With a new director of testing gone after just one week, Massachusetts cannabis commissioners address issues with underlying protocols
It would be impossible to overstate the gravity of everything that’s happening around laboratory testing in the Massachusetts cannabis space. Once an issue only near and dear to the hearts of lab rats and weed nerds, news touching topics such as potency and mold evaluations is now front and center, and is being watched by everyone from investors to consumers. That’s in part due to a major lawsuit between Independent Testing Labs (ITLs), as well as a February “health and safety advisory” which provided more questions than answers.
Members of the Cannabis Control Commission have paid close attention to testing for months. Last November, they hosted a listening session in which CCC members heard testimonies from ITLs and other segments of the industry impacted by problems facing this license class. And last December, amid increasing pressure to act on these matters, department heads made a proposal at the body’s monthly meeting which they argued could “elevate the integrity of the testing process and ensure compliance.”
The resulting administrative order, “Requiring Licensees to Submit Full Panel Test Sample for Required Compliance Testing,” was issued on Dec. 17, 2024. Its intent: “to ensure proper testing of Marijuana and Marijuana Products sold or otherwise marketed to Patients and Consumers consistent with its statutory mandate.” Nicknamed the “One Sample, One CoA” policy, it dictated that manufacturers and cultivators use only “one ITL for all required test panels.”
Though many stakeholders had hoped for more significant reform, with some telling Talking Joints Memo that the action showed how tone deaf the CCC is on the issue, most people watching nonetheless seemed to consider the announcement as progress. Designed to prevent producers from cherrypicking the best results from multiple labs, the new order was set to go into effect on April 1, 2025. But with that date coming up in less than a month, at last Thursday’s public meeting, members revisited the measure to slightly amend the upcoming directive.
Metrc doesn’t “have that functionality”
In an explainer published shortly after the “One Sample, One CoA” policy was announced, Megan Dobro of SafeTiva Labs offered an overview: “This means compliance panels can only be performed by one lab. … As far as I understand, producers will still be able to send different samples out to different labs as long as a single sample does not get split up between labs. R&D samples can still be sent to multiple labs for single tests, but compliance cannot be obtained by combining partial CoAs from different labs.”
Additionally, there is a lot of fine print, including the following language which commissioners voted unanimously to remove last week: “Licensees shall not create multiple Test Sample Packages from the same Marijuana or Marijuana Product source package for compliance testing panels; provided, however, Licensees may create one (1) additional Test Sample Packages per source package for the purposes of Quality Control Samples pursuant to Section 5.4 of the Protocol.”
CCC Chief of Investigations and Enforcement Nomxolisi Jones said the agency does “not have that functionality with [the state’s seed-to-sale software] Metrc to move forward with duplicate sampling, so we wanted to let the public and licensees know.” She added that the change came in part from feedback the commission received from testing labs.
Regarding the amendment, acting Chair Bruce Stebbins said, “I understand the need to change the protocol. And I understand the Metrc functionality piece.” He asked rhetorically, seeding further consideration, “At some point, if Metrc gave us this functionality, is there still a benefit to having this work done?”
Commissioner Kimberly Roy said the “original protocol still needs to be addressed.” It reads: “Duplicate samples shall be collected to provide verification of sampling and laboratory procedures. Specifically, a duplicate should be collected for 5 percent (1 per 20) of the samples collected for each Marijuana product type. Duplicate samples shall not be identified to the ITL (this is considered blind quality control). Duplicate samples are used to evaluate any variance in the sampling and analysis procedures. To ensure authenticity, it should be noted that QC samples should be taken on the same day and be derived from the same batch.”
Director of testing gone after a week
On top of all the other drama around testing and compliance, it was made public at last Thursday’s CCC meeting that the agency’s recently hired director of testing resigned after only a week. In his place, Chief People Officer Debbie Hilton-Creek said Timothy Barwise will step in as the interim director of testing “temporarily … until we recruit a new director of testing.”
Hilton-Creek, who seems to hold the state and local media that covers the commission in the same regard as Donald Trump does MSNBC, then said that she needed to comment further, “just briefly, on the new director of testing role.”
“We did hire a director of testing, and unfortunately after one week, he resigned,” she said. “And just to be clear, to the media, the resignation was because of an opportunity he received that allowed him to move out of the state and be closer with family. Here at the commission we’re all about family, so we totally understand, though we were extremely disappointed because he was the best of the candidates that we had interviewed for the role.”
In the meantime, they’re looking. A job description posted on March 10 reads: “The Director of Testing, under the direction of the Chief of Investigations and Enforcement, is responsible for the overall operation and administration of the Independent Testing Laboratories (ITLs), including assisting the Investigations and Enforcement Department staff in ensuring that licensed Marijuana Establishments (ME) and Medical Treatment Centers (MTC) operate safely and securely throughout the Commonwealth and abide by Commission regulations.”
The role of testing director at the commission is becoming similar to that of Spinal Tap percussionist. Before this latest setback, the person who held the position from late-2022 through much of last year came under the scrutiny of national industry outlets for his industry ties and potential conflicts of interest—concerns that blogger Grant Smith-Ellis had sounded alarms about for months before they became widely acknowledged.
Meghan Dube, the CCC’s business operations manager who was recently suspended from the agency for unspecified reasons after speaking to reporters about various hot button agency topics, lamented the latest developments within the larger context on social media last week.
“It is really scary that amid crisis/chaos around testing in the industry and new testing requirements beginning in two weeks, the newly hired director of testing (started Feb. 24) has already resigned and the role posted again as of March 10th (two weeks later). This was after 8 months of vacancy, for a role that was first ever filled in October 2022,” Dube wrote on LinkedIn. “Health and safety are top legislative mandates—these concerns should start with properly resourcing the area of the agency that oversees the health and safety of the patients and consumers of cannabis.”
