The California Department of Cannabis Control revoked a commercial testing laboratory’s permit a month ago after tests at state-run labs discovered a harmful pesticide in cannabis the private lab had cleared for sale.
Many industry operators and a national association of state regulators consider oversight at so-called ‘reference laboratories’ to be a best practice that should be standard in all state-regulated cannabis markets.
Absent reference laboratories, some states contract private, third-party labs to verify licensed cannabis labs’ compliance with safety standards as well as the reliability of THC-potency results.
But more than half of the country’s biggest cannabis markets do not have a reference lab, according to analysis by MJBizDaily, a glaring gap that critics say raises major questions about product labeling and safety.
This item originally appeared on MJBizDaily. The rest of the story is available here.
