A recent review of Colorado’s recreational marijuana products has revealed that over 85% of the products sold by regulated cannabis retailers may violate labeling and health laws. An analysis conducted by one cannabis operator found a shocking amount of microbial and pesticide contaminants in a majority of retail adult-use products Colorado residents consume.
In November 2024, Ripple CEO Justin Singer instructed his staffers to purchase cannabis pre-rolls, shakes, and flower from marijuana retailers in the Denver area. Singer was frustrated by the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division’s (MED) seeming reluctance to carry out its mandate of ensuring state-regulated marijuana products are safe to consume by conducting product tests and punishing cannabis companies that don’t meet set safety standards.
Ripple sent the shake, bud, and pre-rolls it had purchased to a state-regulated marijuana lab to conduct tests for mold, yeast, potency, microbial, and pesticide contamination. The laboratory found that just 2 of the 15 products Ripple staffers had bought from Denver-area cannabis retailers complied with Colorado regulations.
Furthermore, the tests found that some of the products had dangerously high levels of microbial and pesticide contaminants. 12 of the products (80%) also exceeded the 15% THC level allowed. Singer says that while he expected at least 30% of the products to fail the tests, the actual results were a lot worse than he expected.
The proliferation of substandard and often contaminated products has been one of the main challenges facing America’s state legal cannabis industry. Several prior studies have already found that a notable portion of the cannabis products on the market often don’t meet potency and labeling requirements.
Even so, the situation in Colorado, one of the country’s largest cannabis markets, seems to be especially deplorable. Singer says the issues with Colorado’s potency testing systems came to his attention in 2024 when he tested samples at three laboratories and received different results. His self-funded study tested for coliform, mycotoxins, pesticides, heavy metals, and residual solvents like acetone.
Coliform refers to a group of bacteria that typically occur in human and animal intestines. Although Colorado doesn’t mandate coliform testing for marijuana products, 17 other states require cannabis labs to test for coliform. Unsurprisingly, 4 of the 15 tested products had high levels of coliform bacteria with one pre-roll recording 12,000 colony-forming units (CFU), 120 times more than the legal limit for industrial hemp products.
Jill Ellsworth, the CEO of marijuana decontamination firm Willow Industries, likened aerobic and coliform bacteria to feces and said the contamination of these bacteria was the ‘most concerning’. She says that even though Colorado has implemented a cannabis testing rule, it has dropped the ball on enforcement.
Singer says Colorado could ensure cannabis retailers stock their shelves with clean products by copying other state-level cannabis markets and launching a marijuana-specific reference laboratory to test cannabis products. Ultimately, it will be up to state regulators to enforce cannabis testing rules.
If this experiment can be extrapolated to different states where regulated marijuana sales are permitted, it may become clear that lax enforcement isn’t only bad for consumers but also the entire cannabis industry and its leading actors like Green Thumb Industries Inc. (CSE: GTII) (OTCQX: GTBIF) since it is unfair to compete with entities that aren’t adhering to the existing rules in that market.
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