Medical marijuana could be the answer for thousands of Arkansans – but only if it is pure, so labs are getting ready to inspect it and certify that patients get something helpful, not harmful.

Medical marijuana could be the answer for thousands of Arkansans – but only if it is pure, so labs are getting ready to inspect it and certify that patients get something helpful, not harmful.

One such lab, Steep Hill Arkansas, opened the doors of its west Little Rock facility for tours for a small group of people Wednesday evening, Dec. 12.

“You know, the plant itself is very safe,” said Dr. Brandon Thornton, the company’s CEO. “But there are things that can potentially kill people that can end up in a final product without proper testing.”

Thornton, a pharmacist by training, is one of the co-owners of Steep Hill Arkansas. It is among a small number of businesses that will test the quality and strength of marijuana grown by the state’s five licensed cultivators.

“We make sure that patients are getting a safe medication, “Thornton said. “We make sure they’re free from pesticides, from solvents, from heavy metals. We help with telling patients what the dose is. We give the plant—or the product—a cannabinoid profile to help with dosing and treatment.”

Thornton said pesticides pose the biggest threat to a medical marijuana patient’s safety, in part because little is known about their effects on the cannabis plant. But he said some are already known to cause adverse, even fatal, reactions.

“One example is myclobutanil,” he mentioned. “It’s a common pesticide that’s used on produce. When it’s heated, it actually turns into cyanide, so that’s a particular issue in cannabis.”

The lab currently has three full-time employees, but when cultivators have a mature crop, it will hire more people. Among them will be field agents to go to the grow sites and collect samples to bring back to the lab.

“We can store them, and when we store them—I’ll show you this right here,” Dr. Brenda Gannon, the lab’s director, told the tour group, “we can put them in this cabinet that locks. So, right now it’s locked up. It’s also on wheels, so at the end of the night, every day, this will be moved to a remote location so that it will be secured, and so, not accessible to anyone.”

Steep Hill Arkansas is a franchise of a national company, Steep Hill. Thornton said it is the oldest marijuana testing company in the country. That proved useful to him as delays have pushed back the probably start date for medical marijuana in Arkansas.

“We would have preferred a quicker path, you know, but it did allow us time to really perfect our methods and work on our operating procedures,” he said. “And it allowed me time to work some with our Canada location and our Mexico City locations, and a lot of on-the-job training and learning through that process.”

Thornton said the combination of an experienced testing company, the state’s standards, and the quality of the people already involved in the medical marijuana industry in Arkansas will eventually result in a safe, beneficial product for patients.

“I think that the medication that patients are going to get here,” he said, “is gonna be as good as anywhere you can get it in the country.”

Some cultivators told the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission recently that they will have product available as early as April. The commission could announce as soon as next Tuesday, Dec. 18 which groups will win licenses to run dispensaries.