Cannabis businesses and others in the industry are urging regulators to update the state’s testing rules and make them more standardized and consistent with the latest data.
The state’s cannabis testing protocols and guidelines were last updated in 2021. Since then, other states like Colorado and New York have each updated their testing protocols multiple times, Ryan Dominguez, executive director of the Massachusetts Cannabis Coalition, said during a public hearing Tuesday.
A new law overhauling the state’s marijuana industry calls on the Cannabis Control Commission to conduct a review every two years of the regulations and protocols for the testing required before cannabis products can be legally sold here. Dominguez urged the CCC to go beyond the legislative mandate, which calls for a report from the CCC on its findings, and actually update regulations surrounding testing more frequently.
“We need real changes to the testing program. And if and when we get rescheduling, the available science, research and data will only increase and we need to keep up with that,” Dominguez told commissioners. Federal officials are currently considering whether to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule I substance to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act.
Megan Dobro, co-founder and CEO of SafeTiva Labs in Westfield, agreed, saying the state’s testing regulations are long overdue for an update. Dobro said “every lab is doing their own thing with little guidance” and some companies are rewarded for “cutting corners” when it comes to testing.
“We need rules that make scientific integrity the economically rational choice,” Dobro said. “We need clear standards for how testing is performed and interpreted. We need meaningful oversight when labs depart from those standards, we need to incentivize cultivators to submit representative samples, and we need to make sure consumers can trust the numbers on a label.”
Dawn Duncan, a board member of the Sun Grown Cannabis Alliance, said outdoor cannabis cultivation should be held to different standards than indoor growing to account for the fact that yeast, mold and bacteria are naturally found outside and some levels of those contaminants don’t mean the cannabis is unsafe.
“We realize when Massachusetts first developed its cannabis regulations, of course, it was understandably adopting an extremely cautious approach, but now we have many years of experience and evidence that weren’t available when those first rules were written,” Duncan said. “So we really do feel it’s appropriate to revisit those regulations and determine whether every testing requirement remains necessary, scientifically justified, and proportionate to actual risk.”
Several of those who testified also called on the CCC to establish more standardized testing methods. This includes creating uniform minimum standards for testing, sampling and quality control so “comparable products are tested in comparable ways,” said Ryan Picard with Analytics Labs.
Picard also called for more safeguards surrounding THC inflation.
“Consumers and businesses deserve results that reflect the product, not the laboratory or methodology selected to produce a preferred result,” Picard told commissioners.
On Aug. 13, the CCC released results of an audit of THC potency of cannabis flower products, finding most samples fell within an acceptable range. For the audit, the CCC determined that labels would be considered accurate if the testing showed THC potency between 75% and 125% of what’s listed on the label.
Thirteen of the 63 flower products sampled fell outside of that range. The CCC said it has placed noncompliant products on hold and that producers must take one of the following four actions: destroy the product; retest the product; recall and relabel the product with the audit result; or recall and repurpose the product, which requires new testing.
CCC officials say recreational consumers are usually willing to pay more for cannabis products with a higher THC concentration and those using medical marijuana rely on THC potency labels for dosing. The state’s cannabis regulations require labels to include a full cannabinoid profile and there are more specific requirements for certain products like extracts and tinctures.
“This shelf audit represents the continuing work of our internal testing task force, which we created to focus on testing issues as part of our mission to oversee a safe, equitable cannabis marketplace in Massachusetts,” CCC Executive Director Travis Ahern said in a press release. “The audit will also help us calibrate future audits as we move toward random testing for contaminants of concern, including pesticides, heavy metals, yeast and mold, and bacteria.”
The CCC has taken several other steps to put an emphasis on testing, including a new “Testing and Analysis” webpage and an ongoing internal testing task force.
Payton Shubrick, CEO and founder of 6 Brick’s, a dispensary in Springfield, joined others who testified in calling for labels to include more information including a full cannabinoid profile along with terpenes and THC levels.
“We should not be building an industry on one data point we have the least confidence in,” Shubrick said.
