Weed Industry brought to a standstill by new pesticide testing regulations

vostok

Well-Known Member

Within months of Oregon's full recreational marijuana market coming online, the industry has come to a standstill with low supplies and big price jumps for consumers.

Don Morse, owner of the Human Collective in Southeast Portland, and other retailers, growers and processors blame Oregon's strict pesticide rules for the problem.

The regulations - the first mandatory pre-emptive testing in the country for marijuana - went into effect Oct. 1. But the state has so far licensed only a handful of laboratories to do the tests on thousands of products, including flowers, edibles, concentrates, oils and extracts.

And the tests are expensive - in some cases more than six times what companies used to pay, they report. Then they must wait weeks to get their products back and find out if they passed or failed.

Morse has laid off five budtenders since last month. He's down to about 10 percent of the concentrate inventory he had before October. He can't find anyone to sell him enough marijuana to fully restock.

That's happening in most of the more than 400 marijuana dispensaries around the state.

For Morse, the gridlock is ironic because he pushed for the rules. He helped convince growers and processors that reasonable pesticide limits and testing regulations would be better for them and consumers. But now the fledgling businesses are in jeopardy, he said.

"We don't want to come off like it's boohoo and we're only in it for ourselves," Morse said. "The people of the state said they wanted this both medically and recreationally. They left it to the state to set the rules and the state has set the rules to the point where it's no longer available to them. It's this roundabout way of making cannabis illegal again."

Megan Hatfield bought a vape pen cartridge of Sour Diesel for $45 at Morse's store. It's usually around $30 there, but she still considered it a bargain. She tried two other pot stores earlier in the week, finding only two other options, both at $80 for a gram.

"Honestly, I have been to a couple of places that didn't have a selection nearly as big as this," Hatfield said.

The Governor's Office is expected this week to announce some temporary fixes to address the testing backlog, while the Oregon Health Authority has borrowed inspectors from other divisions to help license labs.

The slowdown is the price of safety, said Jonathan Modie, a spokesman for the health authority.

"Our goal is to protect public health," he said, "by making sure that all marijuana products are tested for pesticides and other compounds by an accredited lab and that marijuana products that fail pesticide testing don't reach consumers."

***

Starting a year ago, anyone 21 and older could buy a limited amount of marijuana flowers, starter plants and seeds. Edibles and extracts were added in June. The state expects to issue 850 recreational licenses for everything from retail outlets to growers by the end of the year.

The state has debated how to handle pesticides for more than a year and came up with the nation's most stringent rules for chemicals used in legal marijuana cultivation and the amounts that can show up in finished products, be it flowers or edibles.

While other marijuana states such as Washington have pesticide limits on crops, Oregon is the only state to require testing of each product before it hits shelves.

Labs here must test for a longer list of chemicals with stricter limits and in larger batches than before Oct. 1, when the rules didn't say how to do the tests, who could do them and what happened if products failed. Today, labs must follow state-specified protocol and then state agencies follow up with growers and processors to make sure any products that fail are retested or destroyed.

So far, the state has issued two recalls for tainted marijuana flowers that made it to retail shelves.

The health authority has certified six labs for pesticide testing. It's a long process that requires extensive proof that the labs are using the correct methods and that the results are consistent before a state assessor shows up to double check the work.

Through the end of the year, the state has three permanent full-time assessors and one full-time temporary assessor working. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has loaned three extra assessors - one full time and two part time - to help with the assessments and administrative tasks.

More labs will be certified through the state's general lab-accreditation program, ORELAP, in the future, Modie said. There are eight more labs that have applied for accreditation, but none are ready for inspection yet.

"ORELAP's role is to offer lab accreditation services, not to ensure that labs succeed in getting accredited or that there is sufficient supply of accredited labs in the for-profit market," Modie said.

Rodger Voelker, lab director of one of the pesticide testing laboratories, Eugene's OG Analytical, said that while some of the pesticide limits might be stricter than necessary, the delays are a temporary growing pain of a new industry.

"I hear this constantly -- people saying this is totally unfair, that they don't expect this of anybody else," Voelker said. "That's actually completely wrong. These things are expected of any industry where people are putting things in their mouth."

-- Molly Harbarger
/http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2016/12/marijuana_industry_brought_to.html
 

pookat

Well-Known Member
i been thinking about this for over here uk. about to kick the gov arse- from a keltic point of view anyway.

@vostok @rollitup apart from initial cost (funding grants etc) why dont riu set up test center's ? mobile units etc. feed profits back into riu bail bond type thingy, thus keeping users happy and high :weed:
 

MynamewouldbeJosh420

Active Member
Are they allowed to use spinosid, azamax, diatomaceous earth?

If you root drench with non-systemic organic compound, the bud wouldn't test for it, if it is banned, would that be allowed... hmmm
 
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