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Holistic Industries knew its marijuana-growing facility in Massachusetts had a mold problem in 2020 and 2021.
To sell its cannabis, Holistic had to have it tested under state health regulations aimed at keeping moldy marijuana off store shelves. The company figured out that a specific kind of lab test would still likely give its weed a passing score and asked the lab it hired to use those tests, Massachusetts cannabis regulators alleged this year.
The pot, despite smelling and tasting moldy, passed.
The Cannabis Control Commission investigated, and in April fined Holistic $200,000 and mandated it test with a state-contracted lab. It was not enough. In August, Holistic cannabis showed up moldy in stores, another lab’s tests showed, creating a potential public health hazard and highlighting lapses in the state’s marijuana testing system that may place consumers at risk.
A spokesman for the Maryland-based company said consumer safety is of “the utmost importance” and that, after a renovation, there is no active mold outbreak at Holistic’s cultivation facility in Monson, just east of Springfield.
But can customers trust the labels on their cannabis products that proclaim them properly tested? No, a Globe analysis suggests.
The Massachusetts testing system for the cannabis industry is poorly designed and fitfully enforced, leaving companies essentially free to shop around for favorable lab test results for potency and contaminant levels, a Globe review of data and interviews with industry insiders found. These common practices cloud consumers’ ability to know what is in their cannabis and potentially jeopardizes key promises of legalization: reliability, transparency, and public health protections.
“It’s a very well-known secret that everyone is [lab] shopping — you’re not in business if you’re not shopping,” said Kate Avruch, founder of the cannabis workforce training program Operator Academy who has worked in the Massachusetts industry since 2016.
In one instance, she said, a lab representative told her: “What test results do you need from us in order to keep your business?”
The risks of all this to consumers are real: A fifth of Massachusetts residents now consume marijuana and ingesting moldy cannabis repeatedly can lead to coughing, chest pain, chronic inflammation, and, in extreme instances, life-threatening lung infections, research suggests.
The Globe analyzed anonymized testing data obtained from the commission through a public records request, detailing THC and yeast and mold results from the 16 laboratories Massachusetts has licensed. The analysis found vastly diverging contaminant failure rates and potency results among the labs, which experts said signaled widespread inaccuracies.
Between April 2021 and December 2023, one lab failed 16.4 percent of samples for yeast and mold, while another failed just 3.3 percent. A third lab failed fewer than 1 percent of samples, which defies credulity for the plant, multiple scientists said.
For growers, the incentive to lab-shop is financial: A larger chunk of cultivators’ crop can reach the shelves if less product fails for contaminants. Failed tests force companies to forgo immediately selling 15-pound batches of marijuana, worth upward of $30,000, based on typical dispensary prices. That can be the difference between a cultivator making payroll and falling into the red. And higher potency weed is easier to sell.
The flawed testing system also means consumers — some of whom turn to cannabis to ease medical issues, including insomnia, depression, and chronic pain — cannot rely on labels that specify the potency of the product. They cannot be sure their dosing matches the experience they want.
“It makes me nervous,” said Aaron Little, a Gloucester medical cannabis patient with an immune system disorder that makes him highly vulnerable to infection, after learning of the Globe’s findings. “We need to have confidence in testing to make sure we aren’t ingesting anything that is actively harming us — the same as Tylenol and Benadryl. It’s marketed as a health product. There should be better standards there.”
State regulators have not responded aggressively to this threat. The commission’s rules are full of holes, and its enforcement efforts appear largely moribund. Despite reports earlier this year that the agency was beefing up its “secret shopper” program, ATOZ Laboratories, the lab contracted to test samples that the commission secretly buys off the shelf, says no such products have been admitted for testing.
“It’s a secret to us, too,” said its lab director, Corey Aldoupolis.
At least five cannabis scientists have shared with the Globe presentations or emails they gave to the commission flagging concerns about lab-shopping and inaccurate test results, dating back as far as 2021. The commission’s own research team also raised red flags about suspicious patterns in testing data in January.
“The taxes for cannabis are coming in, but the agency that should be enforcing testing is asleep at the wheel,” said Kevin McKernan, founder of Beverly-based testing equipment manufacturer Medicinal Genomics. “It’s created an environment in the marketplace where everyone is encouraged to cheat.”
