Saturday, February 11, 2012

LA Times: "Testing pot in a legal vacuum"

The idea of this article is that pot-testing is on the rise, but the situation is chaotic because it is illegal on the federal level:
[...] The idea is that patients don't pop a Vicodin not knowing if the pill has 5 milligrams of hydrocodone or 15. Nor do people make drinks wondering if they are pouring beer or bourbon or Bacardi 151.[...]
It's for recreational use.
Only some top-end dispensaries test their products, and even they can't be sure the results are reliable. Because all marijuana possession is illegal under federal law — and the Justice Department has been cracking down recently — the nascent labs are as unregulated and vulnerable to prosecution as dispensaries and growers. In Colorado, the one lab that tried to get a license from the Drug Enforcement Administration was promptly raided by that agency.

That very week, Los Angeles passed its marijuana ordinance, which required testing by "independent and certified" labs, without specifying who was supposed to do the certifying. Long Beach followed suit two months later.

Making the situation even woollier: There are no federal standards for pesticides in marijuana. [...]
The idea that the pot sold all over the place LA is all or even significantly for medical use is a big joke.

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