A new ProPublica investigation found that Colorado banned chemically converted intoxicating hemp on paper, but weak testing rules, enforcement gaps and industry carve-outs still allowed questionable products to reach consumers through the country’s oldest legal marijuana market.
Colorado did not fail because legal weed was a bad idea. Colorado failed because regulators left the door open and bad actors walked right through it.
That is the real takeaway from a new investigation by ProPublica and The Denver Gazette, which found that despite Colorado’s ban on chemically converted intoxicating hemp products, some of those products still made their way into the state’s licensed marijuana market. Not because legalization itself was the problem, but because the rules were not tight enough, the testing was not strong enough and the people gaming the system knew exactly where the blind spots were.
That distinction matters. A lot.
Colorado helped build the blueprint for legal recreational cannabis in the United States. If any state should have been able to keep sketchy converted hemp products out of its licensed weed supply, it was this one. Instead, according to ProPublica’s reporting, regulators and lawmakers created a system that looked tougher on paper than it was in practice, leaving room for products made from hemp, including vapes, to reach consumers through legal dispensaries.
The investigation begins with a moment that should have set off alarm bells immediately. In April 2024, the owner of a Denver marijuana testing lab says he alerted a top state regulator after routine tests found methylene chloride in a popular marijuana vape brand sold at dispensaries. ProPublica reports that as regulators dug into the contaminated product, they found something even more alarming: it was not derived from marijuana at all. It came from hemp.
That is not a minor technical violation. …
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Author: Javier Hasse / High Times
