Though it may be safe to consume cannabis that your neighbor carefully cultivated in their backyard, it’s a smart (and safer) idea to focus your cannabis exploration within the realm of products that have been tested and certified by an independent laboratory. No disrespect to today’s neighborhood dealers, but I promise you that Cheech & Chong are not buying random weed these days!
Here are a few reasons why lab testing for the cannabis you’re introducing to your body is important:
- Strain: A key attraction of this new world of cannabis is that you can largely tailor your experience by the products you consume. There’s no reason (any longer) to have to guess as to the type of experience you can anticipate (indica vs. sativa vs. hybrid … .down, up or in the middle).
- Contaminants & Toxins: Non-tested weed may have been farmed using pesticides and other potentially harmful agents.
- Mold & Mildew: Improper storage or growing conditions can lead to fungal contamination, which can be bad for your lungs, especially in people who are older and with compromised immune systems.
- Heavy Metals: No, not a musical band… If the plant was grown in contaminated soil, it could contain lead, arsenic, or other heavy metals.
- Unknown Potency: One of the key tenets of enjoying / benefiting from today’s cannabis is that you can assume with confidence that what you’re buying is what you think it is in terms of potency and strain.
In the absence of lab testing, there’s no accurate measure of THC or CBD levels. This can lead to accidental overconsumption.
The risk of putting too much THC into your body in too short a period of time is most often an issue with non-lab tested edibles, where there is inaccurate or uneven distribution of the cannabis distillate across the cookie, gummy, etc.
Inaccurate THC levels can result in you consuming much more (or less) than you anticipated.Bad things can also happen if you eat ½ an edible, but wind up consuming 80% of the THC that was intended for the whole piece. That could lead to a very unpleasant few hours.
Always go slow and play it safe with lab certified cannabis.