A Jessamine County hemp testing lab is the first in the state to get a medical cannabis business license.

Starting January 1st of 2025, the state's new medical marijuana program goes into effect, giving qualifying patients access to medical cannabis.

Kca Labs and Nicholas Ville will be responsible for testing it.

It's a job they say they've been preparing for for the last five years.

Kca Labs, in short, is an analytical testing laboratory focused on keeping people safe and products that are contaminated with harmful materials out of the market by doing routine testing.

We have more than 2000 clients across the country, as well as the world in more than 30 countries now where people trust us to test their product.

It's been nice to have a national or even a global market of hemp that we can address while waiting for this medical cannabis program to come to fruition here in Kentucky.

Our expectation is that we will begin receiving medical cannabis samples for testing shortly after the first of the year.

We're prepared to do that testing.

We've been doing very similar testing since 2019 and we will be ready to process samples as soon as they are available under the new law and regulations.

Cannabis itself is a very interesting plant, a very complex plant that we're still learning about when discovering new things about and even then the materials that come from the plant, the cannabinoids, the and and terpene oils and whatnot are still being investigated in terms of their their therapeutic uses or or even just what, you know, regular consumption can do.

You know, hemp and high THC cannabis are, you know, almost one and the same except for some legal definition.

So we're going to be looking at the same substances.

But the concentrations that are of interest differ considerably between the CBD and hemp market and then the medical cannabis products.

One of the major differences is that the emphasis for testing in the hemp program is the determination of the total concentration of Delta nine.

THC, because in hemp products, the total concentration of THC must be less than point 3% in the medical cannabis program.

The there is no longer a requirement to test at 0.3%.

The raw materials can contain as much as 35% Delta nine THC in that program.

I think it's interesting to note that over the years we've had to navigate, if we were still just testing CBD products, we wouldn't exist today.

We wouldn't have made it out of the market crashes.

We've had to pivot, test more and more hemp derived cannabinoids.

And what we did early on was kind of, you know, share what we've identified and knew about cannabinoids.

You know, we've been working very hard over the last five years to develop test methods that are fit for purpose, which means that we can understand when to use which test methods based on the type of material that we're testing.

People deserve to know what they're putting in their bodies.

People deserve to know that what's in their pocket, if confiscated and tested by the police, will not lead to, you know, charges, criminal charges because of unknowingly possessing, you know, a drug substance.

I'm hopeful that the way that this program's being rolled out by the government, by the cabinet for Health and Family services, by the Bush administration, that I hope to see that we can help foster a healthy, fledgling industry here in Kentucky that rivals that of other states in terms of its successes for business owners and patients and everybody, you know, in the in the in the market.

Kentucky's Office of Medical Cannabis received about 5000 applications for medical marijuana business licenses.

Licensing lottery will be held by the Kentucky Lottery on October 28 for cannabis cultivators and processors.

The drawing will be live streamed.