Most marijuana recalls are issued too late to recover cannabis products potentially containing unhealthy levels of mold or pesticides, according to analysis by MJBizDaily.
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Amid growing concerns over product safety – and allegations of labs allegedly tampering with results – most cannabis products already have been sold and potentially consumed by the time state regulators flag them as unsafe.
MJBizDaily recently analyzed product recalls in five state-regulated marijuana markets: California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan and New York.
In some of those markets, product recalls are rare despite allegations from whistleblowers and state authorities that testing labs deliberately manipulated results to please clients.
In others, recalls nearly always are issued too late for retailers to pull the products from shelves before they’ve been sold to consumers.
Recalled products sold last year
California regulators issued six mandatory product recalls in July in the wake of a Los Angeles Times/WeedWeek investigation that reported detectable levels of pesticides found in marijuana products cleared for sale.
In five of those instances, the products in question – vaporizer cartridges and all-in-one vaporizers sold under the Backpack Boyz or West Coast Cure brands – first went on sale in September 2023.
Since 10 months passed between the products being offered for sale and the recalls, it’s almost certain the affected items had long since been ingested by consumers or discarded.
“Recalling something from 2023 is not going to result in many products still being on shelves or in possession of consumers,” Wesley Hein, the president of the California Distributors Association, told MJBizDaily.
“Operators are able to get compliance tests in under a week,” he added.
“The state should be able to do the same thing, so I expect that we’ll begin to see more timely recalls.”
Recalls lag by months
MJBizDaily tracked the most recent mandatory recalls issued by state regulators in the aforementioned states, information that is publicly available online in every state except for New York, which provided the information after an inquiry.
California regulators have issued 12 product recalls since May 6, identifying pre-rolls and vaporizer cartridges as potentially unsafe after discovering prohibited levels of pesticides and mold during reference lab testing in products initially cleared for sale.
In all but two cases, products were recalled three to 10 months after initially being cleared for sale.
In the two other cases, the recalls were issued seven weeks after the products were eligible for sale.
But even seven weeks is too late to capture most of the affected products, retail operators told MJBizDaily, adding that most products are gone within two months.
“I’ll go bust if I hold onto something for much more than 60 days,” said Elliot Lewis, the chief executive and cofounder of Catalyst Cannabis Co., which operates 28 locations in California.
Catalyst carried Lowell 35’s 10 Tall Pre-Rolls, which the DCC recalled Aug. 1, at five of its stores, Lewis said.
At two of the stores, the offending product was “sold out,” he added.
In Colorado, the state Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) has issued four recalls since June 6.
Two recalls issued July 12 were for “Retail Marijuana Flower (bud/shake/trim)” potentially contaminated with “Total Yeast and Mold above the acceptable limits.”
One recalled product hit shelves March 21, with the final sale reported on April 27.
Another batch went on sale May 1, with the final sale reported in late June.
But for the June 6 and June 20 recalls, affected products were sold starting April 14, 2023, and Aug. 16, 2023, respectively.
In the case of the June 6 recall, the product was “found to contain methylene chloride (a solvent not approved for use in the production of marijuana concentrates) and pesticides not approved for use on marijuana,” regulators said.
A spokesperson for MED did not provide comment by press time.
Regulations evolving
The $36 billion regulated cannabis industry is still new, and regulators stressed that product safety is an evolving concept that states are steadily moving to improve.
“The Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) continuously assesses the effectiveness of its recall actions,” David Hafner, a spokesperson for the California regulator, told MJBizDaily via email.
“We are focusing on improving response times and prioritizing products that pose significant health risks to consumers.
“Our recent recalls demonstrate these improvements.”
The introduction of state-run reference labs that regulators use to double-check products cleared for sale by commercial labs is not yet universal.
For example, Michigan is not due to open a reference lab until the end of this year, the agency said in an April news release.
Oklahoma only recently granted its state Medical Marijuana Authority the power to open a reference lab in a batch of rules that went into effect July 25.
The new rules also clarified the OMMA’s power to seize product it declares a health and safety risk.
“States have different capacity and authority to recall products,” said Gillian Schauer, the executive director of CANNRA, an organization of state marijuana regulatory authorities.
“In some cases, testing and recall authorities in a state are dictated by statute and legislative action would be needed to change the approach,” Schauer told MJBizDaily via email.
Additionally, recalls often must proceed cautiously in order to avoid legal challenges.
“Regulators are typically extremely cautious in their investigations to ensure that enforcement actions are based on due process and sufficient evidence,” she added.
“Regulators typically cannot share public information about in-process investigations, and often investigations can take months to complete.”
Recalls sometimes rare
In Michigan, state regulators remain locked in litigation with a lab at the center of a November 2021 recall, and the state Cannabis Regulatory Authority has issued only three recalls since.
CRA spokesman David Harns told MJBizDaily the agency would not comment.
Despite detailed whistleblower allegations that labs are inflating THC potency and passing cannabis that should fail for pesticides or mold, the last product recall in Massachusetts was in 2021.
On April 11, 2023, the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) issued a bulletin alerting the public that the manufacturer of a test kit used to measure microbial contaminants informed buyers the kit had “a potential defect.”
“It is possible that some products which passed testing based on the recalled test kits may have moved into the market … or have been sold,” wrote the CCC, which said only two of the state’s independent testing labs had purchased the potentially faulty kit.
Though the CCC said its “Investigation and Enforcement department is actively identifying cannabis products tested for microbial contaminants that may not be compliant with Commission regulations,” the agency did not issue any subsequent recalls.
How much affected product was later sold to consumers remains a state secret.
The CCC did not identify the labs and did not comment to MJBizDaily.
Unclear how much product sold
All states have track-and-trace programs in place.
But no state would share with MJBizDaily the track-and-trace data that would definitively indicate how much recalled product was sold to consumers.
In California, public-records laws protect that data from disclosure.
A spokesperson for Michigan’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency directed MJBizDaily to file a public-records request and refused further comment.
That public-records request is pending.
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