The Future of Cannabis is Nano
A Nanofesto
The real reason the cannabis industry is in rough times— a massive over-building on the legal side and deepening sophistication on the non-legal side that has resulted in supply gluts in many markets — is we are bumping into maximum market saturation for cannabis. How so?
Only so many people are willing to purchase sticky, smelly plant material and roll it into cigarette papers (pre-20th century technology) and light up, take bong hits, ‘dab’, vape or many other various ways to activate the THC and other cannabinoids and terpenes for use in the body.
That ‘so many’ number tops out at about 15% to 20% of the adult population, depending on your locale. The law of high supply servicing fixed demand yields lower prices across the board, plus stagnant growth, which is the state of the cannabis industry in both Canada and the U.S. AKA, the feared Red Ocean where too many vendors are chasing too few customers, cutting margins to the bone.
Over the past 5 years, a significant overshoot in capacity was built out by vendors, mostly driven by unbridled hubris and pump-and-dump public market schemes. The legal suppliers are also competing against the vastly more agile non-legal suppliers (unburdened by suffocating, draconian regulatory requirements), who continue to drive more consumer value through product variety, access and lower prices.
So, the challenge in all this is tapping ‘The 80%’: the everyone else segment who generally are reluctant to even try, much less embrace, direct-access-via-extreme-heat consumption forms. They are not partaking, ignoring the traditional cannabis culture percolating on the other side of the fence as they go about their lives in the big Blue Ocean.
Cracking open the non-partakers segment is where both salvation and transformation lies for the cannabis industry. But Crossing the Chasm is critical, and to get there we have to chart new approaches through the introduction of new technology and the novel products it will enable.
We must boldly go, as it were. Reimagine from the ground up, just like Elon did with EVs. Free the plant — while still respecting the plant. Cannabis needs to be unshackled and disseminated into game-changing ingredients for the wider health and wellness market.
To be fair, the main reason for the lack of imagination in the industry product development trajectory is due to its painful regulatory burdens, but after witnessing the many paths CBD blazed since the 2018 Farm Bill we have developed a playbook for THC to follow. CBD’s out of jail and finding its way into zillions of products and use cases while THC is still stuck inside the four grey walls, rolling spleefs and spiking gummies. Sometimes in solitary. But by freeing the plant from the constructs created over the past number of decades, we can help accelerate the decriminalization process in the U.S. and abroad.
So, how do we unshackle the imagination and get to work reinventing?
The path is clear: Nano, baby.
Nano is Now
‘Nano’ is kind of a buzzy word right now but the riffraff out there have been obscuring what it really is and what it means. In reality it’s dead simple: just a measurement on the order of 1/1,000,000,000 (billionth) of a meter, or ‘nanometer’.
In the context of cannabis, ‘nano’ means stable droplets of cannabis oil goodness rendered into particles the size of 25~100 nanometers in diameter, dispersed in water. Nano processing allows us to extract and reconstitute the key original plant ingredients at nano-scale in a manner that is safe, highly-bioavailable and effective.
Water solubility (as an emulsion) is essential for efficient absorption because the human body is water-based, not oil-based. Oil is ‘hydrophobic’, meaning not water ‘friendly’. For example, when you consume CBD oil with the dropper, it ends up meandering through the digestive system before being handed off to the liver, which takes time and is not an efficient use of the cannabinoids.
You’ve no doubt heard stories, or even experienced yourself, the hazards of over-dosing cannabis edibles. In 2014 New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd harshed her mellow this way, bringing widespread attention to the hit-and-miss of edibles in the canna Wild West (which is still pretty wild even today). The extended discomfort she endured is related to this time-delayed onset (which often prompts people to eat more edibles because they’re not feeling it), but once you‘re glued to the bucking bronco it won’t let you off easily. You can’t tap out.
A ‘nano-emulsion’, however, allows rapid absorption directly into the bloodstream via the transmucosal tissue in the mouth, esophagus and small intestine. It’s highly efficient, approximately 50%–70% bioavailability, compared to oral CBD oil, which typically ranges from 6% to 10%. You simply get more cannabinoid effects with less cannabinoids in a nano product, and you don’t have to smoke or vape anything into your lungs. It works via the same principle as any common sublingual pharmaceutical or nutritional supplement.
Water Unfriendly -> Water Friendly
S o here’s where the technology comes in. Cannabinoids, and the accompanying terpenes (which provide the signature aromas of the fresh cannabis plant) work together in a synergistic fashion known as the Entourage Effect, a name coined a dozen years ago by Dr. Ethan Russo to describe how all of the plant’s active ingredients work in concert to exert therapeutic effects in the body.
To give you an example, Dronabinol (aka Marinol), which is synthetically produced THC dissolved in sesame seed oil, tends to trigger toxic psychosis symptoms such as anxiety, dysphoria (unease), and scattered cognitive effects in about 40% of patients. But compared to THC with CBD in equal parts, such as pharmaceutical product Sativex by GW Pharma which is used to treat spasticity, that toxic psychosis is almost eliminated.
Although the Entourage Effect remains unproven by conventional science, anyone with experience in the cannabis industry knows quite well the many different effects created by the thousands of different strains on the market, all with varying cannabinoids and terpenoids.
Pure forms of either THC or CBD have therapeutic value, but this value is greatly magnified when combined with the other naturally occurring plant chemicals. And although Sativex is administered as an oromucosal spray (you spray it in your mouth), the bioavailability is more limited compared to nano because of its hydrophobic nature, being an oil (albeit highly refined).
Most nano approaches use either sonication or homogenization processes, combined with food-safe emulsifiers, and employ physics to render a highly stable water-based emulsion. We want this because our bodies are ‘hydrophilic’ (water friendly), and oils are hydrophobic as mentioned above. Think of nano processing as a way to ‘pre-digest’ the oil so it’s more bioavailable.
Nano processing also performs a critical function: it opens up the chemistry of the plant extract so we can preserve the original cannabinoid profiles, modify them if necessary or desired, and establish exact dosing protocols for whatever delivery choice is made (see Form Factors below).
This means we can align much more closely to the original plant dynamics — restoring the Entourage Effect — while offering a much more palatable option to the 80 percenters (unlike hot-knifing or bong hits), and enabling complete dose control because the finished emulsion is homogeneous and stable for years.
Form Factors
One of the best nanoemulsion cannabis product form factors is the oral spray. Think of a peppermint breath spray with a THC (and/or CBD) kicker. Very discreet (just a breath spray!), very precise in the amount of active ingredients delivered, and an ideal basis to create personal dosing protocols for your body and needs.
This is the type of product can be a door-opener for the ‘Everyone Elsers’ out there. No that’s starting to get awkward. Let’s go with The Rest of Us.
Cannabis for the Rest of Us (don’t spawn an acronym, please) comes into being when we free the active ingredients from the bonds of the plant, but doing so without perverting or truncating the value of those ingredients. It also requires a safe and convenient route of administration into our bodies. Nano technology delivers on all of these features and can play an outsized role in convincing The Rest of Us to finally partake.
As a final note, nano processing has nothing to do with the controversial new forms hitting the market designed to circumvent existing laws. These include hemp-derived delta 8 THC and delta 9 THC (different from cannabis-sourced THC), and the latest chemical abomination: THC-O-acetate, an extended derivative of delta-8 THC.
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