{"id":2954,"date":"2021-12-10T17:58:01","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T17:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/CAIiEIqqAQz8tciYpVfwZSuMusgqGQgEKhAIACoHCAowsbfwCjCm2LoCMNm6jQY"},"modified":"2021-12-10T17:58:01","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T17:58:01","slug":"illinois-cannabis-regulation-moldy-weed-but-no-consumer-alert-or-recall-secret-investigations-sun-times-in-chicago-sun-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/?p=2954","title":{"rendered":"Illinois cannabis regulation: moldy weed but no consumer alert or recall, secret investigations, Sun-Times in\u2026 – Chicago Sun-Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last spring, Illinois dispensary workers and consumers noticed there was mold in a popular brand of pre-rolled marijuana joints.<\/p>\n

\u201cNumerous batches\u201d possibly had been contaminated, state regulators said.<\/p>\n

But the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which regulates state-licensed marijuana dispensaries, never told the public. It didn\u2019t warn consumers they might have bought tainted weed.<\/p>\n

Instead, it emailed dispensary operators on May 22, quietly directing them to quarantine all Mag Landrace cannabis flower products made by Verano Holdings.<\/p>\n

State officials told retailers that they could initiate a \u201cvoluntary recall\u201d of those products \u2014 but left that up to the stores while an investigation was conducted.<\/p>\n

One chain of dispensaries is known to have informed affected customers: Green Thumb Industries\u2019 Rise locations in Niles, Joliet and downstate Canton. The Niles and Canton stores sell to recreational users and also to medical cannabis patients, which means people with serious health conditions could have gotten the moldy marijuana.<\/p>\n

In a notice to customers, an assistant manager at the Canton store identified seven batches of potentially moldy weed sold under the name Mag Landrace and urged customers to \u201cdiscontinue use of this product and destroy it,\u201d offering a $64 store credit toward a future purchase. <\/p>\n

The assistant manager also suggested that customers contact a healthcare provider \u201cif you have any questions or concerns about mold allergies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The notice about the Verano weed wound up on the popular \u201cIllinois Trees\u201d Reddit group, which spread the word among the nearly 18,000 members of the online community. Many responded by describing similar problems with the Chicago-based marijuana cultivator\u2019s supply.<\/p>\n

One user, who identified himself as an employee at a Rise location in Mundelein, wrote that he was sickened for almost a week after smoking pre-rolls containing Mag Landrace a few months earlier. He said he threw the rest away, along with other Verano products.<\/p>\n

\u201cSmelled and tasted like old pond water,\u201d the user wrote of the weed. \u201cI went to work the next day and smelled every Verano pre-roll we had, and we ended up destroying 1000s of tins.\u201d<\/p>\n

He declined an interview request.<\/p>\n

What happened with the moldy weed last spring raises questions about regulation of Illinois\u2019 booming cannabis industry and the high-priced, high-taxed products on dispensary shelves.<\/p>\n

Illinois has some of the strictest rules in the nation for cannabis safety and quality, with cannabis required to pass tests for mold, yeast, bacteria and other contaminants that are much tougher than those in many states. Some states don\u2019t require testing at all for certain contaminants.<\/p>\n

But Illinois officials do little to police those tests to ensure they\u2019re done properly. <\/p>\n

Though state regulators can discipline growers \u2014 and they have done so in a relative handful of cases, mostly for infractions relating to storage or transport of cannabis, which often results in fines of $5,000 or less \u2014 the rules also allow problems to be handled secretly through administrative consent orders <\/strong>that are \u201cconsidered confidential \u2026 not [to] be released.\u201d<\/p>\n

The investigation of the potentially moldy Mag Landrace weed went nowhere. The state Department of Agriculture, which regulates growers, says weed from the cultivator was tested and that no problems were found.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for IDFPR, which sent the May 22 notice, confirmed the quarantine but says the findings of the investigation are secret. The agency is \u201cprohibited \u2026 from disclosing the details of specific investigations\u201d by the Illinois Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act and its rules, according to the agency spokesman. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe department takes allegations regarding products seriously and investigates complaints relating to cannabis products made to the department,\u201d spokesman Paul Isaacs says. \u201cThe cannabis industry is still in its infancy, and IDFPR is proud of its efforts in supporting and regulating its growth. IDFPR is committed to continuing to work with the General Assembly, stakeholders and fellow agencies to support the continued growth of a safe, legal marketplace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Rohde of Waukegan, who runs a weed-centric YouTube channel called \u201cCannabev,\u201d<\/a> posted the Rise dispensary\u2019s Mag Landrace notice on Reddit after obtaining a copy. <\/p>\n

