Why Is Legally-Sold Medical Marijuana Testing Positive For Pesticides, Mold Or Yeast?
This article was originally published on Cannabis.net and appears here with permission.
Do you remember the Cannabis.net story on how Colorado regulators are catching all sorts of cheating on lab testing for legally sold cannabis? The premise destroys the idea that you should be paying more for lab-tested, legal weed, because, well, it was safer than street-sold marijuana. Now, not only are Colorado regulators catching legal suppliers spraying and cheating on lab results, Maine has popped up as a big problem for legal buyer of medical marijuana.
Two recent studies reveal that up to 50% of products in Maine’s medical cannabis market may be tainted with pesticides, harmful microbes, yeast, and mold. Unlike recreational-use products, medical cannabis in Maine currently does not undergo mandatory testing.
However, there are indications that this might change. The Maine Office of Cannabis Policy conducted tests on 127 medical cannabis samples, applying the same standards as the recreational-use program.
Shockingly, approximately 45% (57 out of 127) of these samples would have failed the testing, indicating the presence of prohibited substances. In a separate, more extensive study by Nova Analytic Labs, a licensed cannabis testing facility, nearly 21% of approximately 1,400 medical cannabis samples would have failed the pesticide testing panel for recreational use.
This contrasts with just under 4% of the 3,200 samples from the recreational-use market that failed the same testing panel. The samples that failed the tests commonly contained varying levels of myclobutanil, also known as Eagle 20, piperonyl butoxide, bifenthrin, bifenazate, and/or imidacloprid. These substances have the potential to cause mild to severe health issues in humans. Lab shopping for the highest THC results is one problem labs are facing from cultivators.
Christopher Altomare, the CEO of Nova Analytic Labs, pointed out that the medical samples were provided voluntarily. Since the samples came from providers who chose to test their products rather than being part of a randomized selection, Altomare believes the contamination percentage is likely much higher.
Altomare estimated that only 10% to 20% of the lab’s business comes from the medical market, and most of those cases involve testing for potency rather than pesticides.
The medical …