The Effect of State Enforcement on the Quality of Legal Marijuana Distribution in the U.S.: A Pedestrian’s Perspective
“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.”
He can walk to the dispensary, but he gets in his car to go to a place 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 the state enforcement has put in guardrails. “But when you take the results into account, I think that’s up for debate.”
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.
The experts say criminal cannabis sellers don’t want to work with licensed vendors. Their prices are often lower due to them not paying taxes or costly fees. They can sell their product anywhere in the country, even though federal law prevents them from shipping cannabis across state lines.
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.
What do people think about marijuana and how to stop smoking it? The case for a safer and more reliable marijuana supply, says Ripple Director Justin Singer
“The kind of guy that wants a fair 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 wouldn’t be fun to watch.
People were tested at a lab after they bought 15 different marijuana products from dispensary shelves. He told NPR that four products would have failed state limits for yeasts and mold, one of which was six times the state limit.
“I consider Colorado weed today to be on par with New York street weed in 2008. “I think that the cartels cared more about their consumers than a lot of people here,” said Singer. I have the data to back it up.
Recalls have grabbed headlines across the country last year. In Missouri, state authorities issued recalls covering more than 132,000 marijuana products due to noncompliant lab testing and tracking. In California, Mike Tyson’s branded cannabis flower products were recalled due to molds. And Maine issued its first recalls last year due to yeast and mold in pre-rolled joints and other products sold at two dozen stores.
Despite a $30 billion sales last year alone, there were no reports of people getting sick or dying from using cannabis. But some in the industry and health and safety experts say the long term ramifications of smoking contaminated weed are not known, and they are urging the state to do more to protect consumers.
Shaw, who said he was inspected a few months ago by the state, said anything outside of the regulated market in Colorado, like hemp-derived products, have little to no safety regulations and should be avoided.
“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. “And I am aware of the fact that the industry already feels over regulated and it very much is.”
The director of the Marijuana Enforcement Division, Dominique Mendiola, would not comment directly on data from Ripple cofounder Justin Singer, nor on whether the supply of marijuana is safe, but said there is a robust process in place for ensuring marijuana is free of contaminants.
“We do see ongoing need to continue to work on that,” said Mendiola. Ensuring that we reach consumers effectively, that we are providing information that they need to determine if certain products they own are potentially harmful, and if so, whether or not they should remove them?
She said they are going to distribute flyers in the near future to help educate consumers on safety issues.
The Cannabis and Recreational States: What’s Happening if Weak Cannabis is Legal, Legal, or Isn’t Guaranteed?
After a huge influx of investment, prices for cannabis have crashed and the marijuana industry is suffering. Businesses closing reduces license revenue that funds enforcement. She noted that they are downsizing their offices in Lakewood to reduce costs.
“We’ve been, for a few years now, looking at those opportunities to save costs, cut expenses, in a way that still allows us and ensures that we’re able to carry out our regulatory obligations,” said Mendiola.
“This is the safest weed you can have in the United States right now, and that’s why I think it’s important to keep it,” said Shaw, co-founder of The Flower Collective. “At the end of the day there’s a lot of things Colorado’s learned that other states haven’t learned yet, and one of those, the big one’s, heavy metals.”
She said there’s some research on molds like Aspergillus, which can in rare cases lead to serious medical issues, especially for immunocompromised marijuana users. But there’s no data on how smoking versus vaping, for instance, affects the amount of contaminants that end up in the lungs.
The rate of recalls has slowed, after a major increase in 2023. He said that the financial struggles of the industry in Colorado means fewer producers.
It’s hard to make a judgement about if it is right or wrong when there isn’t any data to back up the claim, according to a senior research scientist in Boulder.
Source: Even where weed is legal, product safety isn’t guaranteed
Analyzing an undercover cannabis grower with an X-ray irradiation technology: Why it’s hard to tell when a product is unlicensed
In Colorado and others, marijuana growers can use irradiation technology to treat their product if it fails testing. The process can be used in food. She said that a grower can hit the cannabis buds with an x-ray until they pass testing. The process breaks down the chemical bonds of the organisms, so that they can die or stop growing, according to the EPA.
Products are required to 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.
Marijuana contaminants and lab testing is an expertise ofShaun Opie, with E4 Bioscience in Michigan. He said the money sunk into a harvest means there’s tremendous pressure to get it to market.
Opie believes that a shelf surveillance testing program is a good idea for states to check the quality of their products.
FAIRFIELD, Calif. — On a crisp winter morning last month, Sgt. Erin McAtee watched as members of his team with the California Department of Cannabis Control executed a search warrant at a home in Fairfield, halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco.
They broke open the door of what looked on the outside like any other upscale suburban house on this street. Inside, the home had been gutted, transformed into a smelly mess of marijuana plants, grow lights, chemicals and pesticides.
The tarp has mold on it. “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.
“Our undercovers will buy cannabis from people who are outwardly pretending to be legit,” he told NPR. “They’ll tell you they have a license and that everything they’re doing is legit.”
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 plays a big part in the legalization of marijuana.
Paul Armentano head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said that there is a market that lacks transparency and accountability. He said that any time a product is sold without proper regulation, it’s risky.
He said he would be concerned about a number of issues, even if he was getting alcohol or cannabis from an unregulated market.
So far, the opposite has happened. Vanda Felbab-Brown, who studies criminal drug markets for the Brookings Institution, said regulated cannabis producers often compete with a growing network of criminal gangs often rooted in mainland China.
Chinese criminal groups are known to use illegal cannabis farms as a hub for money and to smuggle people into the U.S. They wind up in fact being enslaved at the plantations,” she said.
Alcohol prohibition was repealed in December 1933, but many states kept liquor bans on the books into the 1950s, creating the same kind of patchwork we now see with marijuana laws. bootleggers continued to operate for many years.
“When you move from prohibition to legalization, it takes time,” said Beau Kilmer an expert on marijuana markets and co-director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center.
After legalization, the states will take a couple of years to develop a licensing system and figure out how to regulate the illegal market. And in a lot of places, enforcement just hasn’t been a priority.”
In Fairfield, Sgt. The truck was going to take away a large amount of seized cannabis from an illegal grow house. He said this crop might have wound up on shelves anywhere in the U.S.
He said that a lot of the places they hit were shipping their cannabis out of state to make more money.