U.S. cannabis shoppers are faced with a market flush with illegal weed
How safe is the marijuana industry? A dispensary perspective on the issue of public safety in the cannabis market and how to find regulated products
“You’re not gonna keel over if you buy some cheap suspect weed,” said Mitchell. If you start smoking weed 10 years down the road, you might develop a lung problem that someone who wasn’t smoking won’t.
He has the ability to go to a dispensary, but he needs to go to a place that he can trust. That’s a luxury available to someone who has deep knowledge of the industry.
“People assume that it is safe due to the guardrails that are in place by state enforcement,” said Mitchell. “But when you actually look at the end result, I think that’s up for debate definitely.”
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.
With cannabis markets still difficult to navigate, experts interviewed by NPR said the most reliable way to find regulated cannabis is in licensed shops in states and communities where they’re allowed to operate. tradeoff in quality can be significant, but often means paying a higher price.
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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.
“He wants an honest playing field,” Singer said of the kind of guy. If there were no referees and only one team was allowed to cheat, there wouldn’t be fun in sports. It would be difficult to watch and participate in.
So he had people buy 15 different marijuana products from dispensary shelves and tested them at a lab. The testing data, which he shared with NPR, shows four products would have failed state limits for yeasts and mold, one by more than six times the state limit.
“I consider Colorado weed today to be on par with New York street weed in 2008. In fact I think the cartels probably cared more about their consumers than a lot of people here,” said Singer. “I’ve got the data to back it.”
“There’s going to be mold and these banned pesticide and herbicides that are getting into the illegal product so that’s a grave concern,” said Bill Jones, head of enforcement for California’s Department of Cannabis Control. I’m not sure if all consumers are aware of that.
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. 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 said that anything that isn’t in the regulated market in Colorado shouldn’t be sold and that products that are derived from the plant have little to no safety regulations.
To follow these kind of basic food safety guidelines, I don’t know what the industry is doing.
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.
The need to continue to work on that is something that we do see. “And ensure that we are reaching consumers effectively, that we are providing information that they ultimately need to determine: do they have certain products that we’ve identified as a potential threat to health and safety?”
She said in recent months they updated the health and safety notice page online, and will soon distribute flyers to help 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. Now businesses are closing, limiting license revenue that funds MED 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.
“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. “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.”
Shaw explained that cannabis is an ” extreme bio-accumulator” that takes up all the soil and stores it in the plant. Research has identified heavy metal concentrations in smokable products like cigarettes, and cannabis, as a major long-term health concern.
Shaw also noted that the rate of recalls in Colorado has slowed, after a major increase in 2023. The financial struggles of Colorado’s industry have led to fewer producers.
It’s difficult to make a judgement if it is right or wrong when there isn’t any data to back it up.
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What is clear, said Eidem, is that marijuana growers in Colorado and other states are allowed to use irradiation technology to treat their product when it fails testing. The process is approved for use in food. She said that x-ray can be used to hit the buds. The process breaks down the chemical bonds of molds and bacteria, enough for them to die or stop multiplying, according to the EPA.
Currently, what’s required is that products pass a final test. The process can be hard on growers, who are already going through a downturn in sales. Stores and grows are closing.
Opie works for E4 Bioscience, a Michigan company that is an expert in marijuana 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 states to implement a shelf surveillance testing program, to monitor the product that actually makes it to consumers.
FAIRFIELD, Calif. — On a sunny morning last month, Sgt. arrived at work. The team for the California Department of Cannabis Control executed a search warrant at a house located 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. The home was gutted and turned into a mess of marijuana plants, grow lights, chemicals and pesticides.
There is mold on the tarp, and you can see 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.
He toldNPR that their undercovers would buy cannabis from people who were pretending to be legit. “They’ll tell you they have a license and that everything they’re doing is legit.”
Everyone interviewed by NPR for this project said they expect it to get easier over time for people who choose to buy and use legal marijuana. America has gone through similar transitions before with alcohol, which is a popular consumer product.
“You don’t hear about the market that isn’t transparent and accountable,” said Paul Armentano of 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.
“Whether I was getting cannabis or alcohol or my broccoli from an entirely unregulated market, I’d be concerned about any number of issues,” Armentano said.
According to Felbab-Brown, Chinese criminal organizations are drawn to the marijuana business because it’s a relatively low risk to gain a foothold in communities. There’s relatively little law enforcement pressure, unlike with harder drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamines.
The criminal groups in China and the US use illegal cannabis plantations as a way to laundered money, and there are more and more instances of Chinese people crossing into the US through those networks. They end up being slaves at the plantations.
When alcohol prohibition was repealed in December 1933, many states kept liquor bans into the 1950’s, but now have marijuana laws. Liquor bootleggers and smugglers continued to operate for 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 [states] pass legalization, they’ll spend a couple of years coming up with the licensing regime and figuring out what the regulations are going to be and issuing licenses, but there hasn’t been a lot of focus on what to do about the illegal market. And in a lot of places, enforcement just hasn’t been a priority.”
Sgt was in Fairfield. McAtee watched as a truck backed up to another illegal grow house, preparing to haul away a big crop of seized cannabis. He said it could have wound up on shelves everywhere in the US.
He said that cannabis is shipped out of state because it’s ten-fold cheaper than in California.
Justin Singer, who makes edible cannabis products in Colorado under the names Ripple and Ript, said that anything that isn’t in the regulated market in the state shouldn’t be sold and that products derived from the plant have little to no safety regulations. He added, “There’s going to be mould and these banned pesticide and herbicides that are getting into the illegal product.”