The cannabis industry has undergone a rapid transformation over the past decade, spurred by evolving federal and state legislation. Yet, beneath the promise of legalization and medical innovation lies a growing public safety and misinformation crisis—rooted in testing fraud, labeling inaccuracies, and potency inflation. This article explores the darker undercurrents of the cannabis marketplace, examining how systemic deficiencies in testing, regulation, and enforcement are leading to consumer harm, lawsuits, and a breach of public trust.
Conditioned to believe THC potency correlates with quality and efficacy, many consumers gravitate towards products that purportedly have higher levels of THC. When faced with an array of choices, labels, numbers, and strain names, a flower or pre-roll customer will likely pick the item with the higher THC potency even if just by one or two percent.
But if the product is mislabeled and instead of the advertised 42% THC pre-roll it is actually 25%, the consumer is dupped into buying a product he may not have otherwise bought. This not only stifles fair competition – based on true product quality, attention to detail, grow/processing methods, source ingredients, and genetics – but also puts the consumer at a disadvantage in not being able to fully trust labels and the lab reporting they are based on.
Read more at The National Law Review