The analytical landscape of cannabis compliance testing

Abstract

Owing to the lack of federal oversight of recreational and medical cannabis in the United States, a patchwork of regulatory guidelines exists for compliance testing. Adding to this complexity is the fact that Canadian cannabis regulations differ from those in any of the state mandated regulatory jurisdictions and, at the time of writing, cannabis was only recently legalized in Mexico. Therefore, from a North American perspective, cannabis testing represents a significant regulatory landscape to navigate. This not only makes things confusing for those involved in cannabis production and processing, it also creates challenges for those in the analytical testing world when they have to understand and develop methods to be compliant with these various regulatory jurisdictions. In this review article, the current state of analytical chemistry knowledge for cannabis compliance testing is summarized, with an emphasis on suitable techniques and some common problems to avoid. This includes summaries of analytical methods for potency, terpenes, pesticides, mycotoxins, residual solvents, heavy metals and microbiology.