Girl Scout Cookies, Superman OG, Silver Haze, and Critical Kush are just some of more than a dozen medical cannabis strains Michigan regulators recalled from two dispensaries on Friday. Friday’s recalls are mandatory and require that dispensaries notify affected customers who may have purchased the contaminated strains. Lab test failures for mold, yeast, and other contaminants prompted the recalls, drawing attention to Michigan’s urgent need for more medical cannabis testing facilities and licensed cultivators.
Medical Cannabis Recalls Stem From Michigan’s Out of Sync Industry
Since 2016, Michigan’s marijuana laws have been undergoing some massive revision. The state legalized medical cannabis in 2008, but opted not to set up much in the way of regulatory or licensing frameworks. Patients and caregivers had to enroll in the program and get certifications. But with no licensed producers, cultivation, and production fell to patients and caregivers themselves.
That changed in 2016 when a coalition of conservative state lawmakers began passing legislation aimed at taxing, regulating and licensing the state’s medical cannabis program. But by then, an entire informal industry of unlicensed growers and distributors had emerged, along with dozens of unlicensed dispensaries. Realizing Michigan’s medical cannabis infrastructure could simply turn on a time and adopt new regulations, officials implemented a set of “emergency rules” for cannabis businesses. Among other things, the emergency rules gave businesses temporary approval to continue operating while they put their licensing applications together.
Licensing, as many in the industry have experienced, is a lengthy bureaucratic process that routinely encounters delays. And while Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) worked on licensing processors, producers, distributors and “provisioning centers,” it gave the green light for dispensaries to stock medical cannabis grown by caregivers. In fact, LARA more or