Oregonians Demand Clean Cannabis, Urge OHA to Keep Pesticide Standards
Oregonians don't want harmful pesticides or other contaminates on their cannabis. We don't blame them.
May 20, 2017 | Oregon Health Authority (OHA) made a proposal in March to change the pesticide testing rules for recreational cannabis products. The changes they put forth would roll back requirements on flower batches and concentrates to ridiculously low levels even though concentrates and flowers have shown a contamination rate of over 25% on concentrates and 10% on simple flower samples.
The proposal was met with substantial resistance from consumers, organic growers, and testing labs almost immediately, which prompted Andre Ourso and the regulators in charge to do something they have not typically done before making unilateral decisions regarding cannabis … get public comment on the proposed changes. The comment period started in mid March and ended on April 30th.
After six weeks of comments pouring into their office, the results are overwhelmingly in support of the current testing rules. Over 98% of respondents urged the OHA to to make their proposed changes, with only 0.6% asking them to adopt the rollback. About 1% of the respondents had a mixed reaction and generally wanted pesticide rules to remain but other aspects of the rules modified to help keep some of their testing expenses down.