An $11 million cannabis testing facility that will be run out of the University of California, San Diego has been added to the state of California’s arsenal of tools in its bid to manage the state’s unruly pot business. The first assignment for the lab? Putting an end to the labeling fraud that plagues the multibillion-dollar marijuana market in California.
Labeling marijuana has become a highly contentious issue in the state of California. The Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) of the state requires that every marijuana product be tested by a private lab for both its safety and its level of potency. Following these tests, the product must be labeled with the percentages of several components, one of which is THC, the primary psychoactive component of cannabis.
In spite of the fact that the DCC grants licenses to such testing facilities, industry insiders have been alleging for years that labs deliberately inflate their THC levels in order to attract more consumers. During the past month, rumors escalated into legal action when lawsuits rocked several of the state’s major marijuana companies on claims that they have been misrepresenting about how much THC their products contain.
The DCC asserts that the newly established UCSD lab will contribute to the improvement of the testing sector in the state, in part by developing standardized procedures for determining the amount of THC present in various cannabis-related products. However, interviews with people with knowledge of the situation portray a more pessimistic image. The laboratory has gotten off to a shaky start, falling behind schedule by more than a year, and it is still only partially operating. According to the opinions of three testing integrity experts interviewed by SFGATE, the standardized methods currently being developed by the UCSD lab won’t prevent testing fraud in the real world. This raises questions regarding whether or not the state is making effective use of its new multimillion-dollar lab.
According to Josh Swider, CEO of San Diego’s Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs, a standardized procedure will “absolutely not” prohibit unscrupulous labs from faking their THC readings. He asserted this in a statement.
According to what he told SFGATE, “I am able to employ the DCC method and get any outcome for you without getting discovered.”
“The THC crisis with overblown proportions”
In 2009, Oakland’s Harborside Health Center (now just called Harborside), a pioneering medical cannabis dispensary on the outskirts of San Francisco Bay, became the first facility in the state to launch a cannabis testing lab. Harborside’s owners wanted to make sure they weren’t selling pot laced with dangerous contaminants, especially because many of their customers were fighting illnesses like cancer, according to the co-founder of Harborside, Andrew DeAngelo. At the time, there was no legal requirement to test cannabis, but the owners of Harborside wanted to make sure they weren’t selling pot laced with dangerous contaminants.
“We were worried about mold; we were worried about things that could get into people’s lungs that could hurt them,” DeAngelo told SFGATE. “We were worried about things that could get in people’s lungs that could hurt them.” “The lungs are very delicate, and if you get mold in there and you already have a damaged immune system, it’s one of the only ways cannabis can kill you,” says a medical expert.
Within a year’s time, additional marijuana testing facilities opened all around the state. In 2018, California’s newly enacted regulations for the adult use of cannabis made laboratory testing of all marijuana products supplied in the state a mandatory legal obligation. Since that time, the DCC has granted certification to more than 60 private laboratories to conduct quality assurance testing on samples of the more than $5 billion worth of marijuana, edibles, and other cannabis products that are sold in this country annually.
These labs are now an essential component of the cannabis industry in the state of California. The state establishes the rules, such as which contaminants render cannabis unsellable and what must be included on the label of a product, but it is the private labs that are responsible for actually enforcing those rules. This makes the private labs accountable for both the accuracy of the product labeling as well as the prevention of contaminated products from reaching retail shelves.
All cannabis products are required by law to be tested for nine different substances. These substances include the presence of pollutants such as heavy metals, mycotoxins, and residual pesticides, in addition to the percentages of active components such as CBD and THC. The results of these potency tests give testing laboratories sway over the prices that wholesalers and retailers can set for the products: According to data that was provided to SFGATE by cannabis software startup Flowhub, the costs of legal cannabis goods have a correlation with the quantity of THC that is indicated on the items’ labels.
Pot labs have been a consistent source of scandal, including getting caught falsifying safety tests and fraudulently inflating THC test results. This may have been done as a way to drum up more business from pot farms, which are their largest customer base. Despite the vital role they play in the legal cannabis infrastructure, pot labs have been a regular source of scandal.
Over the course of the previous two years, the THC potencies that are reported on labels in California have soared. In the year 2020, 11% of California’s legally grown marijuana had THC levels that were more than 28%. According to the data provided by Flowhub, that percentage has more than doubled since then and now accounts for more than 25% of the state’s legal cannabis. According to DeAngelo and other skeptics, this astonishing growth is not the result of cannabis farms suddenly becoming more skilled at cultivating marijuana. Instead, this is an indication that cannabis testing labs are grossly exaggerating the amount of THC found in the goods they evaluate.
According to DeAngelo, “people are now vying for the highest proportion of cannabis in the product, and people are incentivized to conduct fraud in the system.” [Citation needed] “People are now competing for the highest percentage of cannabinoids in the product.”
At the beginning of this year, the managers of three cannabis testing facilities carried out their own investigation by purchasing and reevaluating over 150 different varieties of marijuana sold in California dispensaries. They discovered that more than 87 percent of the goods contained erroneous THC labeling, and they also noted that at least one laboratory was advertising its company by offering “high potencies.” The findings of the study were presented by the organization in a report titled “The Inflated THC Crisis Plaguing California Cannabis,” which was published in the Cannabis Industry Journal.
Swider, who is one of the three lab directors who are behind the investigation, told SFGATE that the cannabis industry is so accustomed to fraud that potential customers regularly call him and demand that he guarantee that his results will show a minimum of 35% THC in the cannabis flower that he tests. This information was provided by Swider, who is one of the three lab directors who are behind the investigation.
“If you want this deal, you need to pay us 35% of it…,” I was informed by cannabis companies. “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll have to find another lab,” he remarked.
