ONE TOKE OVER THE LINE –
March 24, 2025 – Zarha Ruiz, branch chief of environmental compliance and manufacturing safety at the Department of Cannabis Control. For cannabis, unlike for brownie mix or Tylenol, there’s no federal Food and Drug Administration to keep consumers safe. Testing for more contaminants isn’t necessarily better, however, he says. Without a vast body of research, scientists and regulators don’t know which contaminants have the biggest impact on human health.
Still, California has seen recalls of legal weed — it had 63 last year, the most since the Department of Cannabis Control formed in 2021. That meant sellers had to yank 25,000 individual units of cannabis products from their shelves, because of things like microbial contamination or misbranding.
