Lawmakers, public health advocates seek tighter oversight of medical cannabis

AUGUSTA — Maine lawmakers from both parties joined public health advocates at the State House on Tuesday to introduce and advocate for legislation that would tighten regulations on growing and selling medical cannabis in the state.

“It’s good business practice to ensure you’re bringing quality, safe products to market,” said Sen. Marianne Moore, R-Washington. “Without mandatory testing, tracking and tracing, medical cannabis patients lack assurance that the products they are consuming are free from harmful contaminants.”

Recreational pot grown and sold in Maine must be tested for mold, chemicals and other contaminants. Products on shelves must be tested for purity and potency, while plants must be tracked from seed to sale.

The state’s medical market, however, has no such requirements, which means there are fewer safeguards to keep unsafe or illegal cannabis off the market. Maine is the only state in the country not to require testing for potency or contaminants, such as pesticides, heavy metals and yeast.

Two bills to mandate contaminant and purity testing have been introduced by Reps. Marc Malon, D-Biddeford, and Anne Graham, D-North Yarmouth, respectively.

Malon’s bill would standardize chemical, mold and contaminant testing between the recreational and medical industries. Graham’s would adopt the recreational market’s limits on the potency of cannabis edibles.

“In Maine, 18-year-olds can access medical cannabis without parental consent. They also don’t need a bona fide relationship with the prescribing health care provider,” Graham said. “Yet there’s no cap on THC content in edibles in the medical program, but there is a cap in the adult-use program.”

Medical cannabis industry groups are lobbying against the bills, saying that placing the onus of testing on growers and dispensaries would impede the free market that has made Maine’s medical industry one of the most profitable in the country.

In most states, medical weed struggles to compete with recreational. Here, though, medical cannabis is often cheaper for consumers than recreational in large part due to looser regulations. As a result, Maine’s medical market has always outperformed its recreational counterpart.

Malon and Graham spoke about their bills at a news conference Tuesday held by the Alliance for Responsible Cannabis in Maine, a coalition of bipartisan lawmakers and a dozen public health agencies formed this week to advocate for medical cannabis product testing and plant tracking.

“I think Maine medical consumers have the right to know what’s in the products they’re buying, and they deserve to be confident that what they are consuming is safe,” Malon said. “It makes sense to me that the medical program should be the gold standard for quality and consumer confidence.”

Members of the alliance include the Maine Public Health Association, the Maine Children’s Alliance and the Maine Association of Psychiatric Physicians.

Marijuana use among minors is on the rise in Maine. Nearly 20% of the state’s high schoolers use cannabis, a 2023 state study found. Underage marijuana use can increase the risk of mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia, child psychiatrist Dr. Amy Mayhew said Tuesday, though the full extent of side effects is not yet fully understood.

“I see a lot of kids that are not only using a lot of it, but using daily,” she said.

One group opposing the bill, the Maine Cannabis Union, says implementing testing and tracking requirements would price small-scale growers and companies out of business.

“They impose so many unreasonable and impractical regulations upon the industry,” MCU board member Paul McCarrier said in January of Malon’s bill. “You don’t want to impose a flawed program upon another sector of the industry.”

John Hudak, director of Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy, has previously expressed support for expanding medical cannabis testing. He said in 2023 that “if a business model is one in which producing clean cannabis is too costly, there’s something wrong with the business model.”

Unlike many states, Maine does not maintain a list of chemicals and contaminants testing facilities must look for. Instead, the state licenses individual testing facilities and allows them to establish safe limits of contaminants on their own.

McCarrier noted that the OCP has recently issued three recalls of recreational cannabis for mold contamination after products had already hit the shelves. Malon argued the recalls were the result of a system working as intended.

The push to more strictly regulate Maine’s medical industry comes amid an influx of suspected illegal grow houses into the market, which Malon cited as a factor in his writing the bill.

More than 120 suspected illegal grow houses — rural single-family homes hollowed and converted into industrial-scale unlicensed marijuana farms by alleged members of Chinese organized crime — have received medical caregiver licenses by the Office of Cannabis Policy. Chemical testing of products from several licensed grow houses found potentially fatal levels of toxic pesticides and fertilizers.

Some medical industry advocacy groups are welcoming illegal growers into the legal market. Tammy Smith, board chair of the Medical Marijuana Caregivers of Maine, said last year that licensing illegal growers “brings that operation into the light” and that “calling out” illicit growers could curb their influence in the market.

“We, as a trade organization, welcome new caregivers to the industry; those emerging from the illicit market are no exception,” Smith said. 

Close to half of Maine’s medical cannabis may contain pesticides and mold, two 2023 studies found. The fungicide Eagle 20EW, which creates cyanide gas when ignited and inhaled, was the most community found contaminant. The OCP has previously raised concerns that without testing and tracking, illegal grow houses could be silently selling tainted weed to medical dispensaries entirely legally.

Industry groups say concerns of tainted weed are overblown.

“If you have a product that people don’t want or a product that is tainted, you lose your customer base,” McCarrier said.

Malon agreed that few, if any, of Maine’s roughly 1,700 licensed medical growers are intentionally producing tainted weed, but said they should still have to demonstrate that their products are safe.

“It shouldn’t be left to patients to navigate the ins and outs of whether their products are properly tested,” he said.