One of the most common criticisms of cannabis is that all strains work the same, and most consumers are simply looking to get high. Although this perspective does not align with the research on cannabis, it has been easy to sell to policymakers with the unavailability of medical data.
Times are changing, however, and research is becoming more readily available. In 2019 the DEA is finally approving cultivators other than the University of Mississippi to supply the cannabis used for testing.
Information is Power
Even if something incredible is produced, it will often only be after an advocate arises to represent it that acceptance becomes commonplace. There must be either a popularization of a product or the spread of information before it becomes familiar and well recognized.
Confident Cannabis develops software which hundreds of labs across the country use in their testing facilities. They have an intimate relationship with the cannabis industry and the chemical analysis of commercially available products. Fifty percent of all cannabis sold in America is tested through their products.
In hopes of properly appreciating this privilege their company enjoys, Confident Cannabis has developed the largest publicly available library of chemical analyses done on cannabis strains. This interactive resource includes widely available strains from all over the United States, and an easy to view break down of the compounds present within the strain.
Consumers can either enter a strain manually in a search function to locate it within the library, or they can explore the visualization and click on all of the different dots which represent data points. Each entry includes an analysis of the THC, CBD, THCv, CBC, CBN, CBG, beta-pinene, alpha-pinene, beta-caryophyllene, alpha humulene, beta myrcene, delta limonene, linalool, and terpinolene levels of any given strain.
All of these different concentrations are visually represented cleanly by a circle graph which is simple to become familiar with after looking through a few strains. There is a useful color-coding system which makes interpreting the different concentrations more streamlined than it could be.
This tool is absolutely fascinating as a consumer and is great for identifying similar strains. The level of information may be too intimidating for serious use by casual consumers, however, and so the true potential of this resource is for the development of research.
Growing Visibility and Consistency Within the Industry
As Confident Cannabis already has test results for a vast quantity of commercially available strains within the country, they are a great company to blaze the path for spreading accessibility to data within the cannabis industry. One of the biggest issues researchers have faced in the previous decades is that chemical analysis was not easily available or consistent, so researchers would have to start from the analysis and move forward from there.
Now, after several studies have been published on the different terpenes and cannabinoids within cannabis, and with this library built by Confident Cannabis, the situation is much different. Strain names are no longer the standard of organizing cannabis, as Confident Cannabis includes the chemical analysis for all of the different iterations of a given strain. For example, Sour Diesel has 90 unique entries which list where each strain was collected.
This level of specificity in analysis and organization is a groundbreaking development in the world of cannabis because it allows for clarity which has never been enjoyed before. All of these results are from trustworthy labs that are under internal scrutiny. While many other test results may be doctored to reflect uncommonly high THC levels, the data available from Confident Cannabis only exists to spread accurate information to the public.
Additional Functionality
Users of Confident Cannabis’s chemical library can navigate through searching particular strains and through clicking on specific strains, and they can also separate results through location, classification, and method of cultivation. This allows results to be narrowed down to particular states, including Michigan and Arizona, or growing methods, including light deprivation, outdoor, or greenhouse.
Users can also select to see strains color-coded as sativa, indica, or hybrid, but this library displays the true irrelevance those categories have in relation to chemical analysis. Strains with similar chemical makeups are grouped together, yet when indica and sativa are color-coded, they are mostly intermixed.
With this level of control, consumers are easily able to find access to information that would have been unfathomable even half a decade ago. This service has provided transparency to the chemical reality behind cannabis which has been greatly needed.
