This is our short weekly review of what’s going on in cannabis in the week of 5/28/2022. This week in review an Oklahoma lab was discovered to be falsifying results and keeping inaccurate records resulting in a recall, Killeen Texas has turned in the needed signatures for via Ground Game Texas to decriminalize in the city, Research shows that age gating methods in California and others states are working at dispensaries, and that labels commonly placed on marijuana in dispensaries are often misleading. Audio player included directly below for those on the go.
This week Ground Game Texas announced that it had enough signatures to put decriminalization efforts on another ballot. This time the city is Killeen located in Central Texas next to Fort Hood. Director Mike Siegel announced that more than 2,400 signatures, and 1,400 have been pre-verified.
“In a quickly growing and thriving community like Killeen, there’s no excuse for the continued over-policing and incarceration of community members for marijuana use,” said Julie Oliver, Executive Director of Ground Game Texas in a press release.
The Killeen ordinance would officially codify city policy so that police can not issue citations or make arrests for class A and B misdemeanor marijuana possession offenses, with exceptions such as if the violation is connected to an investigation into a felony-level narcotics case.
Also, the measure says police cannot issue citations for residue or paraphernalia in lieu of a possession charge. And they could not use the odor of cannabis alone as probable cause for a search or seizure. It has become the practice of some departments to issue a class c misdemeanor charge for paraphernalia when a possession charge would typically be in line for the situation. Officers have used this method as a means of justifying not decriminalizing cannabis at a state level, and keep cite and release at bay.
Learn how to become a medical cannabis patient in Texas
Articles on Texas decriminalization and penalty reduction
The state Commissioner of Health issued an emergency order Friday temporarily suspending a medical marijuana testing laboratory’s license in connection with alleged Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) rules violations.
OMMA issued a recall Friday for 99 medical marijuana products related to the lab’s alleged rules violations.
Commissioner Keith Reed’s emergency order immediately suspended the medical marijuana business license for Scale Laboratories in Oklahoma City. Scale is the trade name for Shiv Krupa LLC, OMMA License No. LAAA-C8NH-JZ02.
According to the order, the laboratory
- Reported passing test results to licensees on 138 samples that failed tests for yeast and mold. Scale also reported passing test results to licensees for nine samples that failed testing for aspergillus, five samples that failed testing for E. coli and one sample that failed testing for salmonella;
- Did not use appropriate procedures or recordkeeping for testing for microbiological contamination, pesticides or heavy metals;
- Did not use appropriate quality control methods;
- Manipulated testing data; and
- Routinely deviated from its standard operating procedures.
During OMMA’s routine inspections and reviewing of records, it discovered results not accurately reported by the testing lab. OMMA issued a recall Thursday alerting 33 businesses, informing them of the 99 products included.
The growers and processors that received the recall notice are required to inform dispensaries that bought the recalled products. OMMA rules require dispensaries to contact patients who purchased the recalled products. Patients with questions about the recall should contact their dispensary. OMMA advises any patient in possession of a recalled product to return it to the dispensary.
Learn how to become a medical cannabis patient in Texas
Researchers have found that the labels placed on marijuana in dispensaries is often highly misleading.
After studying over 90,000 samples a study published in the journal PLOS One is giving the nation a deeper look at what advocates and experts have been critical about with variety labeling for years.
The study states, “In addition to mapping the chemical landscape of commercial Cannabis in the US, we also quantified how well commonly used industry labels align with the chemical composition of samples. In general, we found that industry labels are poorly or inconsistently aligned with the underlying chemistry.”
When it came to assigning labels to the products the study found that the labels of Sativa, Indica and Hybrid were overrepresented by specific chemically defined groups. The study states that while commercial labels tended to have poor validity overall, we found evidence that certain names and categories were statistically overrepresented within specific chemically defined clusters. Cluster III samples (high terpinolene-myrcene) displayed an over-representation of Sativa-labeled products. While certain “strain names” were overrepresented in Clusters I and II, neither of these Clusters displayed an over-representation of Indica or Sativa labels.
“Commercial products are routinely labelled “Indica,” “Hybrid,” or “Sativa.” Prevailing folk theories assert that “Indica” products provide sedating effects, “Sativa” energizing effects, and “Hybrids’’ intermediate effects” The results showed though that even a simplistic labeling system, in which THC-dominant samples are labelled by their dominant terpene, is better at discriminating samples than the industry-standard labelling system.
Read more about TCUP (Texas Compassionate Use Program)
A recent Journal of Safety Research study looked to find what is the likelihood that underage youth can obtain marijuana from licensed recreational marijuana outlets in California, a state where recreational marijuana is legal.
Read more about Delta-8 in Texas
The objective of the study was to assess just how easy access to marijuana by underage or youth patrons would be at a recreational marijuana outlet in California, where recreational marijuana was legalized in 2016.
The law in California states that anyone who provides cannabis to someone underage can face up to six months in jail and a maximum $500 fine for the first offense. Just like T-A-B-C in Texas, police officers are allowed to use minors as assistants to test compliance of the law.
The results showed that anybody appearing to be an underage patrons were required to show age identification to enter in 100% of the licensed recreational marijuana outlets visited.
The study noted that researchers found it surprising that there was 100% compliance with the ID policy to keep underage patrons from purchasing marijuana directly from licensed outlets. However, that was consistent with what was observed in two other states, Washington and Colorado. This indicates that youth use of marijuana isn’t coming directly from the dispensary but from another party that purchases the product, the same that states see with alcohol and tobacco use by minors.
The study comes on the heels of hemp and cannabis advocates in Texas pushing for age gating on the state hemp program to ensure that minors do not have easy access to products. Currently, the state of Texas does not have an age gate set for hemp products, but most hemp companies have already self-regulated themselves to a 21 and up system.
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