Already is
Kenny Novotny had a problem.
The owner of 1440 Processing was seeing lab results on over 90% of cannabis he bought and submitted for testing had failed.
Those failed batches came from marijuana growers who supposedly tested the marijuana themselves after harvest, he said. They were supposed to be up to the standards outlined in Oklahoma state law, and shouldnât have had elevated levels of pesticides, heavy metals or other dangerous chemicals â but they often did.
Financial incentives to cut corners, black market sales and a lack of state enforcement ability are forcing professionals like Novotny in the booming industry to self-police their products.
Novotny is a processor, meaning he uses specialized lab equipment worth millions of dollars to extract THC from marijuana plants, and infuse the chemical into a variety of products, including edibles, tinctures, pills and more. This kind of manufacturing massively expands the type of products available to patients beyond just the typical greens one might load into a pipe or roll into a joint.
Marijuana is Oklahomaâs latest boom industry. But can it be sustained?
Using tainted marijuana could not only damage the quality of the final product, it would damage Novotnyâs machines, and could ultimately harm medical marijuana users who consume the products.
So why is it that some marijuana thatâs supposedly been tested and âapprovedâ can fail so spectacularly when being re-tested?
It could be because some growers are mixing tainted, or lower-quality, marijuana with good marijuana, or even forging lab results.
The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, which oversees marijuana licensing in the state, recently shut down a lab it claims forged results for samples of medical marijuana, court records show.
But the OMMA had just two dozen inspectors last month who were responsible for monitoring more than 12,000 business licensees. The agency plans to triple the number of inspectors on staff by December to make sure every business is visited at least once this year, but until that point some businesses go without inspection for more than a year at a time.
Without a watchful eye, thereâs a financial incentive to cut corners when it comes to testing. It costs about $300 to test every 10 pounds of marijuana that a grower harvests, so it can get expensive quickly.
But that cost is worth the price for Novotny, even if a grower has promised quality product, and even if that grower has the documentation to âproveâ it.
âWhat our validation is, is to take the product, us pay $300 and send it off to make sure that what our trusted testers tell us matches the sheet of paper that they gave us,â Novotny said.
Struggles to police the black market
Novotny has also seen evidence of what he believes is continued trade of black market cannabis that either comes in from another state or is transported out.
One indication is when âbrokersâ message him on Instagram offering to sell thousands of pounds of marijuana, but disappear when Novotny replies saying he only buys from farms he can visit.
The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is tasked with investigating these kind of cases where illegal, likely black market supply, is shipped across Oklahoma borders.
âIt hasnât met testing standards and we just donât know if it would even pass Oklahoma standards,â OBN spokesman Mark Woodward said. âAnd itâs going to dispensaries where itâs often sold to patients who could have adverse effects from untested, black market product from out of state.â
Then, there are the sellers offering âfreshly harvestedâ batches during winter months at bargain prices similar to product grown at large-scale outdoor farms.
âAnd youâre looking at it like, what do you mean you just cut it? Not in Oklahoma, you didnât,â Novotny said.
To clamp down on black market weed, the state is trying to implement a seed-to-sale tracking system. The system is similar to what other states use to track marijuana inventory along the supply chain, and would allow for nearly any medical marijuana item sold to be traced back to its source with a few computer keystrokes.
Stitt announces new medical marijuana director; Oklahomaâs fourth in three years
Without the tracking system, medical marijuana in Oklahoma is a billion-dollar industry with little ability to discern where supply is coming from. On average, Oklahomans with medical marijuana licenses are spending more than $200 per month on cannabis, according to an analysis of patient licenses and tax revenue.
The number of total sales since Oklahoma voters approved medical marijuana in 2018 is on track to surpass $2 billion this year.
Itâs widely believed seed-to-sale tracking could virtually eliminate black market trade among licensed cannabis businesses by more thoroughly identifying sources of marijuana and where those products are sold.
Implementation of the system has been delayed, however, because of a lawsuit alleging the tracking service picked by the OMMA, Metrc, would have a monopoly on tracking.
That case was recently moved from Okmulgee County to Oklahoma County after the plaintiff suing the state didnât appear in court.
In the meantime, OMMA recently replaced its executive director. Adria Berry will be the fourth person in that role in the past three years. Gov. Kevin Stitt has vowed to crack down on the issues that still plague Oklahomaâs cannabis industry.
âI am committed to tackling the major challenges that the explosion of marijuana in Oklahoma is causing across our state,â said Stitt. âForeign nationals are gobbling up land in rural communities and drug traffickers are exploiting our laws and threatening our public safety. Adria Berry is the right leader to help us solve these problems and protect Oklahomans.â
The state legislature also beefed up enforcement this year, sending $5 million from licensing fees to the OBN to fund a full-time unit of investigators.
The bureau is already working to identify illegal weed operations and shutting them down when theyâre found.
âMany of those are completely licensed facilities, but weâve traced 100% of their product being sold on the illicit marketâ in other states, Woodward said.
Each one of those busts is part of a larger investigation into organized crime, he said. Along with the illegal drug trade, investigators found evidence of human trafficking and forced labor.
And new laws passed this year could ultimately reduce the number of approved licenses. The OMMA soon will be able to issue âcease and desistâ letters for serious violations and dangers to public health. Companies with foreign financial support will have to disclose that connection.