Rohde says recreational consumers and medical patients like himself often take a back seat to the \u201cprofit-centered\u201d Illinois\u2019 cannabis industry and that it\u2019s especially worrisome that the \u201cvoluntary recall\u201d involving Mag Landrace weed wasn\u2019t announced to the public, only to dispensaries.<\/p>\n

\u201cFolks should be notified if a product they purchased could be tainted,\u201d Rohde says. \u201cMedicinal patients could have had a negative reaction to ingesting moldy cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Chris <\/span> <\/span>
Chris Rohde of Waukegan runs a weed-centric YouTube channel and helped spread the word online about the Mag Landrace \u201cvoluntary recall.\u201d<\/figcaption>Anthony Vazquez \/ Sun-Times<\/cite> <\/span> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

James MacRae, who owns Straight Line Analytics, a cannabis consulting firm near Seattle, says Illinois\u2019 standards \u2014 which are tougher than those in many states not only for microbiological contaminants but also for pesticides \u2014 are \u201cconsumer-friendly. Two thumbs up to whoever created that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But MacRae is critical of the secretive way in which Illinois addresses problems with legal weed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not understand it,\u201d he says of the state\u2019s secret letter to the dispensaries. \u201cIt\u2019s putting the responsibility on the shoulders of the drug pushers, of the people who stand to profit. It\u2019s grossly inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patchwork of state rules<\/h4>\n

From 2015 to June 30, 2021, 3,115 batches of cannabis flower or processed weed products failed state-required tests for quality and safety <\/strong>in Illinois, according to data obtained by the Sun-Times through six public records requests under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.<\/p>\n

That includes 3,072 failures from 2019 through the first half of 2021 \u2014 amounting to just over 7% of cannabis tested in Illinois, going by the state\u2019s figures of the total samples tested.<\/p>\n

By far, the most common reason for failing was having mold and yeast above allowed levels, with about 90% of all failing cannabis flower samples since 2019 having mold and yeast counts over state limits.<\/p>\n

Other states aren\u2019t as strict. Much of the legal weed that failed Illinois\u2019 testing would have passed muster in Michigan, which has much looser limits on fungal contamination than Illinois for recreational weed.<\/p>\n

Microbiological contaminants such as mold, yeast and various bacteria are measured in colony-forming units per gram, or CFU\/g, with labs culturing them on testing plates to measure their levels.<\/p>\n

Illinois allows up to 1,000 CFU\/g for \u201ctotal yeast and mold.\u201d <\/p>\n

Michigan allows far more: total yeast and mold of up to 100,000 CFU\/g for recreational weed and up to 10,000 CFU\/g for medical marijuana.<\/p>\n

In California, there\u2019s no testing requirement for total yeast and mold. Tests are required only for a type of mold called Aspergillus, which can cause serious lung infections.<\/p>\n

Connecticut recently increased its limit for mold and yeast to 1,000,000 CFU\/g, provided there\u2019s no Aspergillus.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/span> <\/span>
A cannabis plant.<\/figcaption>Annie Costabile \/ Sun-Times<\/cite> <\/span> <\/figure>\n

Illinois requires any pesticide residue on cannabis to be below the lowest \u201caction limit\u201d for that compound as set by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency for food. Illinois also requires cannabis to pass tests for five heavy metals.<\/p>\n

As with mold, the rules for pesticides vary by state. Washington doesn\u2019t require any testing for pesticides \u2014 or heavy metals \u2014 unless the cannabis is to be certified for medical use.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is all over the place,\u201d says Lev Spivak-Bindorf, co-founder of PSI Labs in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who has pushed for more transparency for consumers.<\/p>\n

