The former regulator claims her bosses weren’t interested in addressing systemic problems with cannabis testing labs.
A former staffer at the main cannabis regulator in California who was in charge of overseeing testing labs filed suit in state court on Monday against her ex-employer, alleging she was wrongfully terminated in January after pushing for action on reports of serious business violations.
The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court by Tanisha Bogans against the Department of Cannabis Control, claims that Bogans was fired by Director Nicole Elliott after she repeatedly raised concerns about the possibility that multiple testing labs were falsifying results and covering up product contamination. The lawsuit was first reported by Bloomberg Law.
Bogans, hired in December 2022 as deputy director of lab services, was in charge of ensuring cannabis testing labs were compliant with state rules.
But Bogans in her new lawsuit said she was fired after less than a year and a half on the job, specifically because Elliott and Chief Deputy Director Rasha Salama didn’t want to deal with “regulatory issues rampant throughout the California cannabis market,” including reports of testing labs falsely inflating product THC potency in order to satisfy marijuana brand clients.
Issues began cropping up just a few months into her tenure at the DCC, Bogans claims in her suit. They began in June 2023, when Elliott got an email from U.S. Cannabis Laboratories insisting that there were systemic problems in California with labs lying about product THC potency to curry favor with brands, since higher THC numbers can command higher prices and consumer loyalty.
“This laboratory had independently retested products available on the shelf and discovered that potency inflation beyond the acceptable margin of error set by the DCC was widespread,” Bogans’ suit claims. But Bogans didn’t learn of the email “until months later.”
Then in July last year, Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs also contacted the DCC over similar concerns, and claimed that inaction by the DCC was “causing laboratories to cheat in order to get more business from the growers who desire higher potency to be labeled on their packaged products.”
In October, Bogans said in her suit, the issue really began to explode. That month, the California Cannabis Industry Association sent a formal plea to the DCC, also highlighting the same potency inflation problem as a systemic issue that was undermining the integrity of the legal cannabis market. A letter from Pacific Star Labs also arrived in October, claiming that widespread lies about product potency “had driven ethical laboratories out of the market.” And the same month, yet another lab, Anresco, contacted Bogans to report “finding a Category 1 pesticide in a product purchased from the shelf” in a legal dispensary.
“In her efforts to collaborate between divisions within the DCC to address this issue, Plaintiff faced hostility and accusations from Elliott, the Director of DCC,” Bogans claimed in her lawsuit.
Despite the conflicts with Elliott, Bogans received a performance evaluation in November and was given top marks.
But the cannabis industry problems and reports of bad behavior kept snowballing, Bogans said in the suit, and she received more reports in November of pesticides and even fentanyl being found in legal cannabis products available for sale.
Bogans became desperate and notified the U.S. Department of Justice about some of the tips she’d received, but when she shared with Elliott and Salama that she’d contacted the DOJ, she was “severely reprimanded,” and her superiors began excluding her from “key meetings in which she otherwise would have participated.”
The problems even extended to a distribution company whose principal was an elected official, according to the suit.
In December last year, a whistleblower shared with Bogans that Gold Mountain Distribution – whose owners included La Puente City Councilman David Argudo, who’s had past legal cannabis business troubles – was “manufacturing and cultivating cannabis products without a license.”
Gold Mountain was a licensed distributor, though according to the DCC license database, its permit expired in July. The company held no other permits, according to the database.
When Bogans tried raising concerns in December with Elliott and Salama about Gold Mountain, she was ignored. The same month, she also tried to bring attention to reports from other testing labs that Category 1 pesticides – which could harm consumers – were found in cannabis products that were on shelves at licensed dispensaries. Bogans was also ignored on that front for weeks.
Eventually, on Jan. 11, Bogans “raised the matter again, requesting contact information to refer the issue to the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Justice, Department of Fish and Wildlife, and CalEPA.”
“The very next day, on January 12, 2024, Plaintiff was informed by Elliott that she was terminated,” the suit states.
“Defendant ultimately terminated Plaintiff for her constant complaints about state and federal violations of law and hostile work environment instead of taking any action against the true wrongdoers,” the suit charges.
A spokesperson for the OCM declined to comment on the suit, citing the pending nature of the litigation and confidential personnel matters.
The lawsuit requests damages for whistleblower retaliation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and other alleged misdeeds.
The case is scheduled for a case management conference on March 20, according to court records.
H/T: www.greenmarketreport.com
