Harmonizing Nomenclature To Optimize The Global Cannabinoid Supply Chain

By Kellan Finney, Chief Scientific Officer of Eighth Revolution

The momentum supporting the cannabinoid revolution across the globe continues to build as legalities shift. In early November, four new states voted to legalize adult-use cannabis. In the beginning of December, the UN rescheduled cannabis as a Schedule IV drug, opening the door for accelerated growth in the medical cannabis space, and just last week, the House passed the MORE Act. As the domestic dominos continue to fall, their influence will span overseas as they continue to knock down outdated legislation to create room for new opportunities in the cannabinoid space. However, as the international cannabis market expands, scientists and manufacturers are realizing that the language barrier is only one of many potential communication roadblocks ahead. The fast-paced growth of the market allows more room for error, and ones based on miscommunication can have serious consequences.

In elementary school, this lesson could easily be taught with a simple game of Telephone. During this game, the same phrase or message can be interpreted and potentially misunderstood several times over, as the message is passed along from person to person. More often than not, you might understand one phrase differently than the person next to you, and the original message gets lost in translation. The cannabis industry has been playing a perpetual game of Telephone, constantly sending and receiving mixed messages, mostly due to the industry’s lackadaisical naming system for classifying hemp and cannabinoid products. In the United States alone, buyers and sellers are describing similar products with an array of names, creating inefficiencies within the greater market. The increasing number of derivative products emerging in the market, such as distillate, resin, rosin, diamonds, crystalline, or isolate add another layer of complexity. These inefficiencies at a domestic level will only be exacerbated when conducting business overseas. If we want cannabis and hemp derivatives to be traded as a global agricultural commodity, the time is now or never to establish a global cannabis nomenclature to facilitate smoother business, scientific, and social conversations surrounding the crops. 

In other industries, nomenclature is most often taken for granted. The lack of communication-based discrepancies in spaces like alcohol or pharmaceuticals is a testament to its very power, as the industry-specific language acts as an unmentioned but ever-supportive base. Established terminology allows for communication to operate on a higher level and facilitates the buying and selling of goods, as organizations can confidently purchase items with an established understanding of exactly what they’re buying. This extends to the consumer, too. As proper terminology is drafted and utilized, those on the front lines of the supply chain will be able to better educate the customer looking to purchase cannabinoid products. 

Simply put, the cannabis and hemp industry’s lack of an established lexicon is a major problem that nobody is talking about. Perhaps this has been swept under the rug due to the tremendous undertaking required, because the process of establishing this unique naming system is no easy task. The depth of nomenclature is so vast that we knew not one single organization will be able to standardize it for the international community. Recognizing this, several other organizations and industry-leading scientists were solicited to push this forward, including my fellow members of the Emerald Scientific Committee who spearheaded the first cannabis and hemp nomenclature workshop in February, before similar participants gathered for the 2nd nomenclature workshop held during the MJBiz Science Symposium in November. 

The goal of the workshop was to produce a basic framework in which a top-down hierarchy could be established. This framework isn’t the end-all-be-all for naming cannabis products, as it was primarily curated to facilitate more complex classification discussions in the future. Ideally, the below definitions will provide a road map for classifying derivative products from the hemp and cannabinoid industry into internationally recognized biological and chemical classification systems.

Six potential category definitions were presented: two types of “raw” biomass and four extraction products. The main terms that were discussed and ultimately defined during the workshop were:

• Biomass: Harvested Cannabis sativa (including hemp) plant matter.  

• Flower: The flowering portion of the plant, generally denser in trichomes, cannabinoids, and terpenoids than the rest of the plant matter such as stalks and fan leaves.

• Trim: Excess plant material removed from flowering stems after harvest. 

• Fiber: Separated from the outer bast or stalk of an industrial hemp plant through the process of retting or similar mechanical method.

• Hurd: Material extracted from cannabis (including hemp), often with solvent-based extraction methods, which includes compounds of interest (usually cannabinoids and terpenes), lipids, and waxes.

• Seed: Mature seeds resulting from the pollination of female flowers. 

• Crude Oil: Material extracted from cannabis (including hemp), often with solvent-based extraction methods, which includes compounds of interest (usually cannabinoids and terpenes), lipids, and waxes. 

• Winterized Oil: Material, often an oil, refined to remove lipids and waxes from crude. 

• Distillate: Material refined from cannabis (including hemp) concentrate, using distillation to separate compounds of interest. Often found to contain high percentages of single compounds.  

• Isolate: Material comprised of near-pure single compounds of interest.  

Overall, with the greater goal in mind of standardizing the cannabis industry, nomenclature only serves as one piece of the puzzle. It starts with a successful game of Telephone, simply getting the correct message from point A to point B without a hitch. An industry-recognized nomenclature will strengthen our foundation, allowing producers to facilitate meaningful communication and pave the way for international growth. After that, the real work begins. 

See Also: 

• The Cannabis Basics Textbook: An Evidence-Based Journey Into Cannabinoid Science Fundamentals
• Mary Pryor's Powerful Cannabis Inclusion Movement | Benzinga

About Kellan Finney

Kellan Finney is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Eighth Revolution, a research and business development firm supporting the hemp and cannabis supply chain. Kellan is an extraction expert with extensive experience developing standard operating protocols in extraction and has designed methods for isolation, purification, and quantification of medicinal marijuana products. At Eighth Revolution, Kellan advises on strategies to optimize outcomes post-cultivation and helps companies overall solve problems by forecasting industry-specific speed bumps. Kellan has a master's in Metabolic Engineering and Chemistry from Northern Arizona University. Before cannabis, Kellan’s background in analytical chemistry includes working on the Native America Cancer Prevention grant where he quantified uranium and plutonium on the Navajo reservation. In November 2020, Finney spearheaded the creation of the Standard Nomenclature for Cannabis and Hemp Derivatives, an initiative that was long overdue for the industry.

Photo Via Unsplash