Marijuana remains a federally prohibited substance under \u201cSchedule 1\u201d of the Controlled Substances Act. Schedule 1 is meant for drugs with no medical value and high potential for abuse and includes hard drugs like heroin.<\/p>\n

For some time, Congress has been inching toward decriminalizing cannabis nationwide, but it\u2019s unclear what President Joe Biden would do. <\/p>\n

Without a green light at the federal level, states are left to work out their own regulations.<\/p>\n

Even figuring out something as basic as the size of a standard dose has been difficult, says Rosalie Pacula, an economist at the University of Southern California and president of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a standard FDA-regulated product,\u201d says Pacula, who studies the regulation of intoxicating substances, including legal drugs like tobacco, alcohol and cannabis and illicit drugs like methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine.<\/p>\n

As a result, state regulators often tiptoe around product quality issues, suggesting that potentially bad bud be removed from sale but not demanding a recall, according to Pacula.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s shocking from a consumer standpoint \u2026 but we don\u2019t have the FDA here. So there\u2019s no teeth in enforcement,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

And some of the most technically proficient labs in the country, who\u2019ve been testing as contractors for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for years, aren\u2019t involved at all with legal weed because they\u2019d lose out on their federal contracts, she says.<\/p>\n

\"Economist <\/span> <\/span>
Economist Rosalie Pacula of the University of Southern California.<\/figcaption>Provided<\/cite> <\/span> <\/figure>\n

Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says federal oversight would begin to address the patchwork system\u2019s varying standards for testing.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a minimum, it could probably set some sort of a floor, where states might decide on their own that they want to have additional standards on top of those,\u201d Armentano says. \u201cBut it would set a sort of a baseline that says, look, these are the minimum criteria of things that have to be screened for, these are the minimum levels that are allowable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some worry that treating cannabis like any other food or drug product would stifle innovation.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the debate that\u2019s happening right now around this question of federal legalization is whether or not federal governance of the industry right now is a good thing or whether the industry\u2019s actually better served by continuing to operate in this patchwork model so that these local experiments can play out,\u201d says John Kagia, chief knowledge officer for the cannabis research firm New Frontier Data. \u201cSo we can actually see, of these different types of rules, regulations and governing authorities, what seems to work best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite problems with regulation of legal weed, Kagia says the illicit market, by comparison, is \u201ctotally unregulated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Hundreds <\/span> <\/span>
Hundreds of people line up outside a Verilife dispensary in Romeoville on Jan. 1, 2020, the first day of legal recreational weed in Illinois. <\/figcaption>Ashlee Rezin \/ Sun-Times<\/cite> <\/span> <\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The race for higher THC<\/h4>\n

Many new cannabis consumers base their purchases on a single factor: potency.<\/p>\n

Cultivators know this, and many try to produce crops with the highest possible amount of THC, the psychoactive compound that gets users high.<\/p>\n

This past summer, a Utah cultivator announced to much hoopla that it had grown cannabis with 45.13% THC, which would have been close to a record for potency. Subsequent tests at the urging of a medical cannabis patient advocate found the level was actually 21.71% THC.<\/p>\n

Cannabis industry experts say the race for higher potency has led to \u201clab shopping.\u201d They say some growers gravitate to labs that will boost their potency numbers.<\/p>\n

MacRae analyzed seed-to-sale data from Washington in 2015 and identified what he called \u201cfriendly labs\u201d that had a pattern of more frequently reporting higher potency numbers and less frequently reporting failed tests for microbiological contaminants.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Nevada suspended a cannabis testing lab after an investigation found it doctored data to juice THC levels and re-tested samples until they \u201cpassed\u201d contaminant tests.<\/p>\n

Because consumers are willing to pay a premium for higher THC levels, juicing the numbers even slightly can be lucrative, Kagia says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might not seem like much, the additional couple of percentage points, but, in a market where value is determined in part by potency, that can mean a few extra hundred dollars per pound from a large harvest,\u201d Kagia says. <\/p>\n

A report focused on cannabis proficiency testing that was published in February by New Frontier and edited by Kagia warned that \u201cmany bad actors\u201d are offering bogus reports either \u201cby choice or in lacking the competency to generate accurate results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some labs even advertise that they\u2019ll provide beneficial numbers \u201cwithout ever testing the material,\u201d the report says. The result, it warned, is inaccurate lab results \u201cundermining the sector overall at a time when precise dosing is increasingly important for product formulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

