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Banned pesticides keep showing up in California's legal weed products.

Legalization was supposed to solve this problem. When California's
voters legalized pot in 2016, they voted for an initiative that
specifically called on the state to regulate pesticides in cannabis
products.

However, an SFGATE investigation has found numerous problems plaguing
the state's pesticide rules, including labs falsifying safety tests and
stores selling pot contaminated with banned chemicals. Meanwhile, the
state's own pot regulator, the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC), has admitted it is currently unable to test for pesticide contamination in
some pot products. And due to a lack of transparency at the agency,
consumers might never know they're consuming pesticides or other
contaminants.

When the DCC suspects a product is contaminated, it sends secret product "embargoes" to pot companies, leaving the public in the dark - even when
stores violate embargoes by selling the potentially dangerous products.
Last year, SFGATE learned about one of these secret warnings and told
the public about the three embargoed products. The DCC finally warned
the public about one of the products two months later, when the producer
issued a voluntary recall; the agency has yet to publicly address safety
issues about the other two products.

Nicole Elliott, the director of California's Department of Cannabis
Control, declined months of interview requests for this investigation,
and the agency has refused to answer the majority of SFGATE's questions,
citing "ongoing investigations," or to make any agency experts available
for an interview.

California's pot regulations are not a total failure; studies have shown
that pot purchased at legal stores is less likely to be contaminated
than illicit cannabis. However, Josh Swider, the CEO of Infinite
Chemical Analysis Labs, a cannabis testing lab in San Diego, said the
DCC's lack of enforcement has allowed contaminated pot to leak onto the
shelves of legal stores across the state.

"It's a broken system. You can't say it's not," Swider said.

Secrecy - at a price
Pesticides present a uniquely complicated problem for the cannabis
industry. While most American farmers can rely on federally funded
research and regulations around the use of toxins to keep bugs at bay,
little of that research looks at the safety of actually smoking the
residue left behind by pesticides. And even if there were research, the
U.S. Agriculture Department and other national regulators are prevented
from offering any guidance on safe use to growers and state regulators,
because the drug is illegal at the federal level.

Without any federal guidance, states have been left to decide themselves
what pesticides to allow or ban in cannabis. California has some of the strictest rules in the country, banning 21 pesticides and requiring
testing of all legal cannabis products, including for pesticides, heavy
metals, mold and potency. Companies in California must pay
state-licensed private labs to conduct these safety screens.

It's clear these protections have reduced the amount of pot contaminated
with pesticides found in stores, according to Los Angeles-based cannabis scientist Jeffrey Raber, one of the first scientists to publish evidence
that pot smokers are exposed to pesticides when they smoke contaminated
pot.

"You can see lab data before regulation and afterwards, and it is way,
way, way better," Raber said. However, despite millions of dollars being
spent every year on cannabis testing in California, pot containing
banned chemicals continues to be sold in legal stores.

Taking contaminated pot off the shelves is a multi-part process. It
starts with an embargo, a temporary ban on sales issued when the state's
DCC has evidence that a product on the market contains banned
pesticides. Regulators are then supposed to conduct an investigation
which can culminate in a recall of the product.

While recalls are announced publicly, embargoes are only sent out to distributors and stores. The public has no way to access the embargoes,
and the DCC has denied multiple record requests from SFGATE to release information about embargoed products, claiming they count as
"investigative documents."

But that secrecy comes at a price: If the embargo system doesn't work, consumers may buy and consume contaminated pot without having any idea.

'It's very disappointing'
That's exactly what happened last November, when SFGATE received a tip
about three products that had recently been embargoed by the DCC. The
cannabis regulator's secret embargo notice said it was now illegal to
sell these specific products because they were "adulterated," without describing any other details.

But on Nov. 17, eight days after the embargo was supposedly issued, an
SFGATE reporter was able to purchase one of the banned products, a vape cartridge produced by Cru Cannabis, at Bloomerang, a cannabis store in
San Francisco. SFGATE then sent the cartridge to Anresco Laboratories, a DCC-licensed lab in San Francisco, which found trace amounts of
chlorfenapyr, a dangerous pesticide that's banned in California cannabis products. Cru Cannabis did not return multiple SFGATE requests for
comment.

A manager for the Bloomerang cannabis store, who was granted anonymity
in accordance with Hearst's ethics policy, told SFGATE in January that
the DCC hadn't told the store about the embargo until nearly two months
after SFGATE published a story documenting the embargo violation, at
which point the DCC contacted the store to say "there was an illegal
pesticide in that particular batch that we sold," according to the
manager.

A DCC spokesperson told SFGATE in February that the store was notified
of the original embargo and has since been cited for selling the
embargoed product. A second Bloomerang manager who also declined to
share their name told SFGATE in February that the DCC fined the store
$50,000 for selling five of the embargoed vape pens (the store had
originally told SFGATE that 12 of the contaminated pens were sold to the public). The DCC has yet to warn the public about the vape pen.

High doses of chlorfenapyr can be lethal to humans, although the trace
amounts found in the Cru Cannabis vape pen are unlikely to cause
immediate harm, according to Raber. Still, he said SFGATE's
investigation has raised serious concerns regarding California's legal
weed market.

