California Labs Aren’t Keeping Up with New Regulations
SACRAMENTO – Only eighteen of California’s thirty eight licensed testing labs are in compliance with the state’s new standardized cannabinoids testing guidelines, which are designed to combat potency inflation. Until they demonstrate compliance with the new guidelines, the other twenty licensed labs will not be permitted to test flower. Operators in California are more than familiar with the widespread problem of lab shopping , wherein growers pit competing labs against one another in search of the highest THC results. The practice encourages labs to boost THC reports and mislead consumers. A 2022 study conducted by Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs, one of California’s compliant laboratories, self-tested more than 150 randomly selected flower samples from retail shelves and found 87 percent failed to meet the total cannabinoid levels claimed on their labels. According to Infinite’s analysis, more than half the tested flower showed a 20-percent deviation. To address the issue, in 2021...