Teresa Carr

And she found that cannabis was both the way to help her overcome that addiction and it also helps assuage her pain.

But a couple years ago, she and her partner Charles Arbina started having unexplained health issues.

Summer had fainting episodes and stroke-like symptoms.

Charles, who had a history of migraines, suddenly they became unrelenting.

He had to be hospitalized.

He lost feeling in the side of his face.

The doctors didn't have any real explanation for what was going on.

When Charles' doctor suggested their weed could be contaminated, the couple dismissed it.

All legal products have to go through a testing process and they get a certificate of analysis or COA that says it's, you know, free of all these contaminants.

And, you know, here's the chemical analysis of it.

This is the THC profile.

For instance, when Summer and Charles got some of the marijuana products they were using tested... To their horror, they discovered that they were contaminated with both mold and some pesticides, and that those pesticides were associated with some neurotoxicity.

There's no way to know for sure.

You can't prove cause and effect.

One thing they did tell me is that when they stopped using that weed and switched to another brand, the problems that they had dissipated.

So that's all you can say.

They feel strongly that the two are correlated.

He found that most of them were tainted with mold, and two of them actually had salmonella.

He also found that about three-fourths of them

You know, overstated the THC level, which is, as we discovered, fairly common.

One could say that.

So, you know, there are contaminated products, you know, reaching the shelf.

So from that perspective, you could say that the regulatory framework just isn't working to keep all the products that consumers are using and buying at dispensaries to keep those products clean.

So I talked to people across the industry, growers, lab managers, regulators, activists.

And one thing that kept coming up was this issue of perverse incentives that encourage fraud.

So you can see that pattern repeated over and over and over again.

When a state legalizes marijuana, there's this big rush.

A lot of people get into the industry.

There's competition.

It makes things tough.

And now at this point, growers are struggling.

So they need every single crop to pass.

It's very important or they go out of business.

And generally speaking, their products are going to be much more profitable for them if they have a higher THC level.

So the higher THC level, the more it sells for.

So producers pay labs to test their products.

And my investigation for undoc.org found that producers will choose labs that are looser about passing products for contaminants and that will give them higher THC levels.

The flip side of that is that labs that are strict about their standards are going to lose business.

I was really interested in Oregon for two reasons.

One, they had recently opened a state testing lab, which kind of is a new trend among state regulators.

So there was that.

And there was also their regulatory body had recently cracked down on several labs for THC inflation.

In fact, most of their labs in the state they cracked down on for THC inflation.

So it seemed a place to go where the regulators were actually taking some action and trying to do something about the problems that we were talking about.

The experts I talked to, including Max, are most concerned with inhaling the contaminants because as opposed to going through your GI tract, this is going, the vape or the smoke is going directly into your lungs and then it gets directly into your bloodstream.

And when you think about it, like let's say you're eating an apple, well, you can wash the apple and if there's anything on it, you know, you can take it at least off the outside, but you don't wash your weed.

And we really don't know how those inhaled contaminants are going to get into your system and affect you.

So when you think about mold, it's everywhere.

And most forms are fairly harmless.

But there are a few forms that can cause serious health problems to humans, especially if you inhale them.

And so that's one of the areas experts are most concerned about.

And that's the idea that somebody, especially somebody with a compromised immune system, might inhale one of these toxic molds.

And there have been.

case reports of people becoming seriously ill with pneumonia and serious lung respiratory problems from that.

The other thing that scientists are worried about are heavy metals and pesticides that are toxic to the nervous system.

For example, there's a type of pesticides that's commonly used in cannabis called organophosphates.

It's a class of pesticides.

And research has linked that

to the onset and faster progression of Parkinson's disease, which is really a concern because a lot of Parkinson's, I think something like 40% of Parkinson's patients use cannabis to help with their symptoms of the disease.

Wow.

So products that don't pass in the legal market are often funneled into the illicit market.

So when you buy illicit weed, you may be actually getting something that failed for mold, heavy metals, or pesticides.

So my best advice I can give to people, even though it's imperfect, is to go to a dispensary and get a product through the legal market that has been through some sort of testing.

And she became addicted to opioids that were prescribed by her doctor for her pain.