CCC approves protections following revelations that legal department pressured staff to soften findings around testing
In a public meeting of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission last month, members completed their investigation into the 2025 Review and Assessment of the Massachusetts Adult and Medical Use Cannabis Industries. Specifically, commissioners dug into allegations that the industry report was incomplete and delayed.
Investigating the industry report
The so-called industry report was published on the CCC research page in February 2025. I subsequently noted omissions from the document, such as limitations in the scope of the data included. While presenting the report to the CCC, its author, Director of Research Julie Johnson, Ph.D., voiced concerns about a review of it by the legal department just before it was submitted.
Since her return to the CCC from a suspension that was ruled unlawful, Chair Shannon O’Brien and colleague Commissioner Kimberly Roy have proceeded to look into that report. In a Nov. 18 public meeting, O’Brien stated, “It’s my understanding that our research team had … been looking to get internal data about information that was collected from different Independent Testing Labs and that there was a decision made by the legal team to remove certain language from the report that we sent to the legislature.”
In response, CCC General Counsel Kajal Chattopadhyay said: “…the legal division neither changed any data, omitted any data, or recommended any kind of actions with respect to data and its review.”
A memo was released with the Dec. 11 public meeting agenda which recounted CCC Executive Director Travis Ahern’s investigation into the same report. The document delineates the history of the research department’s requests for datasets from the Metrc database of compliance test results, and concludes: “The timeline of data requested from the Research team… supports the need for a process improvement.”
Some of the improvements, including automation of the data retrieval and expansions of the scope, were discussed at other points on Dec. 11.
Defining “data”
The memo also compares versions of the report’s “considerations” (recommendations) from before and after the February 2025 review by Chattopadhyay. In conclusion, Ahern wrote, “Statements made at the Nov. 18th, 2025 [meeting] related to the removal of data from the 2025 Industry Report were misstated or misleading.”
In the public meeting discussion on Dec. 11, O’Brien addressed Ahern’s conclusion regarding removal of data: “Information was changed in this report. So I’m hoping that in your memo, which states that somebody here made a misstatement, I don’t think that it’s a misstatement of fact … to say that information was changed.”
The chair added that the CCC’s primary job is to “protect public health and safety,” saying in regard to the industry report, “that did not occur.”
Ahern conceded the point.
Considerations edited by general counsel
The changes to the text of the industry report constituted the bulk of its discussion on Dec. 11. One consideration was edited to remove acknowledgement that anomalies in testing data suggest “potency or contaminant testing issues.” The largest change was the removal from one of the testing considerations of the phrase: “Economic pressure can potentially drive growers, product manufacturers, and labs toward higher cannabinoid results and passing safety screens.”
This latter change concerned Commissioner Roy, who said, “To take out the first half of that sentence makes it inaccurate, or at best incomplete.” She went on to describe investigative reporting from 2024 which included Metrc data and input from the CCC’s research team: “According to the Wall Street Journal and related industry analysis, cannabis cultivators and product manufacturers and labs are driven to manipulate potency and safety screens primarily by intense economic pressures.”
Roy continued: “Key economic factors driving this manipulation include consumer demand for high potency, intense competition and oversupply, lab shopping, high regulatory costs and taxes, lax or inconsistent regulatory oversight and safety screen manipulation.”
O’Brien added: “To me, this was a very important message to be sending to the legislature, especially because we are constantly advocating that we need a state-run standard testing laboratory, and the reason we need that is because we need to have consistency. We need to have transparency.”
The 2025 industry report was one of the pieces of evidence presented to lawmakers as they set the CCC’s budget last year. In that cycle, additional funding to develop a secret shopper program and standard testing lab was denied.
Commissioner Roy also asked about a comment attached to one of the changes: “ … edited to try and reflect the research perspective without clashing with the testing compliance monitoring perspective.” ED Ahern suggested that the comment reflected “the I and E [Investigations and Enforcement] perspective.”
The comment was attached to a consideration stating that “inability to discern true 0s vs null 0s” hindered understanding the “true scope of potency or contaminant testing issues.” At the same time this report was being prepared, the CCC was investigating Assured Testing Labs for data entries which produced spurious 0s.
