Don’t shirk on product safety
Product safety is becoming an important topic of discussion in the field of medical cannabis. If we, as an industry, are truly committed to serving a vulnerable population of patients with a medically therapeutic product, we must strive to produce the safest product possible. Nobody wants to put out a product that makes a sick person more ill. It’s bad for the reputation of your business, fuels the existing social stigma about cannabis, and opens your company up to liability.
States with older medical cannabis laws often lack the robust regulatory standards for production that newer states like Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland mandate. The best way to protect your business is to implement effective product safety standards, often above and beyond what is necessary for compliance in your state’s medical cannabis program.
Enforcement of regulatory standards in most medical cannabis states is still largely complaint-driven. The majority of states have their programs seated under their Departments of Health, the same departments that inspect everything from restaurants to pharmaceutical production facilities. Medical cannabis facilities in many jurisdictions are subject to regular inspections that ensure compliance with state regulations, but additional surprise inspections and possible enforcement could precipitate from complaints registered by your patients about the quality of your product. If you provide a patient with an unsafe product that makes them ill, you will likely get a surprise visit from such an inspector.
Remember that as an industry, we are still striving for validation in the national dialogue. Even though some states have lax or nonexistent product-safety standards, we must keep in mind that the products we supply are intended for human consumption by ill people and have to hold ourselves to an accordingly high standard.
At a minimum, food-safety standards should be maintained at all times. Inventory management systems that allow for batching and product recall should also be implemented, providing a way to minimize loss in the event of a recall. Above all, if you are in a state that allows laboratory testing, you should have all flowers tested for fungal and microbial contaminants. Testing becomes even more important regarding extracts and concentrates, as otherwise acceptable levels of contaminants could be multiplied to unacceptable levels.
There have even been instances already where a Department of Health has issued a recall on a specific product. During an inspection of an edible vendor’s facility in Colorado, an inspector discovered that cold-water hash was being produced in a regular washing machine intended for clothes. Washing machines often hide growths of mold and are not capable of being sanitized properly to manufacture something intended for human consumption. In another example from Colorado, improper refrigeration of food and concentrates led to a cease-and-desist order against a manufacturer by the Denver Department of Environmental Health. There is even now a precedent for federal enforcement regarding product and manufacturing safety. During “Operation Shattered Dreams,” the Drug Enforcement Administration raided butane hash oil manufacturers in Washington State and California because the targets were using open-blasting techniques in residential neighborhoods, raising serious safety concerns.
Knowing that each state has different product-safety standards, in most states it is simply not enough to meet the baseline requirements. If we want to be a reputable industry, we should strive to offer patients the safest products possible. As mentioned before, it is both good for business and helps mitigate any liability of litigation down the road.
In recent years, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) partnered with the American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) to produce national standards for the medical cannabis industry. Working with medical cannabis companies from across the United States who are recognized for their leadership in their respective fields, AHPA published standards for the areas of cultivation, distribution, manufacturing, and analytic testing that have actually been adopted by multiple state regulatory programs.
Regardless of what is required for compliance in your jurisdiction, implementation of these standards will put your organization among others who intend to provide patients with the highest quality medicine possible. Adoption of high standards — like those published by AHPA — will help your organization lessen the possibility of costly enforcement from state (and sometimes federal) actors and also ensure the safety of the patients using your product.