Missed deadlines, questionable standards
The state’s strategy to reduce the prevalence of fraudulent test results relies heavily on the newly constructed laboratory at UC San Diego. The state of California signed an agreement in February 2021 that promised the university $11 million over the next five years to build and operate a “reference laboratory” for legal cannabis within the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego. This amount includes $2.3 million in laboratory equipment the first year and just under $1 million each year for staff.
Despite having received initial funding in February 2021, the lab, which is directed by university professors Igor Grant and Jeremiah Momper, has not yet met a single deadline for testing capabilities. The lab has struggled with delays due to the difficulties it has encountered. This includes a deadline of July 2022 to finish the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification process, which demonstrates that the laboratory’s personnel and equipment are capable of conducting contamination and potency tests. According to Swider, obtaining ISO accreditation, which is a fundamental prerequisite for any cannabis testing laboratory in the state, is a straightforward process.
According to what he told SFGATE, “If you can do paperwork, you can get ISO.”
Moorea Warren, a spokesman for the DCC, responded to emailed concerns regarding the delays by writing that the agency expects all of these objectives to be met by the year 2023 and blamed the missed dates on “COVID-related delays and supply chain interruptions.”
Warren said that despite this, the CMCR Reference Laboratory has been making headway in constructing the brand-new laboratory buildings, procuring equipment, and hiring employees.
In a statement that was sent out via email, Grant, who is also the co-director of the laboratory, said that “there were many downstream effects of the pandemic.” These “downstream effects” include significant supply chain issues (such as delays in receiving equipment and supplies) and longer times for regulatory reviews. He stated that he anticipates the laboratory would meet the remaining benchmarks in the year 2023.
The California government has already put the lab to work, despite the fact that it does not have ISO certification. They have passed a law that mandates the DCC and its new reference lab to establish a uniform process for testing marijuana by the end of this year. Standardization, according to State Senator John Laird, a Democrat from Santa Cruz who sponsored the bill and said that it would make “cannabis and cannabis products safer for all” at the time, would be beneficial because “a lack of standardization means that one batch can produce inconsistent results between and even within testing facilities.”
But the DCC and its new lab have seen some setbacks in their efforts to fulfill the requirements of the law. The FDA made its initial attempt last June to come up with a single, uniform process for testing all cannabis goods, ranging from infused edibles to pre-rolled joints. However, industry experts deemed this method to be riddled with flaws, and the agency did not release it.
The California Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group that represents over 400 businesses, stated in September that the proposed method would result in substantial testing errors, one of which would be a significant underreporting of the THC potency in edible products.
According to the association’s written comments, “This means that a gummy which tests at.5mg of THC, could actually contain up to 10 times that amount.” In addition, according to Swider’s comments to SFGATE, the state’s initial method wouldn’t be able to discern between delta-9 THC and delta-8 THC, which are two cannabis chemicals that are closely linked to one another but are chemically distinct from one another.
In October, in response to criticism from the industry, the DCC backpedaled and limited the scope of the standardized technique to smokable items such as flower and pre-rolled joints. This decision was made in light of the fact that these products are more likely to be consumed. Even though there are fewer than two months left until the deadline, the organization has not yet published the final version of the standardized technique.
“Lots of room to get away with it”
If the validity of the test findings is in question, it may appear self-evident that the issue can be resolved by requiring all testing facilities within the state to use the same methodology. However, according to numerous specialists who spoke with SFGATE, this demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of testing fraud. According to the opinions of the experts, the problem is not that laboratories are unable to do the tests correctly; rather, the issue is that certain laboratories are manipulating the findings on purpose.
Even if everyone is required to use the same methods, labs can still commit fraud by rigging scales or simply recording the wrong numbers in spreadsheets, according to both Swider and Josh Wurzer, president of SC Laboratories, a multistate cannabis operator based in Santa Cruz. Both Swider and Josh Wurzer are quoted in the article.
According to Wurzer, “the bad actors will still have plenty of room to defraud the system, while the vast majority of laboratories who are doing things the right way already will have their hands tied in trying to develop and improve their services.”
Swider concurred, stating that the idea of having a standardized procedure seemed more appealing than it actually was.
According to Swider, “this entire approach was put into place because non-scientific individuals hear these terms like’standardized method,’ and then sell it to everyone else, but it doesn’t work.”
In an email, a spokesperson for the DCC named Maria Luisa Cesar stated that the organization continues to hold the belief that a standardized approach will improve the testing business in the state.
“The purpose of requiring all testing laboratories to follow the same testing technique is to limit the amount of variation that exists among the various testing methods used by laboratories. According to what she wrote, this should give findings that are more consistent and accurate.
However, in Swider’s opinion, simply documenting standards on paper and expecting that laboratories adhere to the guidelines is never going to be sufficient to prevent misconduct. Instead, he contends that the state ought to actively police the laboratories by examining the work that they undertake, which may even involve randomly retesting products that are already on store shelves. In the event that the results are inconsistent, the state ought to file a complaint against the laboratory that carried out the preliminary examination.
Cesar stated that the government agency is conducting a thorough investigation into the laboratory industry, which includes retesting retail products and looking into claims of wrongdoing. She responded that the government had already conducted investigations into many labs and delivered “letters of caution,” but she declined to share any specifics regarding any of the investigative work that had been conducted.
Swider expressed his worries to SFGATE regarding the possibility of an end to THC inflation before the agency officially penalizes labs who cheat.
He stated his opinion that nothing happens because the DCC is “simply so slow and scared to act.”
Laura McQueen is a writer for MJGreenNews.com.
She has been writing for different cannabis websites and publications since 2018.
