Stopping Lab Result Forgeries with Evelyn Alvarez

Good afternoon, Evelyn, thanks for joining us. Hey, thank you for having me. Very excited to talk about these very important topics for consumers. Yeah, about that. So, you were quoted in a pretty wild article that came out last month on the website Refinery29.

I find the story concerning in a lot of ways. But let’s just start, I guess, with the general premise. So, I don’t know if you want to kind of explain how you got involved in all of this or if you want to if you want to do that first.

Sure. Yeah. And to some of the concerns that it raises. Yes, so a while back, we got an email to our lab and Molly, the journalist from Refinery29 was reaching out, initially just asking some very straightforward questions about a Delta-8 product that she was going to write a review piece on.

When I started digging into the sample information, I realized that the reports were very clearly fabricated, just completely made up. When I reached back out to her with that information, she was pretty blown away as well. And that just kind of started a good back and forth between her and I, which ended up turning into this great

piece by her. I mean, she really went down the rabbit hole and spoke to many different people in the industry, you know, from researchers to regulators. It turned into being a good highlight for everyone, you know, for consumers, especially in terms of safety.

Yeah, exactly. So. So basically, Molly had taken this Delta-8 THC gummy and had a pretty intense experience. Right? More intense than she was expecting or that was advertised. And so, she went to the website and looked at the COA that was listed there, as many of these products have.

And she looked at it, everything looked good, less than 0.3 THC, no residual solvents, everything looks good. But she goes one step further and actually reaches out to the lab. How? How common is that, do consumers actually reach out to your lab to confirm a COA that they see online?

Prior to Delta-8, not very common. Now that Delta-8 products have become more and more popular, we’ve gotten a lot more inquiries to our line. And it’s good that people are asking these questions that, you know, there unfortunately is fabrication out there.

There’s unfortunately not enough education about what these products are and what regulations, if any. But there are. So, the more that people can pull in and ask us questions, you know, we’re happy to help essentially relay the data to them.

We can’t go into say in terms of the physician’s end of things, but we can interpret the results. Right, so I guess before we get too deep into it, can you briefly explain sort of what a COA is and why it is important for cannabis users and patients in terms of product safety?

Yeah. So COA, simply put, is a summary of the results of testing performance products. So COA stands for certificate of analysis, depending on the number of tests requested. It can tell you a lot about a product. So, it’s cannabinoid profile.

You know how important it is, how much THC or CBD is in it. It’s terpene profile. We test for a lot of harmful things, things like pesticides, heavy metals, residual solvents, microbials, mycotoxins. All of those are important in terms of safety if we detect it.

It’s one of those harmful compounds. You shouldn’t be consuming it. Just the whole safety profile alone is super important for the consumer if they are purchasing these CBD or Delta products. How do they really know that that’s what is in the product or how do they know that it doesn’t contain Delta-9 THC?

I’ve heard of situations where people consume CBD products and then end up failing the drug test. You know, maybe if they would have gone one step further to look for the report, it could have helped.

More importantly, for patients that are trying to dose, if they want to make sure that what is labeled on the container is actually what it contains so that they can have accurate dosing for whatever it is that they’re trying to to focus on.

Exactly, and so these COA’s that the manufacturers put up on their websites, it seems like a lot of the things that they’re testing for is similar to what you would do for compliance testing for products that are on a dispensary shelf.

Is that fair to say? Is it really the same battery of tests that are done for these COAs? Does it depend on what the manufacturer requests? What are the differences between the two types of tests?

That is a very important question. It really depends on what they are requesting for testing or compliance testing here in the state of California. There are very specific regulations that we follow really from the beginning of testing to the end.

And I can kind of get into how the sample arrives to the lab and this is important. For a compliance sample, we are required to send one of our trained samplers out to the facility, and we are required to sample something that is unbiased and representative.

And there are a lot of other requirements say the larger the batch sizes, the larger sample we pull. So even just getting to the lab, a compliance one is something that we picked. We refer to non-compliant samples as R&D, so things like CBD and Delta-8 that are submitted, those don’t have any requirements.

Manufacturers can send them in, they can drop them off, they can cherry pick if they still wish. It’s unfortunate, but they do. So, from the get go you’re getting something potentially different than what you’re buying because of how it was submitted.

