Pesticide Recall Issued For MMJ America Products

Colorado regulatory agencies have recalled marijuana products from Colorado dispensary chain MMJ America's Denver location, MMJ America Downtown, over potential pesticide contamination. It's the second marijuana recall to hit Denver this week, with Lightshade recalling products from all eight of its dispensaries because of potential mold contamination.

The Colorado departments of Agriculture and Public Health and Environment and the state Marijuana Enforcement Division issued a collective announcement Thursday, April 11, warning customers who purchased marijuana products from MMJ America Downtown, a medical and recreational dispensary at 2042 Arapahoe Street. According to the MED, state inspectors found levels of diuron, a banned herbicide, in the dispensary's cultivation.

A Cornell University study showed diuron to have low toxicity to mammals, but it can irritate the throat, nose and eyes and changed the bone marrow and spleens of rats who were exposed to high levels of the herbicide over two weeks. The same study also said low levels of diuron in rats' food for two years showed no adverse affects. However, a more recent study found that diuron is a "biologically active pollutant" in soil, water and sediments.

Diuron is generally used to kill weeds by prohibiting photosynthesis, or the growth of plants. It was listed in a 2018 recall for Boulder dispensary Boulder Botanics.

"Affected products include marijuana flower, trim, concentrates, and infused-products. Consumers who have these affected products in their possession should return them to the medical center or retail store from which they were purchased so they can be properly disposed of," reads the MED recall.

The recall does not include products from MMJ America's other dispensary in Boulder, but trim from the cultivation was sold wholesale to other dispensaries for extraction, according to MMJ America, and could've been sold to customers as concentrate. Find the OPC codes (tracking numbers that appear on every marijuana product label) of the recalled products from the downtown store and the cultivation they came from below:

Medical cultivation license: 403-00426

• Product OPC: N2-GG030619-A
  
• Product OPC: N2-WW030619-A
  

Retail cultivation license: 403R-00023

• Product OPC: N2-GG040219-AR
  
• Product OPC: N2-GC040219-AR
  
• Product OPC: N2-BY040219-AR
  
• Product OPC: N2-CT031919-AR
  
• Product OPC: N2-JF030619-AR
  
• Product OPC: N2-GC030619-AR
  
• Product OPC: N2-GG030619-AR
  

According to MMJ America Downtown's general manager, Courtney Gunn, around twenty pounds of the cultivation's 200-pound marijuana harvest was quarantined by the state after the investigation. Gunn says her staff is unsure how diuron showed up in the CDA test. "We're not sure if this is outside contamination, because people use it to kill weeds or things of that nature," she says. "If you wanted to kill your plants, that's what you'd use."

Gunn says the company is bringing in a third party to test the facility further.

"We'll have a third party come in to swab and test the entire building to see if there's anything else in another area," she explains. "We're just trying to fix everything and do as much as we can to right this."