HELENA — Business owners in Montana’s legal marijuana industry say they’re facing challenges, as there’s currently only one lab in the state performing the tests they need before selling their products.
“The fear is what happens if the one lab that is up and going gets shut down for some reason,” said Wes Stucki, CEO of Top Shelf Botanicals.
Watch the video to see how the testing situation is affecting marijuana businesses:
Before any marijuana product ends up on the shelf in Montana, state law requires that it be tested for potency and for possible contaminants, including pesticides.
There are two labs in the state licensed to do that work, but right now, one of them isn’t conducting pesticide tests.
According to leaders with the Montana Department of Revenue’s Cannabis Control Division, they’re currently in a settlement agreement with Nordic Labs, a testing lab in Bozeman, after an audit in April.
The department posted the agreement to the CCD website. It says the audit found “deficiencies” in Nordic’s pesticide testing methods. The CCD agreed not to take formal action against the lab’s license yet if Nordic agreed to temporarily stop testing for pesticides.
Last year, the Department of Revenue approved new administrative rules for the marijuana program, expanding the number of different pesticides that marijuana products must be checked for. Those rules took effect Feb. 24.
Chris Young, an attorney representing Nordic, told MTN Thursday that Nordic understood what substances they were required to test for, but he believes they had some miscommunications with the CCD regarding testing methods.
“We’re cooperating with any and all investigations, and we’re working with the department to resolve the issues,” he said.
Top Shelf Botanicals, which operates 15 dispensaries in western and central Montana, had been using Nordic to test its products.
“We waited 4 to 6 weeks for them to come back online, only to be told recently that that may not happen for a while, or may not happen at all,” Stucki said.
Stucki was one of a number of members of the marijuana industry who attended a “Cannabis Conversation” in Helena Wednesday, organized by the Montana Cannabis Guild.
Cannabis Control Division staff and state lawmakers took questions from the audience, many of them focused on concerns about testing.
CCD administrator Kristan Barbour told MTN she’s hopeful the situation with Nordic will only be temporary. For now, though, all the marijuana products for sale in the state are going through Fidelity Diagnostics, the other licensed lab, located in Missoula.
Melissa and Andre Umansky, the owners of Fidelity Diagnostics, were also in attendance at Wednesday’s event. They said they were confident they’d be able to handle the additional volume.
“We've had the luxury in the past to be able to scale up as our clients need, and this caught us by surprise because we did not know the influx of samples that were going to be coming in,” said Melissa Umansky. “We’ve made a lot of hiring decisions, we've invested in more equipment to be able to support the industry as we can.”
Umansky said Fidelity’s typical turnaround time from picking up a sample to reporting a result was three to five business days, but it’s currently closer to seven to ten days.
Stucki said that the backlog is starting to have an impact on his dispensaries.
“We definitely have had shortages on the shelves,” he said. “What we’ve done now is we've gone to purchasing from other providers to supplement what's on the shelf – but also, several of the providers we’re purchasing from also are running low on product.”
Umansky said they’re hoping they’ll begin to clear the backlog once their additional staff and new testing equipment are on board. She said she understands why businesses have reservations about her lab being the only one they can use.
“It's absolutely very valid concerns – we have the same concerns,” she said. “We're excited to hear that there are other labs in the state working on opening up. All we can do at this point is focus on our laboratory and our practices to keep the industry going.”
This year, the Montana Legislature approved Senate Bill 27, which is going to freeze the number of ‘licensed locations’ to produce or sell marijuana products for two years. However, that law doesn’t apply to testing labs, so new ones will still be able to come in.