When it gets to the lab, that was a great question that you asked, what kind of testing is performance? So for compliance testing, we perform the whole gambit that the state requires. So a lot of what I mentioned earlier, pesticides, mycotoxins, heavy metals.

However, for these noncompliance tests, it’s whatever the manufacturer requests. So if they’re only concerned about cannabinoid profile, that is the only thing that we test because they have no requirements. So if it did have something harmful, since we’re not testing for it, there’s really no way for that to be communicated to anyone.

Yeah. And furthermore, even if that were requested by the manufacturer say mycotoxins or heavy metals or something like that, if you report that back to the manufacturer, is there any mechanism for that to be reported also to some sort of regulator or anyone to make sure that that product still

doesn’t make it to the market like I assume is in place for compliance testing? Yeah, another huge difference, there is no requirement for that information to be submitted anywhere else than to the person that requested it or anything that is non-compliance for our compliance results.

The state has really specific regulations. When we finish and approve the results, we are required to simultaneously report it to the distributor that the people who submitted the request to the testing to the State of California, the Department of Cannabis Control.

And we have to upload it to a system, track and trace system. In California, we use metric and all of that case, you know, digital data for everything. So even if this distributor tried to transfer it elsewhere, say, to a retail shop, they won’t be able to do that because those failed results are stuck with it.

And even so, since we notified the Department of Cannabis Control, they’re already going to take action on that. But for these non-compliant samples, those manufacturers really aren’t required to do much. Maybe they’re good actors and they’re going to go back and mediate their batch and submit again for testing and then sell the product.

But maybe they’re not and they’re just going to submit a different sample and still push it through elsewhere. Right, and like you mentioned earlier, the fact that they can sort of submit samples that may not exactly be representative of an entire batch.

Yeah. Is an issue as well. Yeah I mean, there’s really no way of knowing that what you’re buying is what was tested for anything that’s not in these state regulated areas. And another thing that you mentioned when I asked how common it was for consumers to actually contact you to verify results of a COA, you said it was

more common now with Delta-8 THC. Yet I know that seaways have been in place for CBD products in the past. So what is it about the Delta-8 THC products that are causing more red flags, I guess with consumers.

I would imagine it is because of the mild psychoactive properties. So if you buy CBD and say you bought CBD gummies, you may not necessarily get high, you may have some feeling, but probably nothing that’s concerning. I think what happened with Delta-8 is, you know, it’s very new.

So, people don’t know how to dose. It’s very new in the manufacturing end. And so you also might be getting something that you weren’t expecting. So if people are having a psychoactive reaction that they didn’t expect. That is more cause for concern.

What did I just take? You know, like let me dig into this. And unfortunately, a lot of the times the effects we get are after the fact, not before. So after they’ve consumed it. And so how often are those inquiries, does it come up that they may have used a product that had a fake COA?

or one that’s been modified? Is it increasingly common? I can’t see increasingly and even for the common. For the number of calls that we get, it actually hasn’t been as common. Okay. But at the same time, I also don’t know how many people go to that extent.

You know, someone may buy a product, look up the report, find it. OK, this looks fine. So there could be a lot out there that we just don’t know about. Right, but like you said, you encourage people to reach out to you to confirm that these results, or is it becoming overwhelming?

You know, on some basis, we do get a good amount of calls, but we definitely do not want to cut that off. You know we are a cannabis testing lab, we’re not just going to hide behind the results.

We’re going to help. Absolutely, and I guess to that end, are there any red flags or maybe warning signs that people, if they’re if they are looking into a COA for a product, that they had maybe a strange or unexpected experience with?

Are there some indicators they can be looking for? Yeah, this is a bit of a tough question because to the trained eye, our staff, we can quickly tell what’s what. I guess the main points that I want to pass on is that most COA’s have pictures of products.

So, if you pull up a COA and the product that you have in hand does not match what is on the report. That is a huge red flag. Already they’re just slapping on a QR code to a different product, assuming that you’re not going to go to the extended standard.

Even on the pictures, we take the pictures in our lab. We take some nice pictures, but don’t expect like a marketing photograph to end on a report that comes from our lab. If it has a fancy background, that’s going to be a red flag.

