Sydney Lupkin

Yeah, it is super, super different.

And that's because weed on the federal level is illegal.

Pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, have to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration based on a very detailed process involving clinical trials and inspections to verify safety and efficacy.

With weed, that robust federal system is not there, which means that the states are basically having to figure this all out on their own and stand up their own

many FDAs and many EPAs.

And they do have a group that they have sort of formed together called CANRA, which is basically a way for state regulators to communicate from state to state with one another to share data and what's working and what's not working.

But that has its limitations because the standards are still kind of a patchwork.

Yeah, so state officials had been doing this like across several different state agencies.

But a few years ago, they consolidated into the DCC, which is their Department of Cannabis Control.

And they're basically tracking almost every step in the cannabis pipeline.

Like every plant has a tag and an ID and it gets logged into a database.

Like weed manufacturers even have to report how many pounds of like plant trimmings they throw away.

Wow.

The labs have sort of had to keep up with this like really interesting and like creative industry where like, you know, one day they're like, oh, well, now we've got THC popcorn on the shelves.

Like, how do you test that?

Right.

And they've got to figure it out.

And that isn't to say that DCC is like doing everything perfectly because –

It's not.

There was some reporting by the LA Times that there were still pesticides in the legal weed products, particularly in the vapes.