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Americans for Safe Access Foundation has created the Patient Focused Certification (PFC) Program to address issues of quality control and product safety to ensure patients (consumers) and their healthcare providers can rely on high-quality medical cannabis products and services. ASA has been advocating for safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research on behalf patients for over a decade. Founded in 2002, ASA developed a vision for safe access that includes a legal and regulatory framework that has shaped the medical cannabis field we see today.

The PFC Program has established guidelines that provide a system of processes, procedures, and documentation to ensure that Cannabis products (hemp, medical cannabis, and cannabis-derived products intended for human consumption) have the strength, composition, purity, and identity they claim to constitute or possess. PFC helps companies that are cultivating, manufacturing, and distributing these products achieve a commitment to quality and product safety. PFC represents the consensus of the world’s leading experts on cannabis, hemp and botanical product regulations.

PFC addresses quality control & product safety through:

To date, we have:

  • Worked with American Herbal Pharmacopoeia (AHP) to release a Cannabis Monograph, which now serves as a guide for identifying the quality, purity, and potency of the cannabis plant internationally;
  • Collaborated with the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) to create the AHPA Cannabis Committee which has developed standards in the form of Recommendations for Regulators for Distribution, Cultivation, Analytics, and Manufacturing, Packaging and Labeling;
  • Worked with regulators to get AHP and AHPA cannabis standards adopted in over a dozen states and;
  • Partnered with American Chemical Society (ACS) divisions of Small Chemical Business(SCHB), Agriculture and Food (AGFD), and Chemical Health & Safety(CH&S) to create a Cannabis Chemistry committee to provide education and training that addresses the needs of laboratories, chemists, and service/equipment providers;
  • Partnered with A2LA to conduct dual PFC:ISO/IEC 17025 accreditations