State says cannabis stores need ‘quick response code’




 

 

Even though marijuana is legal in California, there are still shops that operate outside the law and sell products that may not meet state testing standards. The lapse could lead to a range of health issues for the people who consume them, officials say.

In an effort to direct customers toward safe, legal dispensaries, the Bureau of Cannabis Control, the state agency that oversees the marijuana industry, says it will require dispensaries to post a quick response (QR) code that, when scanned, will show customers the store’s license information.

The BCC had announced early in January that it was encouraging stores to display the QR code, but the agency announced Jan. 23 that it intends to amend its regulations and make display of the code mandatory.

Alex Traverso, a spokesperson for the BCC, said the change was in response to a series of search warrants served on unlicensed Los Angeles dispensaries in December.

The cannabis products seized were tested, he said, and “we got the lab results on the products, and it showed 75% of the tested products had all these additives and cutting agents that we know from tracing back are the things making people sick, whether it’s vitamin E acetate, vitamin E, vegetable oil, whatever people are using. At that point we decided to make the QR code mandatory because we have a public safety issue and we really want people to have an easier way to identify legal shops.”

There are many businesses across the state operating under Prop. 215, the legislation passed in 1996 that made medical marijuana legal. When voters approved the Adult Use of Marijuana Act in 2016, the new legislation overruled Prop. 215, meaning dispensaries operating under the 1996 law had to come into compliance with the 2016 law or close their doors.

Because many medical marijuana dispensaries had been operating for years and are nearly indistinguishable from legal operations, people have continued to frequent the now-illicit businesses.

Traverso said now that cannabis is legal across the state, preexisting medical dispensaries that haven’t gotten licensed cannot claim to be geared toward healthcare when there are many state-sanctioned businesses people could go to.

“The focus for the illegal market is to make as much money as they can, as quickly as they can,” he said. “In doing that they’re cutting their cannabis oil with these agents to spread it out further, so they’re making more money off less product. People are buying what they think is good quality product but they’re getting filler and additives that are not safe to ingest. . . . I think that’s what we’re seeing on the illegal cannabis market.”

Traverso said that with the rise of vaping-related injuries and illnesses, the BCC is taking steps to remove products from shelves before consumers can come to harm. But the state can’t shut down every dispensary all at once, so in the meantime, mandating that legal businesses hang a QR code with their license information on their front door will at least show customers the products inside are safe.

Part of the problem, Traverso said, is how people find cannabis. Weedmaps, a popular online service that connects cannabis users with retailers and delivery services, doesn’t require verification that the businesses are licensed.

The BCC has taken notice of the issue.

“The administration has started to put a little more pressure on Weedmaps to come to the table and be a little better of an actor in the cannabis space and by that sense have a little tighter control over who is advertising on their site,” Traverso said. “They did say last year before the end of the year they would make sure they only had businesses listed that have license numbers from the state. I think they dumped a couple thousand listings.”

Follow Ian Bradley on Twitter @Ian_ reports.