Though Colorado has openly embraced the legalization of recreational and medicinal marijuana, a unanimous state legislature vote approved a proposal to require safety testing for all marijuana, medicinal or not. The next step for the bill is another committee approval, then it will return to the senate for a final vote.
The largest challenge with the proposal will be a shortage of testing facilities. Many facilities are not certified or licensed to test the medicinal plants. “We do it every day for every other food that we have,” said Greg Duran of the Cannabis Patients Alliance. “The bill comes a month after marijuana regulators in the city of Denver ordered eight commercial pot growers to quarantine hundreds of plants because of possible pesticide violations. The plants were in some cases treated with pesticides not cleared for human consumption.” If passed, the state will implement standard statewide testing and the bill will require all medicinal marijuana sold in dispensaries to be tested by July 2016.
