Vermont Cannabis Control Board Gets Funding for a Laboratory

A large spending package enacted on Monday includes money that will allow the Vermont Cannabis Control Board to build and run its own testing lab.

Brynn Hare, the board’s executive director, said the lab will “improve the efficiency of our inspection and investigative processes and also help ensure the products on the market are compliant, safe and consistent.”

The issue of product safety has taken on new urgency in recent weeks, after cannabis tainted with a banned pesticide made its way to store shelves and sickened a consumer. The board is still looking into the health scare and has said having its own lab would have made the investigatory process easier.

Currently, just three labs are open in the state, and only two can run the full complement of tests needed before a product hits the market. While the new state lab won’t be open to the public, it will allow the control board to run tests without gumming up the private labs that licensed growers use. Aside from investigations, the control board plans to perform random sampling of products to ensure that growers, manufacturers and retailers are following the laws.

H.145, which Gov. Phil Scott allowed to become law without his signature, includes about $1.4 million to hire two chemists and a lab director and buy equipment for a Cannabis Quality Assurance Program. Hare said they’ll need three machines: one to test for pesticides and terpenes, another for potency and and a third for pathogens. She hopes the lab will open this summer, either at the state’s agricultural lab in Randolph or, potentially, in Montpelier.
“This is going to allow us to conduct our own tests to determine if we need to do product recalls,” Hare said. “It’ll allow us to conduct audits of results from our licensed labs and serve as an industry-wide reference point for lab testing standards.”

She added: “I think it will be a good check on the whole process and the whole system.”

The spending package also tweaks state statute to exempt cannabis vapes from a 92 percent tax on e-cigarettes. Retailers had complained that the tax hurt sales of the popular products, and Hare said the legislature acknowledged that it did not mean to include cannabis in the e-cigarette tax.

“We heard a lot about the vape tax being a big problem,” she said.

The tax will come off the books on July 1.