Plasma-based sterilization of medical cannabis

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Canada is now poised to open the market for wide-scale legal use of cannabis by the general population.**However, there already exists a large and growing market of this product for medical use. WeedMD Rx Inc**(WMDI) is a licensed producer under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purpose Regulations (ACMPR) to**produce and sell dry cannabis products. The regulated requirements imposed by ACMPR are extremely**stringent for microbial contamination: cannabis producers must provide material that is nearly devoid of**microbes, extremely difficult to achieve in industrial settings. Currently there are two technological approaches**to sterilize dry medicinal cannabis: (i) gamma irradiation or (ii) electron beam sterilization. However, both**these methodologies are problematic in that they either result in heating, which alters the pharmaceutical**properties of cannabis, or they are capital intensive and only regionally available. The purpose of the current**proposal is to investigate the use of "cold" (near 300 K) gas discharge plasmas, a potentially cheap, up-scalable**approach for use in decontamination of medical cannabis.