A critical investigative tool, secret shoppers need to be used methodically, and with clear communication of how information is used
Over the past several years, we have covered countless subtopics around cannabis testing and business compliance. Many of those features, in the form of analysis of complicated Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission issues, have come from Dr. Jeff Rawson of the Institute of Cannabis Science.
Jeff’s perspective is especially unique because while he is definitely deep into the data of cannabis testing, he doesn’t draw a line where science ends and business begins. The bureaucrats who write the rules may not fully grasp the math, but he is fluent in the regulations as well as the rationale.
On Monday, the CCC held a remote hearing on the issues of delivery exclusivity and its secret shopper program. Below we reprinted Jeff’s testimony regarding the latter in full. -Chris Faraone, TJM Editor
Thank you Madame Chair and Commissioners, Mr. Executive Director, and all those gathered here today for the chance to speak. I would like to specially thank Commissioner Kimberly Roy for working so hard to bring the regulations for Secret Shopper to the top of the stack after they were buried for so long.
I hope that, after these refinements, our Legislature will fund the Secret Shopper program sufficiently to protect the consumers who have contributed (at least) hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue to the Commonwealth.
I’ve spent considerable time drafting modifications to the language of these regulations, and I hope you’ll examine those recommendations. I also hope the Commission will continue to seek our input as this policy evolves.
The most important consideration for Secret Shopper is how the program is applied. I have heard from many business operators who are afraid that this program would unfairly penalize them with aggressive punishments. These concerns must be reassured through strict adherence to the stated purpose: “The Secret Shopper Program is established to enable the Commission to assess compliance…”
Secret Shopper should be used as a measurement tool, an assessment. It should be used to answer the questions, How well is regulated cannabis serving consumers in Mass, and, How can it improve?
Secret Shopper is one critical investigative tool, not an entire investigation. You will need to implement it methodically and with clear communication of how the information is being used. We recommend you begin by integrating Secret Shopper into ongoing investigations as a source of evidence, rather than as a means to initiate investigations.
Broader samplings of the marketplace by the Secret Shopper program should also be conducted. The aggregated results from broader samplings can inform policy and the public. The specific results can be used as warnings to operators, but we shouldn’t rush to use isolated failures as grounds for punishment. The reason is that we haven’t yet learned enough about the many sources for differences between a certificate of analysis produced at compliance testing and a shelf-test of a product. It requires many investigative steps to establish the cause of a difference in test results.
The most challenging aspect of broadly sampling the marketplace will be selecting the samples. Statistically sampling a cannabis marketplace as diverse as the one in Massachusetts, with so many operators of such differing scales, is already hard, but restrictions on communications and advertisements about cannabis make it harder. The new Metrc product catalog might be a helpful tool for selecting samples, but the Commission may need to engage with the company to streamline it for these uses. The Commission’s own Director of Research should be an invaluable resource for designing selection in broad samplings.
Our ultimate goal should be to achieve a compliance regime in which adherence of the contents to the label of each cannabis package is the expectation rather than the exception. In such a regime, shelf tests from Secret Shopper would be used to initiate recalls of failing product categories at the producer’s expense. I believe such a compliance regime is years away, and that the judicious application of a Secret Shopper program today is necessary to bring it about.
Read more by Jeff at the Institute of Cannabis Science