In a statement, a commission spokesperson defended its regulations, saying Massachusetts’ licensed labs “are held to some of the highest standards in the nation,” and citing examples of the agency fining cultivators for pesticide use and a lab for improperly disposing of marijuana. The commission also requires plant material found to have impurities to be retested and can mandate additional screenings as needed.
“Consumers and patients should remain confident that the regulated products they purchase in Massachusetts have passed testing for contaminants within the past year,” the spokesperson added.
Exceeding the state limit for yeast and mold does not automatically make a product unsafe, and testing criteria vary across the nation. Some states, including Michigan and Connecticut, allow the sale of cannabis with mold readings 10 times the Massachusetts limit. And some cannabis strains can support more mold than others, which can contribute to an abnormal distribution of results, a commission spokesperson said.
But seven scientists with cannabis expertise said that consumers in the state are being misled, and laboratories producing inaccurate tests — either intentionally or unknowingly — are rewarded with clients.
Citing the flaws in the system, one of the state’s oldest testing facilities, ProVerde Labs, no longer has clients bringing in cannabis flower samples for it to test, said chief scientific officer Chris Hudalla. He said some of its customers flocked to other labs that he believes may manipulate results.
“No testing would be better than what we do today,” he said. “It gives consumers a false sense of safety.”
Shortly after Massachusetts legalized medical marijuana in 2012, it became among the first states in the country to require cannabis be tested. Other states have since been more proactive, though, restricting testing technologies, sharing testing data publicly, and starting to weed out bad actors, industry experts said. Policy changes along those lines, plus increased enforcement, have led to lab closures in Washington and Nevada.
But in Massachusetts, lab executives said, vague state testing rules do not adequately specify which testing procedures or equipment labs should use to determine THC and contaminant levels. Cultivators choose their own samples for testing, allowing them to pick fuller, healthier buds to represent a large batch. And labs sometimes shuffle between two types of tests, which can spit out different results.
The Globe analysis found three of the four labs with the highest failure rates for total yeast and mold have seen the number of samples they test fall, as labs that pass more product scoop up market share.
The labs are not named in the data, but the one that was once the busiest in the state also failed cultivators’ marijuana for total yeast and mold most often. Ultimately, it saw a 28 percent decline in the number of cannabis samples it tested in 2023. The same year, a new lab opened its doors for the first time, flunking cultivators 65 times less often than the large lab hemorrhaging clients.
The market shift coincided with a drop in total yeast and mold levels statewide from 10.1 to 7.7 percent between 2022 and 2023. (The commission also requires cannabis be tested for heavy metals, pesticides, and other contaminants.)
Those improved figures may deceive. Growers tweaking their processes may contribute to fluctuations in contaminant readings, but it’s unlikely that explains all the inconsistencies in testing results in Massachusetts, said Josh Swider, founder of San Diego-based Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs.
Some cannabis companies and labs are likely remediating samples that would otherwise fail without regulators’ knowledge by putting cannabis in X-ray machines or freezing it — techniques that can pause live fungal and bacterial growths or kill them entirely, Swider said. These practices, which can mask the presence of contaminants, are not included in the state testing protocol.
“Sometimes, lab employees are directed to do things wrong,” Swider said. “Laboratories don’t know what they’re doing sometimes.”
The Globe review of state dataalso found that readings of THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana that causes a high feeling, have ballooned. Higher THC levels allow growers to charge more money for cannabis, at a time when marijuana prices are plummeting.
Across the state, the average THC readings rose from 20 to 24 percent within three years, and the share of all cannabis buds testing at a whopping 30 percent THC or higher nearly doubled to 13.6 percent in 2023, up from 6.9 percent in 2022. For comparison, researchers believe 40 years ago, marijuana contained less than 2 percent THC.
To amp up THC levels, Swider said, companies can dust products with keefe, the tiny, potent crystals that cover cannabis flowers, or by heating samples to extract moisture. (The commission forbids heating cannabis to dry it before testing.)
The data on yeast and mold tests suggest rampant lab-shopping.
