What's it like to attend RI's first marijuana conference? Here's a look

PROVIDENCE – You won’t find Snoop Dogg at the Cannabis Science Conference this week.

The celebrity pot enthusiast certainly knows a thing or two about marijuana. But if he’s like most folks, his knowledge is limited regarding the critical influence that the “vapor pressure deficit” plays in the plant’s cultivation, or the enhanced absorption rate of the compound CBDA “via the intestinal efflux pump.”

About 350 people – from laboratory glass manufacturers to plant geneticists – gathered at the Rhode Island Convention Center on Thursday to learn about the latest scientific research and challenges transforming the industry.

'It's just amazing what this plant does'

Dozens of conference attendees took in the keynote lecture Thursday morning by Dr. Dustin Sulak on the “knowledge and art” of combining the various cannabinoid compounds in cannabis for medicinal purposes.

Beyond the more familiar compounds – THC, which provides the psychoactive effect, and CBD, often used more for pain – there are other elements, or mixtures of elements, proving useful, Sulak said.

“It’s just amazing what this plant does. It gives us so many gifts.” But, he said, “there are just so many unknowns here. Let’s acknowledge that.”

More: Marijuana legalization: What you should know if you want to grow your own

Restrictions on marijuana may ease at the federal level

The conference comes as the federal Department of Health and Human Services last month formally recommended that the Drug Enforcement Administration ease restrictions on marijuana.

For decades, marijuana has been officially listed as a Schedule 1 drug, in the same category as heroin and LSD, despite a majority of states now allowing its use for either medicinal or recreational purposes.

Because of the drug’s illegal status, most of the research on it has been done behind the scenes by private growers and plant geneticists as states approved medicinal and then recreational programs, as Rhode Island did last year.

Changing status of marijuana not seen as entirely a good thing

Conference attendee Christopher Hudalla is the founder and chief scientific officer of ProVerde Laboratories in Milford, Massachusetts, which tests cannabis products for Massachusetts dispensaries prior to sale.

While many see the federal government changing marijuana’s legal status as a step toward legalization, the possibility gives Hudalla “huge angst, because the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] is not ready to deal with this.”

“The FDA, from a regulatory standpoint, is looking at regulations through pure compounds. These plants, and their mixtures, the extracts, are so complicated that one production run to the next is going to produce a different product. So, from the FDA standpoint, that’s terrifying because you don’t know how to do clinical studies because you can’t get a standard dose for the same product.”

Hudalla says the change in federal designation could also be a threat to private labs like his, and private cultivators, of which there are about 60 in Rhode Island, supplying seven dispensaries.

The FDA will almost certainly impose all kinds of compliance “hoops and hurdles, which could shut us all down,” he said. “They could take all that foundation work that these people have been doing for decades and give it all to the pharmaceutical companies, who will screw it up anyways."

What kind of vendors attend a pot conference?

The conference attracted an array of niche vendors.

Take for instance, David Concordia, representing the family-owned New Jersey company QIS, Inc. which was looking to provide its special glassware and plastics to laboratories and companies that extract oils from marijuana.

“The goo, the honey, whatever they’re making with the oils, it’s very sticky,” said Concordia. “It doesn’t want to come off the glass, and it’s very valuable.”

Concordia said his company may have a solution to separate the precious oil from the extraction container so “I’m here looking to see if there is a play for us in it.”

Then there was Raffaele Gianfrancesco, offering an “altered brainwave entrainment” experience under a $5,500 device resembling a 1980s-era sunlamp.

“I import these devices from the United Kingdom that basically use the human frequency-following response,” Gianfrancesco said. “Kind of like when you stare at a fire and zone out.”

Conference attendee Kevin Harbison gave it a try, sitting in a chair and staring up under the device with his eyes closed as it pulsated light across his face.

“It was weird,” Harbison said after four minutes. “You could see different lights. At times it was red and blue lights, then there was white and yellow. And little boxes all over the place.”

“Psychedelic?” asked Gianfrancesco.

“Yeah, but also at the same time, you had control.”

Gianfrancesco said “there are a lot of people who cannot, would not or should not take psychedelics, but they want to experience beneficial brain-wave states because it has been shown that psychedelics can create peace of mind.”

With his device it takes only a few minutes to achieve that relaxed state.

Said Gianfrancesco: “who has all day to be on mushrooms?”

Contact Tom Mooney at: tmooney@providencejournal.com

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: From THC to psychedelic, what we found at RI's first cannabis conference