Teresa Carr

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.