Come July 1, 2018, cannabis testing labs are anticipating a bottleneck for their services according to a story by MJ Biz Daily. Why testing labs, why July 1? As you likely know by now, with California’s legalization of adult-use recreational cannabis back on January 1 of this year all licensed and compliant plant-touching businesses must have their products tested by a testing facility or company that is also licensed at the state and local levels.
Due to the complexity and massive scale of legalizing an entire industry (from the ground up) across a state as large and as populous as California, state and local regulators have afforded cannabusinesses a degree of a grace period during this transition to legalization. That grace period ends, yep, you guessed it, on July 1. At the strike of midnight on July 1 the regulations and expectations for products is to have been fully tested by testing labs. The rub lies with the fact that presently within California there’s a bit of a shortage of licensed testing facilities and, in fact, there are zero labs within the city of L.A. proper, and there are only 26 labs with temporary licenses in the entire state. (Ed. note: There is one in Lynwood and one in Long Beach).
Why are testing labs so crucial? For starters, all products must be tested for compliance and quality at all stages of the manufacturing/rendering process. Not so bad if you’re only testing a cannabis flower, but a little trickier if one is testing the flower, the rendered oil, and then the edible that’s made from the oil. Testing facilities go a little further, though. They also test for:
- Contamination from heavy metals and pesticides
- Relative potency of the strain
- Microbial infections –like noble rot as we’ve discussed previously
- And any residual contamination from cleaning agents or other sources
The shortage of testing labs will likely represent a painful crunch for plant-touching businesses of all shapes and sizes –this has largely been the same situation in states such as Colorado and Oregon– but in the long-term it does represent a tremendous business opportunity for savvy chemists who are familiar with the testing equipment and requirements.
For now? There are a few measures that testing labs and plant-touching businesses can take to brace for this July 1 crunch. If you’re a cultivator, manufacturer, or distributor, begin building relationships with testing facilities, determine which one will be best for your business and try to get your products tested now. For testing labs? Back in November, we wrote about a few of the measures that could be taken to meet the requirements for temporary licenses and a lot of those requirements are the same ahead of the July 1 deadline.
No matter if you are a plant-touching business or a testing lab, if you have questions about compliance or regulations, you should feel free to contact MMLG: info@mmlg.com or call (310)449.4528