One would assume that legalizing marijuana for recreational use, and heavily regulating it, would come with strong consumer safeguards.
And in New York, one would apparently assume wrong.
In yet another example of the state’s ongoing challenges to oversee the multi-billion-dollar recreational cannabis industry, the state Office of Cannabis Management is accused in a lawsuit of overlooking violations of regulations by licensed operators, and then retaliating against the business operator who reported it.
The supposed excuse for the lax enforcement, related in what the lawsuit says was a recorded conversation, is a gem: If the state cracked down on such violations, an OCM employee said, it would have to shut down half the licensed operations.
This is not how regulation is supposed to work.
As the Times Union’s Brendan J. Lyons reports, the allegations came to light in a lawsuit filed by Jenny Argie, a Columbia County cannabis processor who is suing the state for what she contends were abuses of process, intentional interference with her business and constitutional violations that have cost her more than $5.6 million.
Ms. Argie says she told the Office of Cannabis Management that some operators were mislabeling their brands and selling product contaminated with mold. But according to her suit, one of the people she communicated with, Damian Fagon, the agency’s chief equity officer, told her that he “felt bad for operators and would let them do what they need to survive,” and that “if I enforce regulations on licensed operators, I would have to close down half of them.”
She says she also reported to Chris Alexander, the agency’s former executive director, that a New York City shop was selling California products falsely labeled as having been produced in New York, but received no response. Mr. Alexander is among a number of officials who have stepped down in recent months amid criticisms of poor performance by the agency. Mr. Fagon, now on leave, is expected to resign in November.
As if the allegations of mislabeled and contaminated products aren’t bad enough, Ms. Argie herself ended up the target of enforcement after making the complaints and speaking publicly about them. All the agency came up with, according to her suit, was a fractional deviation in the potency of one of her products, but she was hit with apparently the first known recall of cannabis products in the state. She was also subjected to a surprise inspection and cited for using a chemical in her cannabis oil extraction process that it turns out the agency would later allow. The state issued a stop-work order and quarantined her products.
Yet the state inspector general’s office, in a limited look at her allegations concerning Mr. Fagon, didn’t find anything amiss, at least not technically. Its investigation concluded that there was a lack of “clear agency guidelines regulating OCM staff contact with licensees.” At worst, it said his remarks were “imprudent.”
It’s no secret that OCM has had a disastrous record, from a slow rollout that left growers sitting on millions of dollars’ worth of unsellable product to poor enforcement against illegal stores. It’s a start, certainly, that Gov. Kathy Hochul is bringing in new leadership. But with that must come an institutional cultural change that includes not tolerating violations when it comes to product safety or truth in labeling.
The state wouldn’t tolerate such violations in the food or liquor industries. Or so we’d assume. Here’s hoping that this time we don’t assume wrong.
H/T: www.timesunion.com
You can view the whole article at this link Editorial: Hazy enforcement of cannabis laws
