“I know nothing about marijuana. I know that it’s not particularly dangerous. I know most of the kids are for legalizing it. But on the other hand, it’s the wrong signal at this time.”
So said Richard Nixon in a meeting at the Oval Office in 1973. Two years earlier, the same president rallied for an “all-out offensive” that became known as the War on Drugs. Recently published audio recordings show that “Tricky Dick” was not as misinformed about cannabis as the policies he supported would suggest – but that he was willing to mislead citizens for his own political interests.
Still, the tapes from that meeting find the president clearheaded, privately admitting that penalties for pot needed to be reevaluated: “Like in Texas where people get 10 years for marijuana – that’s wrong.”
How funny: Even Richard Nixon thought Texas’ weed laws were insane.
On Saturday, when that audio went national via a story in The New York Times, I was at a conference in College Station, listening to doctors, scientists, and lawyers discuss cannabis policy in Texas – where the laws still don’t make much sense.
It was my first year attending the Texas Cannabis Policy Conference, which ran last weekend on the A&M campus, and I was blown away by the level of intellect and expertise among the panelists. Science-heavy sessions on topics like intellectual property laws in relation to cannabis genetics made me wish I’d paid more attention in biology class, while a keynote from Sen. José Menéndez was disarmingly candid.
The program that I found the most interesting was billed as “Testing, Recalls, and Accountability for Consumer Protection.” I know, that title almost put me to sleep too, but the information was revelatory.
The session – moderated by the Austin attorney, advocate, and onetime ag commissioner candidate Susan Hays – began with a slide show by data scientist Yasha Kahn charting how cannabis lab testing is fraught with bullshit.
Kahn, a VP for MCR Labs, has spent years filing Freedom of Information Act requests to 37 states for their cannabis lab testing results and charting the data. Cannabis producers send their products to laboratories both to be evaluated for compliance with state standards on contaminants and also for the stickers that list percentages of active components like THC.
Turns out, even Richard Nixon thought Texas’ weed laws were insane.
Kahn’s histograms, with a dizzying amount of data points, indicate that there is a widespread issue of “lab shopping,” where cannabis producers seek out labs that will give them fraudulent results. He presented glaring charts showing that when a producer switches to a new lab, the failure rates for mold sharply decrease below the national average. It’s the same with “potency inflation,” which refers to labs that will give cannabis high THC levels. Overall, his results chart a 28% uptick in THC on the day a cultivator switches labs.
This leads to a troubling business trend, Kahn explained: that honest labs are going out of business, while dishonest labs take over the market. It’s also a sad situation for the consumer, who might be ingesting dangerous amounts of mold, pesticides, and heavy metals because of lab manipulation. Worse yet, we might be buying some weed that says it has 25% THC, when it only has 15%.
It made me realize that the old adage “You can’t believe everything you read” also applies to the stickers on weed.
I asked Kahn how lab shopping applies to Texas, where hemp-derived smokables are widely sold, claiming to be under 0.3% THC.
“It’s absolutely happening,” he said. “They’ll say that all that’s in there is Delta 8 THC, when in reality it’s Delta 9. Or, if they want lower THC to be in compliance. There’s financial incentive for the lab to find the results that the client wants to see.”
Kahn says the good news is that there’s a mountain of data supporting solutions, like off-the-shelf testing programs, where product labels are compared with secondary testing (with inconsistencies prompting recalls) and for states to have cannabis testing regulation that defines methods and validation. He showed that the very day that a regulatory update went into effect in Maryland, the failure rate for mold jumped from 1% to 21%.
Being a nascent and loophole-oriented cannabis economy, Texas lacks regulations that would limit lab manipulation, but it’s a good thing for lawmakers to consider as the cannabis market continues to be established.
When Susan Hays asked Tyler Klimas, former director of the Cannabis Regulators Association, how Texas should move forward with lab testing, he advised building out the Texas medical cannabis program (TCUP) and copying the best practices from other states that have already figured it out.
“You’re not exactly flying in the dark here,” he said. “You have 24 adult-use states and 36 medical states to rely on. You have the blueprint, you just have to get the resources.”
Meanwhile, Peter Stout, head of Houston’s crime lab, provided revealing insights into the law enforcement side of cannabis testing in Texas.
He said that, prior to 2019’s hemp bill, it used to cost him dollars and take minutes to simply identify whether a sample was marijuana. Now it costs hundreds and takes hours to determine court-admissible THC thresholds – and no one has a clarity on what the laws are. With 5,000-10,000 drug cases annually and limited resources, he sets aside misdemeanor amounts and only tests felony quantities of flower – and doesn’t even touch vapes and oils.
“Every dollar I spend on testing [marijuana] is a dollar I don’t have for sexual assault kits and homicide evidence,” he said to the afternoon’s loudest applause. “I can’t keep up with the pills we know are killing people – why in the world am I going to spend money on that?”
This article appears in September 20 • 2024.