"It's very disappointing," Raber said. "... It makes you wonder how much
other stuff went down that same path"

The state's lab falls short
California's strict pesticide testing requirements should have caught a pesticide-laden vape pen like the Cru Cannabis product before it ever
hit retail shelves. However, these tests have been ridiculed for years
for being wildly inaccurate and unable to keep toxic products out of
pot. And even the state regulator admitted to SFGATE that they are
currently unable to test for banned pesticides in pot products.

The state has known since 2018 that some labs are falsifying pesticide
tests. The state has revoked two labs' licenses for failing to
accurately conduct pesticide tests, and fined three others for doing the
same. And in 2022, Nicole Elliott, the director of the DCC, told the
Cannabis Business Times that "unscrupulous labs" were "intentionally undermining the regulatory space, scamming consumers and threatening
public health."

In an effort to better police these private labs, the state spent $11
million on building a laboratory at UC San Diego that could serve as the state's "reference laboratory by conducting testing of cannabis goods as requested" by the state, according to a copy of the lab contract
obtained by SFGATE in a public records request. However, the lab has
failed to meet any of its contractual deadlines to provide cannabis
testing for the DCC, according to quarterly reports obtained by SFGATE
in a records request. Kellie Woodhouse, a spokesperson for UCSD,
attributed the lab delays to COVID-19.

David Hafner, a DCC spokesperson, said in an email the agency "will not
comment on contract performance" with UCSD, but said the agency is "in
regular communication with the lab regarding improvements to their
processes."

Without a fully functioning lab at UCSD, the DCC is unable to test some
pot products for pesticide contamination, according to Hafner. He said
the department will be able to test all products for pesticides
"shortly," without clarifying when. He also declined to say which
products they currently cannot test, claiming that "this information
might assist operators seeking to circumvent regulatory requirements."

Hafner said the DCC is still working with the UCSD lab to validate a
pesticide testing method to "confirm, with scientific rigor, that it is sufficient to protect the public and to produce evidence that can
withstand legal scrutiny in potential disciplinary proceedings." Even if
the agency can't test for pesticides in a product, he said, they will
still test for other contaminants.

'Nobody's monitoring the industry'
California has the largest pot market in the world. Last year, the state recorded over $5 billion in legal weed sales, encompassing millions of products. Yet, despite the market's massive size, the DCC has rarely
warned the public about contaminated pot.

California regulators announced just four voluntary recalls in 2023, one
for pesticide contamination. The DCC has never issued a single mandatory
recall for pesticide contamination. In contrast, the Washington State
Liquor and Cannabis Board, which polices a cannabis market less than a
third the size of California's, recalled 65 products last year for
pesticide contamination.

Lezli Engelking, the CEO of FOCUS, a nonprofit organization focused on developing cannabis regulations, said the lack of product recalls in
California should be deeply concerning to the public.

"It sounds like nobody's monitoring the industry," Engelking told
SFGATE. "We're doing all this testing but nobody is actually looking to
see if there's problems. Arizona probably has four recalls a month. A
state the size of California, it just statistically does not make sense
[to have that few recalls]."

A spokesperson told SFGATE the agency has issued 304 embargoes since
2021, more than a third of them in January 2024. But it's unclear why
the state has secretly embargoed hundreds of pot products, yet only
warned the public about a handful of recalls. The agency declined a
records request for embargo notices, claiming they're all part of
ongoing investigations.

Not all pot regulators consider embargoes secret: The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority publishes embargoes on its website. Engelking said
it was "absolutely unacceptable" that the DCC refuses to release embargo information, which she told SFGATE she believes protects the reputation
of private companies at the expense of public health.

Hafner, the DCC spokesperson, defended the department's recall work by
pointing out that private California companies have issued four
voluntary recalls since November of 2023.

"DCC will continue to use its full range of enforcement tools across the
supply chain in an ongoing effort to facilitate a well-regulated legal
market that protects consumer health and safety," Hafner said in an
email.

'People will take advantage'
Cannabis oversight does appear to be increasing in California. The DCC
recently increased pressure on the state's cannabis labs, including by
rolling out new testing regulations intended to help catch unscrupulous
lab operators. Hafner said the agency has already cited several labs for
not following the new testing method. Jason Cooley, the director of Sqrd
Lab, a DCC-licensed lab in Los Angeles, told SFGATE he feels like the
agency has been paying closer attention to private testing operations
lately.

"I feel like there's greater awareness in the industry that they're
watching, which is good," Cooley said. However, he added that SFGATE's investigation has shown clear failures in how the agency conducts
embargoes.

"They should have reached out to those places where the product was, individually, and made sure that each place had confirmed that they were
aware of the embargo," Cooley said.

Swider, the lab operator from San Diego, said the DCC pays for a system
that is intended to track legal cannabis products throughout the supply
chain using batch identification numbers. He believes the agency should leverage that system, and make it impossible for a store or distributor
to even ring up a product that's under embargo.

Raber, the cannabis researcher from Los Angeles, told SFGATE the state
needs to increase enforcement, so that pot companies and cannabis labs
know they will be punished if they violate the rules.

"The lack of enforcement has allowed everything to go off the rails,"
Raber said. "I think that shows you that if you're not enforcing things,
people will take advantage of them."

https://www.sfgate.com/cannabis/article/banned-pesticides-testing-califor nia-cannabis-18678450.php

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