For example, a cultivation facility for Jushi Holdings relied heavily on a lab with a 16 percent total yeast and mold failure rate for two years, frequently garnering yeast and mold results almost 50 times the legal limit. Later, the facility switched to another lab that failed under 4 percent of its total samples across all clients.
Trent Woloveck, chief strategy director at Jushi Holdings, said the company stands by its product quality, adding that it optimized its lab testing processes “to improve economies of scale and ensure best-in-class safety standards.”
Another facility, operated by Northeast Alternatives, did not have a single sample for total yeast and mold fail testing between October 2023 and the end of last year, immediately after switching to a lab that only failed 0.3 percent of samples from all their clients. (Northeast Alternatives did not respond to questions from the Globe.)
A third location, a facility operated by INSA, rarely failed yeast and mold tests, too, after largely turning to a lab with a low failure rate around March 2023.
INSA chief executive Pete Gallagher said the company has worked to improve quality, and its decision to switch labslast yearwas “driven by operational efficiencies and cost savings.”
Testing is expensive for cultivators, but it’s also costly for labs, particularly when they lose clients. Running a testing facility requires specialized equipment and trained scientists, and carries high transportation expenses. At least two labs in Massachusetts have already closed, due in part to financial issues.
Megan Dobro, founder of Westfield-based SafeTiva Labs, said a client once told her the hard truth: SafeTiva’s prices were competitive, but the grower was looking for something else. It sent samples to seven labs and simply chose the one that returned the most preferable results, despite SafeTiva’s cost and turnaround time guarantees.
“It’s discouraging to hear a client chose another lab because they had higher THC numbers,” Dobro said. “Or that they failed a microbial test with us, so they’ll just use another lab.”
The competitive pressures squeeze labs that see themselves as honest brokers, said Michael Kahn, founder of MCR Labs in Framingham.
“It’s not like we want to provide more failures,” he said. “We just refuse to lie.”
To fix the problem, industry specialists said the commission should conduct more surprise testing on products in stores, share testing data publicly, specify how labs should conduct their tests, and place more restrictions around how cultivators can choose their own samples.
Had those efforts been in place, it may have helped pinpoint the problems at Holistic, the company fined over its mold issue, more quickly.
Afterthemold was documented with photographs and a commission investigation, regulators ordered Holistic to test with a state contractor, Hopkinton-based ATOZ Laboratories, for six months to ensure the cannabis was above-board.
Holistic said ATOZ upped its prices, so the commission allowed the cultivator to switch to two other labsunder an agreement between regulators and the company.One of the labs Holistic switched topassed the majority of Holistic’s samples for certain contaminants, according to data shared with the Globe.
After a rival lab, ProVerde — unaffiliated with the agency — took it upon itself to test three Holistic samples off a store shelf in August, it found two failed for total yeast and mold. One sample presented 12 times the state’s allowable limit; another exceeded it by four times, records show.
Hudalla, ProVerde’s founder, flagged the issues in a Sept. 11 email to the commission.
“It is concerning that … moldy product that predates the Holistic enforcement action is still available for purchase today, and that no re-call for re-screening for microbial contaminants was part of that enforcement action,” Hudalla wrote.
The commission is reviewing that complaint, a spokesperson said.
Kyle Crossley, general counsel at Holistic Industries, denied that the company sought out new labs that failed fewer samples and said it is now working with the commission to find a new lab to complete the final three months of the state testing requirement, based on “pricing, process, and turnaround time.” (The requirement was put on pause until that new lab is under contract.)
“We will always comply with everything state regulators ask of us,” Crossley said.
In early September, the 13 remaining active labs met with a commissioner. The commission now intends to hold a public hearing on lab practices in coming months.
“It couldn’t come fast enough,” said Jeff Rawson, founder of the Massachusetts-based Institute of Cannabis Science. “There appears to have been no acknowledgment ever that the health of human beings was at stake here.”
Naomi Martin of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_. Scooty Nickerson can be reached at scooty.nickerson@globe.com.
“}]] The state’s cannabis testing system is poorly designed and enforced, leaving companies essentially free to shop around for favorable lab results for potency and contaminant levels. Read More