Regulators Announce Recall Firsts in California, New Jersey

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New Jersey’s cannabis regulators have announced exactly one cannabis recall, and that recall took place this week. 

In response to a complaint earlier this month, regulators said they tested “15 samples” of Green Joy branded cannabis flower, grown by licensee Green Medicine NJ, “from a single dispensary.” 

Regulators said that “12 flower packages were found to contain insects and one package contained what appeared to be human hair.”

Now, “random sampling and testing at cultivation and wholesale facilities associated with Green Medicine is ongoing.”

You can read the full recall notice here.

Also this week, California regulators announced a “voluntary recall for multiple ‘Kush Creaturz’ flower due to labeling that is attractive to children.”

While regulators in California have announced dozens of recalls in the past couple of years – with most of those taking place this year amid increased scrutiny – this is the first recall related to packaging “attractive to children.”

You can read that full recall notice here.

This week, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams held a news conference to announce that city officials have padlocked more than 779 unlicensed storefronts. And, the New York State Illicit Cannabis Enforcement Task Force closed another 230 + unlicensed shops. 

So, the number is now ~1,000. 

The biggest questions: how big of a piece of the sprawling unregulated cannabis store pie is 1,000? In other words, how many unlicensed shops were there to start with? And how many remain? And, how will New York’s unregulated market continue to shift? We already know that regulators aren’t enforcing against unlicensed cannabis events.

Officials and licensees have pointed toward increased sales at legal shops in tandem with the uptick in enforcement. 

“We have seen dramatic changes to our business ever since Governor Hochul took action to shut down illegal shops. Thanks to Governor Hochul, the visits to my shop have increased by 3,000 percent in the past 60 days, and this month, I’ve sold about 500 percent more product than in months before enforcement began,” Leeann Mata, owner of Matawana, a licensed shop, said in a statement.