The United States Pharmacopeia (USP) and ASTM organized two online, global webinars on cannabis quality to explore the potential for harmonization amongst regulators, standards organizations, analytical laboratories, and industry. The webinars included speakers and attendees representing regulatory agencies, standard setting organizations, industry, testing labs, the scientific community, and policy makers from Europe, North America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania.
The Cannabis Quality Workshop objectives:
- Raise awareness of the existing global regulatory frameworks, quality standards, quality attributes, and best practices applied to cannabis for medical and scientific use.
- Increase understanding of the scientific basis for regulations, standards and practices, identify data gaps, and inform future research needs.
- Highlight common challenges faced by regulators, standards organizations, laboratories and industry. While there is already alignment in various aspects, there is the need to work toward greater harmonization.
- Provide sufficient global engagement opportunities for information sharing, and the identification of key limitations, resources availability, and major action points for innovation required across the globe.
The expert inputs from these two webinars helped inform recommendations toward greater alignment and a more harmonized future related to cannabis quality standards.
