>\n Tonani is also looking at contaminants to determine where they\u2019re introduced and how to control for them. The first two samples turned up a long list of nastiness, including the fecal bacteria Enterobacter asburiae and the vaginal bacteria Gardnerella vaginalis. What this means, politely, is that many people handling pot don\u2019t wash their hands.<\/span><\/p>\n The irony of legalization in the U.S. is that recreational users often now have more certainty of their weed\u2019s safety than people with legitimate conditions whose suffering was part of the original justification. Washington State, for example, requires its few dozen recreational stores to test pot for contaminants and to display THC and CBD content. There\u2019s no such rule for the far more numerous medical pot stores\u2014as many as 300 in the Seattle area alone\u2014which are still in a legal gray area after the state legislature failed to pass a bill regulating them this year.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s exactly the opposite of the way it should be,\u201d says Randy Oliver, chief science officer at Analytical 360. Oliver says his lab gives failing grades to about 15 percent of the recreational samples it tests for mold, potentially dangerous to sick people with compromised immune systems. Medical pot stores rarely seek tests of mold and other contaminants, he says.<\/span><\/p>\n Some of the latest states permitting medical marijuana, including Florida and Utah, have done so by allowing only a type that\u2019s verified as low in THC and high in CBD. Colorado, the other state to permit recreational use, doesn\u2019t require contaminant testing for medical marijuana centers, though most test on their own, says Natriece Bryant, a spokeswoman for the state\u2019s Marijuana Enforcement Division. Colorado also has rules on hand-washing and sanitation for those locations.<\/span><\/p>\n In the dispensaries Tonani visits, there\u2019s little consistency. The waiting room in one place is like a doctor\u2019s office, with plush leather chairs and stacks of manila folders. At another, lit with a harsh bulb over a marijuana plant growing in a converted shower, the guy at the counter says he\u2019s never found that certain strains work any better for ailments. Just find one that gets you really high and numbs the pain, he says. Tonani, 38, who co-founded GnuBIO, a DNA sequencing company sold (PDF) in April to Bio-Rad Laboratories (BIO), has a personal as well as financial interest in pot\u2019s future. She turned to the drug a decade ago for a gastrointestinal condition that led to the removal of part of her stomach, multiple surgeries, and twice-weekly intravenous infusions. Her doctor has since asked her to counsel other patients who think pot might help, and she\u2019s frustrated not to have better answers.<\/span><\/p>\n While Colorado is spending $9 million on research into marijuana\u2019s potential medical benefits, there\u2019s little federal funding because of pot\u2019s classification as a Schedule I dangerous drug. Many of the cannabis breakthroughs\u2014like Sativex, a mouth spray for multiple sclerosis sufferers developed by the U.K.\u2019s GW Pharmaceuticals (GWPH)\u2014have occurred overseas. Verda Bio, which may raise money from investors later this year, hopes to eventually generate revenue from licensing or sales of stable plant varieties and cannabis-based treatments, Tonani says.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI honestly believe it saved my life,\u201d she says of pot. \u201cBut it\u2019s just not a medical system right now. Some people get lucky, and some people don\u2019t.\u201d Source: http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/ 8th August 2014<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Months after her biotechnology company sold for $40 million, Jessica Tonani is on Seattle\u2019s Highway 99, where Kurt Cobain in his final days shot heroin in cheap motels. She\u2019s scoring a gram of Blueberry Kush. Tonani doesn\u2019t plan to smoke the pot. Her typical procedure is to isolate some of its DNA and bank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,14,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medicine-and-marijuana","category-social-affairs","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}