Called to account
General Counsel Chattopadhyay was asked to provide explanations. Commissioner Roy kicked off the questioning: “If you could provide with specificity what this [testing compliance monitoring] comment from legal meant …”
Chattopadhyay demurred about attorney-client privilege before answering, “I would reiterate what ED [Ahern] just said, in terms of trying to harmonize comments received from the different departments during the review process.” About his editing of the report just before its submission, the GC explained that he hadn’t joined the CCC as of the earlier review, “and I wanted to make sure that I had a chance to review myself and … add input.”
The discussion then returned to the removal of the “economic incentives” phrase, which Chattopadhyay explained was due to “liability considerations with respect to ongoing litigation.” In response, O’Brien asked, “We are not parties to any ongoing litigation that I’m aware of, are we?”
The general counsel’s response referred to a lawsuit between testing labs filed in January 2025: “We are not a party to an ongoing litigation, but there is a litigation that is pending and, as general counsel, it is part of my job to try to limit the liability of the commission, and to try to manage and mitigate risk.”
O’Brien countered, “Did you consider the liability risk of hiding information from the general public and the legislature?” To which Chattopadhyay responded, “I guess I take exception with the suggestion that we were hiding information. I think the issue was, we wanted to be accurate with what was being stated in a way that protected the commission.” He went on to insist that “there were no changes made to the data sections of the report.”
O’Brien was unsatisfied, and lectured him again with reference to the case of Assured Testing Labs: “We, at the same time, were apparently investigating one independent testing lab that appears to have had significant problems with testing accuracy … had economic incentive, and as a result, had grown its business to now be doing 25% of the testing across the entire industry.”
O’Brien continued: “Our potential liability could come by failing to protect public health and safety, by failing to do the regulation that we need to make sure that there is consistent reporting on THC levels to make sure that we’re protecting patients so that they can get the proper dosage of medicine they need.”
Chattopadhyay remained defensive, “I don’t get information related to ongoing investigations. … While the commission still is not a party to that ongoing lawsuit, that could change, and we could be added to the lawsuit. Changes that were recommended were offered in an effort to limit the commission’s liability and to avoid it from being added to this ongoing litigation.”
Chair O’Brien continued to flip the general counsel’s arguments of liability around, leading to a remarkable exchange about the CCC’s responsibilities of public communication …
O’Brien: So, are you not concerned that, by taking that information out that specifically names the problem, that you have not exposed us to liability because we’re not doing everything we can and should be doing to protect public health and safety? Do you have concerns about liability?
Chattopadhyay: I stand by the edit. I think … the edit was offered in good faith and to Commissioner Roy’s earlier point about the Wall Street Journal having reported on the phenomenon. Obviously the information about that phenomenon was out in the public. … The fact that that sentence was not included in the final draft of this report did not somehow prevent that information from being released to the public.
O’Brien: So do we just count on the Wall Street Journal to do our job?
A final point about pressure
The general counsel was dismissed from the table as commissioners discussed a motion intended to bolster the research team’s access to data and independence from interference. The discussion dug into the editing process one last time, with Commissioner Carrie Benedon saying, “My understanding is … that chiefs make proposed changes in track changes or via comments, but that ultimately it’s up to the Research team whether to accept them.”
Recalling the distress of Dr. Johnson in the February 2025 public meeting, Commissioner Roy disputed that the research department was free to reject the changes pushed by Chattopadhyay.
“I know you said they … accepted the changes, but if you read that meeting [minutes, members of the research team] were pushing back, and it was explained to them, We don’t want to be subpoenaed.” And, This is going to the legislature. … So there’s also a pressure on them to have to accept. And I don’t like that pressure.”
The motion to protect the process of preparing research reports carried unanimously. ED Ahern vowed to return soon with a new standard operating procedure for preparing reports that would permit commissioners to oversee comments from other departments while preserving the independence of the research team.
These discussions of the industry report toward the end of the Dec. 11 meeting were only the most recent evidence of the circumscription of the CCC’s research department, which appears to go back years. In 2024, CCC leadership canceled a conference presentation by Dr. Johnson about data and potential lab fraud at the last minute.
