What to do if you’re not going to keel over weed, but you can always do it yourself, right?

“You’re not gonna keel over if you buy some cheap suspect weed,” said Mitchell. Someone who was smoking cleaner weed won’t get a lung problem 10 years down the road.

He has a place that he can trust to sell marijuana, but he must get in his car and drive to that place. That’s a luxury available to someone who has deep knowledge of the industry.

Mitchell said people assume it’s safe because there are guardrails that are in place. “But when you actually look at the end result, I think that’s up for debate definitely.”

Justin Singer makes edible cannabis products in Colorado under the names Ripple and Ript, and over the years, he has become increasingly concerned about the state’s lack of enforcement of the industry and what that means for the safety of the marijuana supply.

Outside experts are deeply concerned about marijuana product safety, even in the regulated market. They don’t totally blame state regulators, since there is little to no research on health impacts of different contaminants in cannabis. It’s not definitely known if any state’s testing system is looking for the right things at the right levels.

A breaking point came when Singer released a much cheaper product to the market, and increased sales by 500%, a spike he expected would certainly trigger an inspection from the state Marijuana Enforcement Division.

A Buyer Beware Market for Marijuana and Other Chemicals: The Ripple Project, a Cannabis Enforcement Division Report to the Colorado Department of Health and Safety

The kind of guy who wants an honest game, Singer said. If there were no referees and one team was allowed to cheat, it would be difficult to play professional sports. It would be very not fun to watch, to participate in.”

Thomas Mitchell reviewed cannabis products for Westword, and is now an editor for the Colorado weekly. Health and safety advisories and recalls have been written about extensively by him. He said it’s a buyer beware market.

Colorado weed is on par with New York street weed in 2008. In fact I think the cartels probably cared more about their consumers than a lot of people here,” said Singer. I have the data to back it up.

Bill Jones, head of enforcement for California’s Department of Cannabis Control, said that there is going to be mold in the illegal product because the banned pesticides are getting into it. I’m not sure if all consumers are aware of that.

Despite a $30 billion in sales last year, no one has reported getting sick or dying from using cannabis. Some health and safety experts are advising the state to do more to protect consumers, as it’s not known long term effects of smoking contaminated weed.

As marijuana became well established in Colorado, the division increased their staff and began testing it for harmful substances like heavy metals and yeasts. The MED issues health and safety advisories.

I do not know what the industry is doing to follow these kinds of basic food safety guidelines.

The director of the Marijuana Enforcement Division, Dominique Mendiola, would not comment directly on data from Ripple cofounder Justin Singer, nor on whether the supply of marijuana is safe, but said there is a robust process in place for ensuring marijuana is free of contaminants.

“We do see need to work on that more and more,” he said. “And ensure that we are reaching consumers effectively, that we are providing information that they ultimately need to determine: do they have certain products that we’ve identified as a potential threat to health and safety?”

She said in recent months they updated the health and safety notice online and will soon distribute flyers to help educate consumers.

The cannabis industry is going through a tough time: Do we care about what is safe, what is not okay and how do we manage it?

Mendiola acknowledged that the marijuana industry is suffering, prices for cannabis have crashed after a huge infusion of investment during the pandemic lockdowns when sales were rising quickly. Licensing revenue that funds MED enforcement is being limited because businesses are closing. She noted that they are downsizing their offices in Lakewood to reduce costs.

“For the last few years we’ve been looking at those opportunities to save costs, cut expenses, and still allow us and ensure that we’re able to carry out our regulatory obligations,” said Mendiola.

At this point in Colorado, you can have weed that is the safest in the US, according to the co-founders of The Flower Collective. There are many things Colorado has learned that other states have not, and one of them is heavy metals.

She said there’s some research on molds like Aspergillus, which can in rare cases lead to serious medical issues, especially for immunocompromised marijuana users. But there’s no data on how smoking versus vaping, for instance, affects the amount of contaminants that end up in the lungs.

In Colorado, the rate of recalls has slowed after a big increase. He said that the financial struggles of the industry in Colorado causes fewer producers.

“It’s hard to know if it’s right or wrong when there’s not a lot of data to get to the health impacts of the issue,” said the University of Colorado Boulder’s senior research scientist.

The Food and Drug Administration has endorsed irradiation as safe for food products, citing 30 years of research, but labeling is required when used. Colorado cannabis’ industry successfully fought a labeling law last year.

Currently, it’s required that products pass a final test. The process can be a challenge for growers who are already in a downturn in sales prices. Stores and grows are closing.

An expert in lab testing and marijuana, Opie is with E4 Bioscience. He said the money sunk into a harvest means there’s tremendous pressure to get it to market.

It would be a great idea for states to implement shelf testing programs to monitor the product that actually makes it to consumers.

The Undercovers of a Fairfield, Calif., home: a marijuana plantation and a drug-traffic smuggler

FAIRFIELD, Calif. — On a crisp winter morning last month, Sgt. The team members with the California Department ofCannabis Control executed a search warrant at a home in Fairfield, about halfway between Sac and San Francisco.

They unlocked the door and it looked like any other upscale suburban house on this street. A home had been renovated and turned into a stinky mess, with Marijuana plants, Grow lights, chemicals, and pesticides inside.

“You can see the mold down on the tarp down there,” McAtee said. “Yup, that’s mold.” His team also identified chemicals and pesticides not approved in the U.S. for use with consumer products like legal cannabis.

“Our undercovers will buy cannabis from people who are outwardly pretending to be legit,” he told NPR. “They’ll tell you they have a license and that everything they’re doing is legit.”

It can almost be impossible for average consumers to differentiate between weed and black market products, which is difficult for experienced cops to do. Marijuana legalization advocates say that unregulated weed plays a big role.

Paul Armentano is the national organization for the reform of marijuana laws. He said that it’s risky for a consumer product to be sold without proper regulation.

“Whether I was getting cannabis or alcohol or my broccoli from an entirely unregulated market, I’d be concerned about any number of issues,” Armentano said.

According to Felbab-Brown, Chinese criminal organizations are drawn to the marijuana business because it’s a relatively low risk to gain a foothold in communities. Unlike harder drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamines, there is relatively little law enforcement pressure.

The use of illegal cannabis plantations as a base for money-laundering by the Chinese criminal groups is increasing as more people are being smuggled into the U.S. She said they end up being enslaved at the plantations.

Alcohol prohibition was repealed in December 1933, but many states kept liquor bans on the books into the 1950s, creating the same kind of patchwork we now see with marijuana laws. Liquor bootleggers and smugglers continued to operate for years.

“When you move from prohibition to legalization, it takes time,” said Beau Kilmer an expert on marijuana markets and co-director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center.

After legalization, states will spend a few years designing the licensing regime and figuring out what the regulations are going to be but there hasn’t been a lot of attention given to the illegal market. And in a lot of places, enforcement just hasn’t been a priority.”

Sgt. was in the area. The truck was about to haul away a big amount of seized cannabis when it backed up. He said this crop might have wound up on shelves anywhere in the U.S.

He stated that a lot of places he visited were shipping their cannabis out of state so it could be made ten-fold more money in California.