Cannabis lab fraud can be curbed if industry is 'part of the solution'

Scientist David Vaillencourt has spent most of his cannabis industry career working on standardizing the rules, measurements and recommended procedures that guide licensed marijuana businesses.Vaillencourt certainly has the credentials to back his mission: Vice chair of Pennsylvania-headquartered ASTM International’s Committee D37 on Cannabis Standards.

Board chair and co-founder of the S3 Collective, a cannabis industry nonprofit in Colorado advocating for industry standardization.CEO of the GMP Collective, his Colorado-based consulting firm.

ADVERTISEMENT His work has often intersected with the marijuana industry’s testing lab niche, which in recent months has been rocked by scandals and lawsuits in major markets such as California, Colorado, Massachusetts and New York.MJBizDaily spoke about testing lab fraud with Vaillencourt, who welcomes increased scrutiny of the sector but believes businesses also must do more: Why are we seeing so many testing lab scandals at this point in the industry’s evolution? It’s been going on since third-party lab testing has been around.

It’s been talked about.I look at this as positive, that it’s finally getting more traction.

One of the reasons why I think it’s coming to light is because several labs are going above and beyond their job and collecting and summarizing data.There are people like Yasha Kahn of MCR Labs (in Massachusetts) that are bringing this information to the public sphere and showing unequivocally that there is a major lab shopping issue.

I want to ask the industry, “What are you doing to be part of the solution?” Because the industry is the one that’s choosing to pick Lab A over Lab B because of more favorable results.That’s straight-up fraud.

They are defrauding consumers by knowingly picking labs that are going to give them more favorable results.The onus needs to be on the industry to say, “We’re not OK with doing this, and...