Colorado Announces Period of Randomized Cannabis Product Testing

The Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED) announced it will start randomly testing cannabis products sampled from industry retailers in October and collect data over the following three months to support its regulatory efforts.

Under the Surveillance Testing Program, MED officials will collaborate with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to collect samples from medical and adult-use cannabis retailers in the state. The samples will be submitted to the CDPHE Reference Laboratory for testing, where officials will evaluate the products for potential contamination, the accuracy of potency labels, and other helpful data points.

“The desired outcomes of this Program include, but are not limited to, collecting comprehensive data to inform policy gaps, operational best practices, and increasing product safety.” — Excerpt from the industry bulletin

Per Colorado law, the companies will submit products at no cost to the state. The licensees will be informed about any product batches that fail testing for contaminants so they can be quarantined and removed, and potentially recalled.

Meanwhile, an anonymous sampling of regulated cannabis products by researchers at the University of Boulder published in July found that most of the state’s cannabis flower products are mislabeled with inflated THC levels.