We take very simple pictures. I mentioned QR Codes. So, QR Codes are not only on products, but we also put QR Codes on our reports and a lot of other labs, too, as well. And this helps a lot, because if you scan the QR code on the report, it actually takes you to the website that we use

to post reports. So if you’re pulling up the report, and the QR code is taking you to some random website, that doesn’t pair up to what is on the report, that could be a red flag as well, because that means they’ve probably downloaded it, possibly changed something, uploaded it elsewhere, because they can’t upload

it to our site. It’s only what we upload ourselves. If it is missing a QR code, that could be red flag as well, depending on where it’s coming from. But other than that, it’s a lot of kind of minuscule differences that would be more so caught by us than anyone else.

No, but the one with the fact that the report is most likely going to be hosted on the lab’s Web site, that I think is a pretty good indicator right there. So if it’s a PDF uploaded to the manufacturers website, that’s probably a little more concerning than if it’s going to EncoreLabs.com.

Correct. It may or may not be, some do download it and re-upload it very directly without changing everything. But let’s say they did do that and they scan the QR code as long as it still goes back to our website.

That would be fine. And as long as the one that you’re looking at on their website isn’t any different than the one that’s on our website. Right. We use a LIMS system that’s called confident cannabis. And here in California, actually across the nation, a good amount of labs use that website as well.

So that’s a common one that you would see reports on. Excellent okay, so I want to talk a bit about Delta-8 THC specifically too, because you did mention that, you know, folks are still not really familiar with how these products are manufactured and how kind of the differences in how they’re manufactured could introduce

other concerns. I was wondering if you could start maybe briefly explaining what the process is for creating these products and then you can go from there. Yeah, I don’t have hands-on experience with this part more so just on the testing.

Just kind of very briefly, they’re not extracting it from the hemp plant. There’s not enough Delta-8 naturally occurring in the hemp plant to do that extraction like would be normal for CBD or THC. What is actually being done is CBD isolate, which has had an overstock because of the hemp legalization.

They’re taking the CBD isolate and they’re introducing a catalyst. So, a lot of times it’s a combination of acid solvents and heat. And they are converting CBD into Delta-8 THC. So it’s an isomerization process.

It’s a conversion, it’s not an abstraction. Right, and so I guess in general, how do Delta-8 THC products compare to the more dispensary grade products that you test in your lab? I mean, I know I saw one article recently out there and someone was calling some of these Delta-8 THC products.

Bathroom gin, Is that something that you’re seeing? How do they compare it to things that are coming from the regulated market? You know, unfortunately, because they don’t have all of the required testing, we don’t have as much data points.

So a lot of it is kind of ignorance is bliss. You know, they may have solvents, but since they’re not required to do all this testing, we don’t have those data points. In terms of cannabinoid potency, we have some pretty consistent products that we see with 90 plus potency.

So, I mean, the best thing to say about that is if we have an oil that is coming from a Delta-8 cartridge, we’re seeing that it has greater than 90 percent of only Delta-8 THC in there, which is pretty comparable to some of the Delta-9 THC products.

We see a good amount of gummies and a good amount are hitting the targets that are labeled and visibly it looks like a gummy overall. But, I think it’s really difficult for the consumer is that Delta-8 THC as a primary cannabinoid is new.

So the effects are different, the effects are different from person to person. That is something that needs to be studied more. Absolutely and I just keep coming back to just the process of synthesizing Delta-8 THC and how that can just introduce all these other residual solvents or other compounds that you wouldn’t traditionally see if

you were doing just a straight extraction of sort of naturally occurring compounds in the plant. And it sounds like a lot of these manufacturers aren’t even going as far as what’s commonly performed on products in California to maybe even capture those additional compounds that come with the process of creating Delta-8 THC.

So that’s a little concerning. It is, yeah. And another key point to make on that is the testing that we perform is based on the California regulations, which were based on the knowledge of historical THC manufacturing. So these lists that they create, especially for like solvents, we’re looking for butane, and that’s a very common extraction solvent.

But what is common for Delta-8 THC is kind of still being figured out. There’s a lot of different extraction methods that are being tested. So even if we test for residual solvents with that California list, it’s not going to encompass all of the potential solvents that they could use.

