Oregon Marijuana

Oregon's public health officials want to scale back some pesticide testing rules for recreational and medical marijuana. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, file)

(Andrew Selsky)

The latest proposed changes to Oregon's marijuana testing rules reduce key requirements, prompting a fierce backlash from some lab owners and extract producers who say weaker rules will lead to contaminated cannabis reaching the market.

The Oregon Health Authority's rules advisory committee will take up the changes at a meeting Thursday in Portland. The health authority sets pesticide rules for both medical and recreational marijuana.

Among the proposals: Instead of requiring that every batch of marijuana extract and concentrate be screened for pesticide contamination, the products would be randomly tested annually. But all of the marijuana used to make those products would first be screened for pesticides.

The state also has proposed new rules for marijuana flower headed to the market.

Current rules require about 33 percent of all batches of marijuana flower for the recreational system be tested for pesticides. The change would give authority to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission to require less testing. Under the proposal, at least 20 percent of marijuana flower would undergo pesticide testing. (In the medical marijuana system, 100 percent of medical flower batches still would undergo pesticide testing.)

Some industry representatives say the proposals represent a departure from what Oregon public health officials have hailed as the country's toughest pesticide testing rules for cannabis.

"It's a complete evisceration of everything we put into place," said Rodger Voelker, a chemist and lab director of OG Analytical, a Eugene testing lab.

At the same time, many in the industry support the revisions. Don Morse, a marijuana retailer and director of an association that represents cannabis businesses, said labs are pushing back on the changes to protect their own "pocketbooks."



"They want the most testing at the highest cost they can charge," Morse said.

Andre Ourso, manager of the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, said industry complaints about the cost of testing and delays faced by concentrate and extract makers getting their products to stores drove the proposals.

Also, more testing means more expense for the consumer, he said. By law, the state is supposed to consider consumer cost, as well as public safety, in drafting its rules.

He said the public may comment on the rules between March 15 through April 30. New rules are expected to go into place June 1.

"The agency will evaluate the public comment," he said. "If it comes out that this is not something the public wants, the agency won't adopt" the changes.

Voelker said the changes would gut testing provisions intended to identify tainted extracts -- products especially vulnerable to pesticide contamination.

When marijuana is processed into highly concentrated oils, pesticide levels can spike. If the finished product isn't retested, pesticides may go undetected.

Kevin Walsh, a founder of CO2 Company, a southern Oregon company that makes cannabis extracts, said the revisions take Oregon "10 steps backwards."

He said his company has made significant investments in its process and equipment to meet the standards set in earlier drafts of the rules.

"We put a ton of time and energy into building a quality control system that is super robust," he said.

Last month, the health authority told Oregon lawmakers that about 10 percent of marijuana flowers fail to meet state pesticide requirements; the fail rate for extracts and concentrates is about 26 percent.

"It's truly amazing," Voelker said. "Let's pick the worst problem we have and let's make it go away by ignoring it."

Cedar Grey, who owns a cannabis company in Williams, said the new requirements for extracts and concentrates translate into "almost no testing at all."

"For good actors, there is no need for these kinds of rules, but obviously we can see there are bad actors in the industry," Grey said. "There is a lot of poison product."

-- Noelle Crombie

503-276-7184; @noellecrombie