Aspergillus testing has been on my mind quite a bit lately and I’m not alone – it’s been prominent on the minds of Oregon’s cannabis industry ever since new rules went into effect in March.

Deep Dive of the Week  TL;DR: Oregon Secretary of State quits amidst reporting of her ties with LaMota, a cannabis chain that is under fire for violations What Happened:Investigative reporting by Sophie Peel at Willamette Week unraveled one of Oregon’s largest dispensary chains – and the Oregon Secretary of State. Where We Are: Shemia Fagan, Oregon’s…

I’ve written about what I found when I examined anonymized data from Oregon, so when a data set claiming to be Michigan’s THC testing data came across my email, you know I had to take notice.

I’ve been writing about issues with THC percentage inflation in cannabis for months, and one of the first questions I’m always asked is “So What?”

Last year, around this time of year, I conducted an experiment much like the one I wrote about earlier this month in California. In addition to running the experiment, though, I also requested data from the state of Oregon about every THC test that had been performed since 2018.

Deep Dive of the Week  TL;DR: How A Recall in Michigan put Contaminated product BACK on the shelves What Happened: In November of 2021, regulators in Michigan recalled 64,000 pounds of cannabis due to testing irregularities – with much of the recalled cannabis returning to the shelves by the time the fight through the courts…

California’s cannabis market is one of the most storied. It’s no surprise that some of those tales include cannabis testing fraud…

When I thought about ‘what would be the perfect chart to discuss recall information’ for this article, I found that the problem was even more basic.

Deep Dive of the Week TL;DR Emerald Scientific awarded ACS Laboratories another round of badges after issues with potency and contaminants testing in Florida. What Happened: Emerald Scientific calls it ‘The Emerald Test’, the gold standard in cannabis testing. It recently awarded another round of badges to ACS, one of Florida’s first certified cannabis testing…

At the bottom of nearly every cannabis laboratory website is a cluster of badges indicating the accreditations and affiliations of the laboratory. While laboratories tout participation in these programs, it is rare that the purpose of them is clear to consumers.