MORE: Lawsuit alleges Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority violated public meeting laws
Moving ahead despite the circumstances
Novotny, the owner of 1440 Processing, wants to be the âPfizer of cannabisâ products with a strong focus on medicinal use, he told The Oklahoman during a recent tour of his facility in Choctaw. Cannabis with varying levels of naturally occurring THC, CBD and terpenes are used with the hope that it will alleviate a wide variety of ailments. Labs like 1440 Processing make sure those ingredients are produced to exact specifications for each client.
His problem with failed marijuana batches pops up less frequently now that 1440 Processing has a list of about a dozen marijuana farmers who Novotny trusts. When he gets a bad batch, he sends it back and notifies OMMA.
âIf we donât know the farmers, havenât met the farmers, donât have a relationship with them, we would test the material again,â he said. âBecause if you put material thatâs got pesticides into a machine, itâs very, very, very difficult to get them out.â
I paid for the article, but let me say, that website is fucking cancer. Making me call to cancel a digital subscriptionđ¤Śââď¸
Looks like pgr bud that was probably 19% and spiked with distillate or kief, if it did test 29.
Illinois is the other extreme from the wild west model. No one gets a license here unless you are at the highest levels of political corruption. And those people suck at growing weed. The dispensary by me doesnât even have bud, but they will offer you a sweet deal on some trim, just 20 bucks a gram.
Itâs just click bait for a terrible newspaper. They have nothing to offer.
Agreed
I shit bricks when I see the terms âsmall budâ and âpre-groundâ. Like wtf do you guys do with the bud to only be selling trim and shake?
I tried this with metered doses of chemicals on paper. It just made me unrelatable.
Youâve played this game before.
Secret of fast sugar? The dirt cheap seed we usingâŚ
I tried for a bit to get folks to adopt âImperialâ as the opposite of âin METRCââŚ
Measured in units like boxes,elbows,coffinsâŚrather than g or kg
Vs purchased from an expensiary
I read this entire thread and see some similarities in Alabama and a few things that we are trying to do better. Full panel testing and reputable folks are hard to find round here. The only thing not mentioned in this thread is how them boys from Oklahoma roll their joints all wrong.
Oklahoma was a budding, and now mature market. This is what should have been expected. I have similar feels to @TheGratefulPhil here⌠the locals⌠never stood a chance. Like how everyone is complaining about pricing. Well, they hit their NATURAL numbers, all you gripers and complainers are gonna get heard, theyâre gonna legislate their way out of it, and theyâre gonna bless a few producers with the go ahead.
Weed shouldnât be seen as a luxury commodity. Itâs like popcorn ffs, an agricultural product.
The entire industry was ill equipped to handle itself, even running basic calculation on population and given consumer density, youâd figure âThereâs gonna be some bumps in the roadâ.
Was it a s@#$ show?.. absolutelyâŚ
Will it resolve?.. absolutelyâŚ
Gotta say though, for a open source website, quite disappointed to see the number of people getting upset about market saturation.
Like⌠duhâŚ
Dirty weed being grown isnât the problem, the lack in testing and adherence to proper scientific, and ethical standards are the problem.
Thereâs not too many grower/processors the system just wasnât prepared to have such an influx, and to police itselfâŚ
Just my .02 it ainât worth much but, ya know, there it is.
If you didnât see the market getting saturated upon legalization 10 years ago I feel sorry for you. We all knew this was coming.
The state has given everyone enough rope to hang themselves.
Ask yourself this⌠Does the state have itâs interest (tax money) aligned with your interest (to make revenue)?
If the state was truly concerned with the success of the business in the industry then it would at least apply âthe hidden handâ to limit the production to a volume that would match the size of the market.
The state instead has allowed far too many producers to grow far too much biomass for the market it was intended for.
This behooves the state as it allows for the maximum amount of application fees and expands the stateâs payroll.
Whatâs still yet to play out is the massive tax liability that will be levied on the unsuspecting producers and processing operations in Oklahoma. Those plant count reports and other seemingly harmless information that you gave to the regulators will be used to overburden business with unpayable taxes and fees.
Once the market has been thinned out and the state has bleed all but the well funded out of business then we will see normal market controls to protect the business involved in that market.
All of this could have been solved by having operations mature into the next size of operation. Letting someone with no experience start a facility that can manufacture 50% of the states consumption is unreasonable and dangerous for the whole market.
When it comes to matters of money, most need to be saved from their own ambitions. I fear there will not be many success stories that come out of the Oklahoma market.
I know of a few dreams shattered stories for the exact reasons you said, anyone with a lil pocket change could get a permit and go for it. It really surprises me still how many people in this business are not business men. So many obvious red flags, glad i didnât take the opportunity that was given to me. I do like the cheap land though, for 700k-1m here id spend for a place id get way more there for it.
Concisely put.
Everyone seemed to buy the pie in the sky dream, and they forgot we are on planet earth. If we just stayed on earth we could have thrived so much better.
I think the big agriculture thing is what makes Oklahoma shine, and is also, what makes it a turd, big agricultural standard practice and refined cannabis practice intermingle, but donât mix well.
I think there were a lotta folk who just had general ag knowledge, and just hadnât been thoroughly educated/didnât have access to proper information.
Its just like a repeat of the corn farmers growing hemp and not knowing the ins and outs and alot of people with a lil paper and a lil experience running extracts. Obviously not all but im sure the amount of people will steadily decline over the next 1-2 yrs. Only the best funded and best at there craft will survive the 2nd being 50/50
I fit that description. Iâm just in that debate.