There haven\u2019t been any similar accusations in Illinois, where a handful of labs have received state approval for testing cannabis.<\/p>\n

The Illinois agriculture department\u2019s data on weed testing failures obtained by the Sun-Times did not include lab names, so it wasn\u2019t possible to compare labs\u2019 results against each other.<\/p>\n

The data did show several cases of potency fluctuating widely within the same batch of weed. For example, there were 12 instances in the state failure data in which samples from the same lot number of cannabis flower was tested twice, on separate dates.<\/p>\n

None of the \u201ctotal potency\u201d levels in the first and second tests lined up exactly. Three of the 12 had potency differences outside the acceptable variance of 15%: One was 28.6% lower on the second test, one was 18.3% lower on the second test, and one was 26.2% higher on the second test.<\/p>\n

By law, state regulators collect failing test results from labs, not passing ones. But they say 43,039 samples were tested from 2019 through the first half of 2021, which would mean that about 7% of the state\u2019s weed products failed at least one test \u2014 which is a far better failure rate than some states with looser regulations. For example, in 2018, close to 20% of all the samples in California failed tests for potency or purity.<\/p>\n

Despite <\/strong>requests over several months for failing test results for mycotoxins and heavy metals, agriculture department officials did not produce any documents.<\/p>\n

Asked for failing pesticide results, the agency provided 17 examples, with 16 of them occurring in 2016 and one in 2018. Asked whether that meant there were no failing pesticide tests in 2019, 2020 and 2021, state officials declined to answer.<\/p>\n

Spivak-Birndorf, the Ann Arbor lab co-founder, says he was surprised that only about 7% of Illinois cannabis failed. Even with Michigan\u2019s far more permissive limits for mold and yeast, he estimates that about 25% of all flower samples his lab saw last summer flunked.<\/p>\n

He says that if his state used the stricter Illinois limit for mold and yeast, \u201cI think our failure rate would be closer to 50%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spivak-Birndorf says Illinois regulators should be looking closely at not only the failing results but also the passing results, which might offer a window into whether certain labs are more lenient than others.<\/p>\n

Without that oversight, he says, \u201cThere\u2019s just not a huge incentive in being very accurate.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cannabis-testing laboratories in Illinois must submit an application and independent, third-party verification confirming that they meet internationally accepted scientific standards. Labs also must be independent from anyone involved in cultivating or selling cannabis.<\/p>\n

Under state regulations, labs must submit a copy of each failing test result to the agriculture department.<\/p>\n

But the data files given to the agriculture department are riddled with apparent errors, the Sun-Times found. Virtually all of the results of microbiological tests are logged as being 10 times higher than the state\u2019s limits. And all the pesticides and solvents in the data are noted as \u201ccolony-forming units\u201d even though those chemical compounds cannot be cultured into colonies.<\/p>\n

State officials attributed the mistakes to typos and said they\u2019re confident of the results the labs are providing.<\/p>\n

Regulators rely on what the agriculture department calls \u201clargely a complaint-based system,\u201d though they say inspectors do regular spot checks at cultivation sites.<\/p>\n

The agriculture department says it is planning, though won\u2019t say when, to create its own state lab to provide \u201cmuch-needed capacity\u201d to independently test or verify test results.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/p>\n

The Sun-Times commissioned lab tests. Here\u2019s what we found.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last spring, Illinois dispensary workers and consumers noticed there was mold in a popular brand of pre-rolled marijuana joints. \u201cNumerous batches\u201d possibly had been contaminated, state regulators said. But the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which regulates state-licensed marijuana dispensaries, never told the public. It didn\u2019t warn consumers they might have bought tainted weed. Instead, it emailed dispensary operators on May 22, quietly directing them to quarantine all Mag Landrace cannabis flower products made by Verano Holdings. State officials told retailers that they could initiate a \u201cvoluntary recall\u201d of those products \u2014 but left that up to the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/illinois-cannabis-regulation-moldy-weed-but-no-consumer-alert-or-recall-secret-investigations-sun-times-in-chicago-sun-times.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thcinct.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}