Casey Solomon of PHYTOLAB

by Lynn Wachtler MSN, RN, FNP-BC, CMCC

Driving back from Chisago City, Minnesota, after visiting Phytolab, a veteran-owned cannabis business just north of the Twin Cities, I reflected on all the work done so far, the extensive planning and the process of building something significant and doing something that matters. I think about owner and CEO Casey Solomon’s words, “There is no acceptable level of war a human should have to experience.” I thought about the plant and how it allows for healing, growth, and new possibilities.

Veterans face navigating the complex world I call “BC” and “AC”: Before Combat and After Combat. For a nurse, those acronyms refer to before and after COVID-19. Casey is both. As a veteran and a nurse, he understands post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and moral injury better than most.

Moral injury refers to the lasting emotional, psychological, social, behavioral, and spiritual impacts of actions that violate a service member’s core moral values and behavioral expectations of self or others (Litz et al., 2009). Nurses also experience moral injury (Hegarty et al., 2022), and both professions have suicide rates above the national average.

Home from Afghanistan, Casey felt physically safe but suffered from residual psychological effects of being constantly on edge during his deployment. He shares that he’s not able to unsee what people are capable of and candidly says that “he did what he was told to do,” and hoped to make people’s lives better. Upon his return, he experienced anxiety, depression, and disconnection, which he describes as feeling nothing but wanting to feel something. With a war lasting more than two decades and the country again under Taliban rule since 2021, he wonders what the point of all of it was.

Casey made the decision to enlist in the Navy Reserves between his Freshman and Sophomore year of college. Not long after graduating from the University of Minnesota with a Biochemistry degree in 2008, he deployed with the Navy to Afghanistan as an Individual Augmentee working to support Army intelligence.
Like many returning veterans, he struggled with the transition to civilian life and turned to alcohol to numb and cope with his unsettling thoughts. Eventually coming to terms with his use, he worked on his health, which included attending sessions with a VA therapist. He decided to pursue further studies, and in 2015, he earned a PhD in biochemistry and went on to teach at St. Olaf and Metro State University.

Casey has used cannabis to help quiet his mind and improve his focus. With both a personal and scientific understanding of this plant, he eventually made his way to California, where he served as Chief Scientific Officer for a biosynthetic cannabinoid company until Covid disrupted the business, and he returned home to Minnesota.

No stranger to startups and small businesses, he spent a year and a half building a lab for a medical device company before deciding to enroll in nursing school at the College of St. Scholastica. Graduating in 2023, the year of legalization, he believes that “the purpose of science is to help people out.” Currently, he works part-time on a cardiology unit while simultaneously pursuing a path toward licensure with his business partner and co-founder, Mollie Holter.

Mollie previously founded MicroBio Consulting in 2018 as a Woman-Owned Business certified by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. During her career, she designed and developed ten laboratories in the U.S. With her extensive background in microbiology, sterilization, biocompatibility, toxicology, and other regulated products, they both come heavily credentialed and with the real-world education, experience, and integrity needed for the cannabis industry.

With their recent acquisition of the Orange Photonics LightLab, they can offer basic cannabinoid potency analysis with a mobile solution to test plants, concentrates, and infused edibles and beverages. A potency test is typically conducted for research and development purposes or for home growers interested in analyzing what they grew. The cannabis tested is not for sale to consumers.

This type of rapid and cost-effective testing generally takes around ten minutes. It does not provide a formal Certificate of Analysis (COA), which is a verified document from a third-party testing facility that details the percentage of cannabinoids, and terpene profiles, and also tests for the presence of microbiological contaminants, mycotoxins, pesticides, heavy metals, and residual solvents.

Unfortunately, in other states, reports of fraudulent testing have surfaced detailing doctored formal lab results and falsified COAs on products sold for public consumption.

PhytoLab operates under ISO/IEC 17025, DEA, and Minnesota hemp testing lab standards. In Minnesota, full certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which meets the requirement to submit a testing facility application, can take six to 18 months.
A new proposal by the Governor of Minnesota would allow the Office of Cannabis Management to add a variance and path for applicants who meet the criteria to receive a pending laboratory accreditation. This variance addresses concerns raised regarding testing bottlenecks if there are not enough licensed lab facilities to support the industry, which could then, in turn, create supply chain issues in the new product marketplace of adult recreational cannabis sales.

As he prepared to potency test a sample of White Widow, which is the name of a cultivar or strain of cannabis, we talked about clones. Clones are cuttings taken from mature or “mother” cannabis plants that are then able to be used to grow a new plant, preserving the original genetics of the plant and offering genotypic (gene) and phenotypic (trait) consistency during the growth of that next generation of cuttings.

Genetics used to be pretty much what the last person told you they are, but it’s changing,“ Casey says. Scientists can now use sequencing technology to analyze data and determine the DNA. Currently, the cannabis strains don’t follow any standard botanical naming conventions, so testing and mapping at a genetic level is critical for consistency and uniformity across the cannabis industry, as a White Widow in Minnesota may not also be (at a genetic level) a White Widow elsewhere.
As we waited for results, Casey noted that for accuracy, it's important to take a representative sample of the entire grow versus testing just the best buds. He was wearing gloves, and I saw and heard the nurse and biochemist intuitively teaching and following best practices as we spoke. I saw a matter-of-fact approach to advocacy, goal setting, and early successes, which do not come easily in this industry or to anyone who has dealt with the things he has. I saw someone our government and hospital patients count on to handle sensitive data and complex situations, and I trust consumers will see it too.

References: Litz BT, Stein N, Delaney E, Lebowitz L, Nash WP, Silva C, Maguen S. Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans: a preliminary model and intervention strategy. Clin Psychol Rev. 2009 Dec;29(8):695-706. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2009.07.003. Epub 2009 Jul 29. PMID: 19683376.
Hegarty S, Lamb D, Stevelink SAM, Bhundia R, Raine R, Doherty MJ, Scott HR, Marie Rafferty A, Williamson V, Dorrington S, Hotopf M, Razavi R, Greenberg N, Wessely S. ‘It hurts your heart’: frontline healthcare worker experiences of moral injury during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2022 Oct 18;13(2):2128028. doi: 10.1080/20008066.2022.2128028. PMID: 36276556; PMCID: PMC9586685.