Daniel Sanders (right), a Little Rock-based clinical trials expert, interacts with a crowd of southwest Arkansas health professionals at an April 3 gathering in Magnolia. Sanders was a guest speaker at the April HEALTH Coalition of Columbia County meeting.

As medical marijuana rapidly approaches prescription availability in Arkansas, other cannabis-related products are also finding their own niche in the market.

Daniel Sanders, a research coordinator and chief operating officer of the Little Rock-based Clinical Trials Inc., spoke last week in Magnolia about just these subjects. His firm is now testing medical marijuana for contaminants before it hits dispensary shelves in the coming months.

Medical marijuana was approved by Arkansas voters in 2016. The issue is entering the final roll-out stages, with 32 dispensary licenses issued last year throughout eight regions in the state. Zone 8, where Columbia County sits, stretches across the southwest corner of the state — from Sevier County to Union County. In February, it was announced medical marijuana will be available at outlets in El Dorado, Texarkana, Prescott, and Arkadelphia. The legal drug is regulated by the state as any other controlled prescription substance would be.

Sanders’ firm specializes in a multitude of clinical trials, including testing for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, diabetic peripheral neuropathy, and multiple sclerosis drugs. With medical marijuana testing, the company is not attempting to gauge if the plant can cure certain illnesses or diseases, but rather it is examining the safety of the commercially-grown substance before it goes out to the public for consumption.

“Instead of the department of health or the FDA coming in and testing the product due to the Schedule I [controlled substance] nature of it, we actually test to make sure there are no pesticides, the potency is correct, and make sure there are no heavy metals, as a general health awareness for consumers,” Sanders said.

Not all states test their medical marijuana for such substances. Arkansas Department of Health standards mandate that every 10 pounds must be checked for quality control.

“They did that for general health concerns to the public and for at-risk patients,” Sanders added. “Especially since most of your patients are probably going to be smoking it. You don’t want to be combusting pesticides then inhaling.”

Arkansas modeled its testing requirements from Oregon’s — which is “right in the middle ground” compared to other states, according to Sanders.

The clinical trial executive also claimed he would like to push for harsher testing.

“It’s been two years,” he said. “It’s about time to expand it.”

In February, Alex Gray, an attorney for the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: “We anticipate the first dispensaries will open no later than mid-April.”

Time will tell on the opening, especially since in-state medical marijuana growers will begin their first live-harvest in the coming weeks. The state requires that all growth must be performed at indoor facilities. Two locations have already been cleared to grow, according to Sanders, with three more in the pipeline.

And although marijuana in The Natural State may not be available through doctors’ recommendations just yet, the plant’s fully legal, commercially available non-THC, often hemp-based, cousin has already begun popping up for sale all over Arkansas. Hemp and marijuana are both varieties of the cannabis plant, but unlike marijuana — which contains high levels of THC that produce the “high” from ingestion — hemp, and in-turn CBD, or cannabidiol, contains virtually no THC at all, thus negating any stereotypical drug-like effects.

Even Magnolia now has a small shop dedicated to CBD products. The store is now in its third month of operation. Industrial hemp products were legalized by the federal government in 2018.

Medical marijuana will be subject to strict testing, just as Sanders stated, but CBD so far is not under the same kind of regulatory oversight.

“Hemp-based CBD does not have to be tested,” he said. “There is no national standard yet as to what they have to test — how frequently if it can cross state lines — nothing like that.”

Sanders did say that the FDA is reportedly drafting regulations for CBD testing, and that his firm is dedicating a new space to the work, but nothing will be known officially until at least late May.

CBD-containing products are often labeled as hemp oils or come in edible and topical forms. Many shops claim CBD has all of the anti-inflammatory and anti-epileptic side-effects of marijuana, just without the alteration of one’s state of being due to the THC.

Sanders warned customers to be cautious when purchasing current CBD products and had some advice for anyone purchasing CBD products directly from the shelf. He claimed that since CBD products are not under regular FDA testing, it’s more or less buyer beware at this stage in the game.

“Either get it medical marijuana-based, because it passed a CBD test in the state, or get make sure there’s some analysis label on it,” he said.

No mandated disclaimers or content labels are currently required.

“You can either email the company and ask for an analysis yourself,” he added, “or you can do the test yourself because FDA’s not going to get involved.”

He later said: “It’s not mandated, so it falls on the consumer to ask or falls on the product developer to put out the information.”

In some rare occasions, Sanders says the FDA will look into CBD products, but only if it is discovered that the retailer is selling false goods or claiming major disease-curing advances.

“When they make a medical claim, like ‘this will cure your cancer, this will cure your arthritis’ — that’s when they step in,” he said.

The clinical tester also acknowledged the benefits of CBD, saying that even though it will rarely cure anything, it is worth it if improves a person’s well-being.

“If it can help treat the symptoms or displace the perception of pain, then in some ways it’s increasing the quality of life,” he said. “And if you’re not doing any damage, at the end of that day, that’s what it’s about — quality of life.”

The only thoroughly tested, FDA-approved, CBD-based drug now available comes from the U.K.-based GW Pharmaceuticals drug called Epidiolex. The medication attacks rare forms of epilepsy.

The English company specializes in cannabinoid science. It also has more CBD-containing drugs in the pipeline, with some to begin clinical trials soon dealing with arthritis, autism, more common forms of epilepsy, and general pain relief.

Marijuana testing is just a small part of Sanders’ firm’s work. For the more traditional drug trials, under-enrollment is a huge issue on advancing those medications. With strict requirements — weight, health, etc. — most trials fail.

“Eighty percent don’t make it through phase two,” he said. “It’s either because of under-enrollment or the eligibility is so strict that they can’t find anybody.”

The under-enrollment issue cannot be understated. A recent Alzheimer’s clinical drug test for onset memory loss netted only two subjects willing to test over a six-month period.

The trials are fully paid for and do not affect medical insurance. Sanders emphasized that if anyone wants to help in possibly curing a disease that has affected a family member or loved one, a trial sign-up may be a way to do that.

“A lot of people see these illnesses come through their family, and they don’t really know what they can do to give back or help progress the research aspect of it. We provide a few ways they can do that.”

For more information on trials, visit www.clinicaltrials.gov.