All right. Yeah, I just the whole Delta-8 THC thing really concerns me just because I feel like there is so many great growers, manufacturers in the regulated space that have all these regulatory hoops that they need to jump through and are doing things the right way, and I’ve gained a lot of trust in the marketplace for people to trust cannabis products.

And now we have this new compound that’s coming out. It’s unregulated. Folks are not testing for the things that they should. And I worry that they’re going to sort of erode the public trust a little bit with cannabis products because they’re not doing things the right way.

Yeah, I would definitely agree with all that. It’s not to say that there aren’t companies that have good manufacturing practices and that are doing a good amount of testing and have transparency, but there’s a lot of bad actors that are completely taking advantage of this seemingly gray area that is up for interpretation.

But, yeah, I mean, a couple of states have already taken action, outlawed, and we’ll kind of have to see with the continuing regulatory landscape turns into for this. But, I guess another thing to worry about is even if Delta-8 becomes outlawed or included in regulatory schemes.

Who’s to say that the next cannabinoid isn’t going to become the next trend? Right. Delta-10 THC. Sure. So we’ll really have to see how this evolves. But I mean, on our end, the main thing is. For consumers is continued to ask about testing from the manufacturers, continue to push for that, because if there’s no regulatory push, then it has to come from the consumers.

Yeah, agreed. And yeah, I think it’s unfortunate that some states have taken to banning Delta-8 THC instead of what you suggested, you know, may be sort of bundling it in or including it with with the with the legal market and kind of letting these sort of these, like we’ve

said, these established operators who are operating within the regulated market, making sure that their maybe the ones that are that are bringing these Delta-8 THC products to market, instead of these new actors who may be just sort of trying to make a buck, and like you said, not to say that there aren’t some good ones

out there, but it seems, at least it seems to me as a consumer, a potential consumer, it’s hard for me to be able to suss out who are the good and the bad actors if folks are sort of doing what they’re doing with the COAs.

Yeah, definitely. So just in general, with Delta-8 THC testing, how much has that grown in the past 12 months? Because it seems like it’s really exploded as of recently.

Yeah, it definitely hasn’t taken over a majority of our testing. We really still focus on our compliance testing and supporting R&D testing that supports that compliance testing. But, you know, a year ago, if you asked us about Delta-8 THC, it was it was a minor cannabinoid that occasionally came up because someone didn’t treat

their normal THC distillate well. But now we’re seeing a good variety of products come through that are solely for Delta-8. And, you know, some days we receive 10 to 15 percent of our R&D testing is solely from Delta-8.

Wow. Yeah, and so maybe that’s a good point, I know we’re coming up to the end of it. Maybe if you could tell us a bit about Encore Labs, what you guys do and how people can learn more about you guys.

Yeah, so we are a licensed cannabis testing lab here in California. Different states obviously have different regulations. If it has become legalized. So in California, you have to be licensed to test for these compliance tests. We are ISO accredited as well.

So that’s kind of a big thing for us. And to educate the consumers on the differences between ISO labs and non ISO accredited labs. We have to go through an accreditation process that encompasses a huge list of requirements.

And we have met that. So if you’re looking at a COA, that is actually another thing to look for after the testing labs being used, ISO accredited, are they licensed by your state? If they’re not, then there could be more questions on the lab producing the results.

So we are located in Pasadena, California. We feel like we have a very strategic location for the cannabis landscape. We’ve been here since twenty eighteen and have really grown with our experience and with our team. And we’re always looking for opportunities to educate consumers and to partner up with different companies to push for testing.

Absolutely, and you’re located in Pasadena, California, which is where our CannMed conference is going to be. So that’s great that we’re very happy to have you guys on board as a bronze sponsor. And I think if you’re looking to partner with companies that are looking to educate, you’ve come to the right place.

Yeah. So all right, Evelyn, thank you so much for taking the time today, and like I said, we’re really looking forward to seeing the team out there in Pasadena for CannMed. Yeah, thank you for having us and reach out to Encore if you have questions on reports.

Absolutely. I’ll put a link to your website and your social media and everything in the show description so people can find you. Great. Thank you. All right, thanks.