Even if it’s legal, product safety isn’t guaranteed
Online advice for weed distribution in the U.S.: Where is the marijuana? What does it tell us about the marijuana industry and where is it going?
“You’re not gonna keel over if you buy some cheap suspect weed,” said Mitchell. “But 10 years down the road maybe you develop a lung problem that someone who was smoking cleaner weed won’t.”
There’s a dispensary he can walk to, but he gets in his car to drive to a place that has marijuana he can trust. That’s a luxury available to someone who has deep knowledge of the industry.
Mitchell said people assume it’s safe because of the safety precautions taken by the state. I think that’s up for debate when you look at the end result.
Justin Singer makes edible cannabis products in Colorado under the names Ripple and Ript, and over the years, he has become increasingly concerned about the state’s lack of enforcement of the industry and what that means for the safety of the marijuana supply.
Many states where cannabis is legal, like California, New Jersey, and New York, now have online advice for people to locate and buy legal marijuana. It’s important to make sure the shop you are in is licensed and legit.
Marijuana Enforcement Enforcement in the Cannabis Sector: The Case for a Better Understanding of the State’s Uncertainty Playing Field
A breaking point came when Singer released a much cheaper product to the market, and increased sales by 500%, a spike he expected would certainly trigger an inspection from the state Marijuana Enforcement Division.
“The kind of guy who wants an honest playing field,” Singer said. “Professional sports would not be fun if there were no referees and one team was allowed to cheat, while one team tried to follow the rules. It would be very not fun to watch, to participate in.”
Thomas Mitchell was an editor at the Colorado weekly, after he reviewed cannabis products for Westword. He has written on the health and safety advisories of the state. He thought it was a buyers beware market.
Colorado weed is comparable with New York street weed in 2008. “I think the drug traffickers cared more about their customers than a lot of people in this area do,” said Singer. I have the data to back it up.
Last year, recalls grabbed headlines. The state of Missouri has issued recalls for 132,000 marijuana products due to non compliant lab testing and tracking. Mike Tyson’s branded cannabis flower products were recalled due to mold. Maine was the first state to issue a recall due to yeast and mold in pre-rolled joints.
Still, there have been no widespread reports of people getting sick or dropping dead from using cannabis products, despite an estimated $30 billion in sales last year alone. Some in the industry and health and safety experts are asking the state to do more to protect consumers, because they don’t know if the long term effects of smoking contaminated weed are known.
As the industry became well established, Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division increased its staff and started to require testing of marijuana for things like heavy metals and yeasts and molds, and set limits for the contaminants. The MED issues health and safety advisories when there’s a problem.
“If we require that dog food follow this, but we don’t require that for cannabis, something that many people are using as medicine, to follow these kind of basic food safety guidelines, then I don’t know what the industry is doing,” said Eidem. The industry feels like it’s over regulated, and it very much is.
The director of the Marijuana Enforcement Division wouldn’t say whether the supply of marijuana is safe, or if there is a robust process in place for ensuring it is free of contaminants.
“We see the need to continue to work on that and that is something that we do see,” said Mendiola. Ensuring that we are reaching consumers effectively, that we’re providing information that they eventually need to determine, if they have some products that we’ve identified as being a potential threat to health and safety?
She said the online health and safety notice pages were updated recently, and that flyers would be distributed soon to educate consumers on safety issues.
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Mendiola acknowledged that the marijuana industry is suffering, prices for cannabis have crashed after a huge infusion of investment during the pandemic lockdowns when sales were rising quickly. License revenue that funds MED enforcement is being diminished by the closing of businesses. They are downsizing in order to cut costs.
“For a few years now, we have looked at ways to save costs, cut expenses and make sure that we are able to carry out our regulatory obligations,” said Mendiola.
“I think at this point in Colorado you’re dealing with the safest weed you can have in the United States,” said Ethan Shaw, co-founder of The Flower Collective. There are many things Colorado has learned that other states haven’t, and one of them is heavy metals.
Shaw said that cannabis is a “bioaccumulate,” meaning that it stores everything in the plant. Heavy metal concentrations in tobacco products, like cigarettes and Cannabis, are a major long-term health concern.
The rate of recalls has slowed after a major increase. He said that the financial struggles of the industry in Colorado means fewer producers.
“It’s hard to make judgements on if it’s right or wrong when there’s like zero data to really go into the health impacts,” said Tess Eidem, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s lab for aerobiology and disinfection.
The Food and Drug Administration has endorsed irradiation as safe for food products, citing 30 years of research, but labeling is required when used. In Colorado, the cannabis industry successfully fought a labeling law last year.
Currently, what’s required is that products pass a final test. The process can be onerous, though, on growers, who are already suffering a prolonged downturn in sales prices. Stores and grows are closing.
Shaun Opie, with E4 Bioscience in Michigan, is an expert in marijuana contaminants and lab testing. He said the money sunk into a harvest means there’s tremendous pressure to get it to market.
Opie said it would be a good idea for the states to set up a shelf program to watch the product that actually makes it to consumers.
NORML: The role of China in the U.S. cannabis market and the way it’s been managed: An undercover search at a Sacramento home
FAIRFIELD, Calif. — On a crisp winter morning last month, Sgt. The team with the California Department of Cannabis Control executed a search warrant at a home in mid-air, halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco.
The door of the upscale house on the street was broken open, like any other upscale house on the street. Inside the house had been gutted and turned into a bad smelling mess with marijuana plants, grow lights, chemicals and pesticides.
The mold can be seen on the tarp. “Yup, that’s mold.” His team also identified chemicals and pesticides not approved in the U.S. for use with consumer products like legal cannabis.
He told NPR that their undercovers would buy cannabis from people who were pretending to be legit. “They’ll tell you everything they’re doing is legit because they have a license.”
If it’s hard for experienced cops to distinguish regulated weed from black market products, it can be nearly impossible for average consumers. Unlicensed weed can be a big part of marijuana’s role in society.
“We’re talking about a market that lacks transparency and accountability,” said Paul Armentano, head of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He said any time a consumer product is being sold without proper regulation, it’s risky.
I would be concerned about any number of issues, whether I was getting cannabis or alcohol, or my broccoli from an entirely unregulated market.
Beijing hasn’t replied to NPR’s email about the role of China in the U.S. cannabis industry. In the past, Beijing has suggested the U.S. is pointing fingers at China to divert attention from America’s drug and crime problems.
The Chinese criminal groups use the plantations for money and also for human migration to the U.S., which goes through some of the networks. They wind up in fact being enslaved at the plantations,” she said.
Most states kept liquor prohibitions on the books into the 1950s, despite the repeal of alcohol prohibition in December 1933. Liquor bootleggers and swindlers were still operating for many years.
According to Kilmer, many states have mismanaged this transition, focusing too much on regulating legal weed companies without helping them compete with criminal organizations.
It won’t be long after legalized states start to come up with a licensing regime for businesses and how to regulate them. There hasn’t been much focus on how to deal with the illegal market. And in a lot of places, enforcement just hasn’t been a priority.”
In Fairfield, Sgt. McAtee watched as the truck backed up to the illegal grow house and prepared to take away the seized cannabis. He said this crop might have wound up on shelves anywhere in the U.S.
He said that most of the places we hit were shipping cannabis out of state to make a lot of money.
