Peer-review Blinded Assay Test (P-BAT): a framework for trustless laboratory quality assurance for state-regulated cannabis markets

The purpose of laboratory testing in the cannabis industry is to ensure public safety by preventing products that exceed hazardous limits of contaminants from reaching consumers, and to provide consumers with transparent and accurate label information so that they can make informed decisions when purchasing and using products. However, cannabis testing does not exist in a vacuum of incentives—some incentives exist that are in direct conflict with what is best for consumers. For example, cultivators and distributors will prefer to use the services of laboratories that find the highest THC concentrations or lowest contaminant concentrations, regardless of the accuracy of their testing results. Laboratories will, therefore, be incentivized to serve the cultivators and distributors over the end consumer. The present essay proposes a framework for quality assurance that combats these perverse incentives. The following proposed framework called the Peer-review Blinded Assay Test (P-BAT), is a validation process where each laboratory tests products from competing labs and their own lab, but in a blinded fashion to ensure that the label values of said products and the labs that produced said labels, are unknown. This system of blinded self-review and peer-review is designed to be cost-efficient, transparent, nearly self-funded, can be implemented in any state with two or more laboratories, and most importantly, it is trustless—there is no need to trust the behavior of any one actor or laboratory to serve as a “gold standard”. While the primary objective of this process is to focus on laboratory performance, it will also highlight other common problems in the industry such as product adulteration by distributors and poor storge practices. Data from P-BAT should be publicly available so consumers can make informed decisions about their purchases based on the quality data derived from P-BAT. Doing so would further incentivize laboratories to serve and be accountable to the end consumer instead of cultivators and distributors.