8 April 18-24, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | Florida, but a relatively small cannabis pro- ducer, Goldflower, is attempting to fill the void with cannabis products grown organically with no synthetic pesticides applied. Gold- flower claims its grow operations steer clear of chemical sprays and minimize the use of harsh fertilizers by employing a soil mix that pos- sesses natural defenses against pest invasion. “Our process puts the plants on a pedestal as if nature is the perfect model,” Alek Rojas, a manager for Goldflower, tells New Times. “You don’t want to consume anything that you’re not fully aware of, especially through your lungs, when it’s being combusted.” Pesticide residues on food are unhealthy. But as Rojas notes, the residues can become even more toxic when burned. Compounds with chlorinated elements are capable of producing particularly nasty combustion byproducts. Cannabis plants also readily absorb com- pounds from the soil in which they grow, making soil composition a crucial aspect of ensuring clean flower. Marijuana plants are sometimes referred to as “hyperaccumula- tors” for their ability to absorb heavy metals and chemicals from soil. (Soil contamination was blamed for the aforementioned incident in Washington, wherein remnants of DDT, a pesticide banned decades ago, were found in cannabis samples.) Florida has no official organic certification process in place for cannabis products. But Goldflower (formerly known as Goldleaf) says it’s on the leading edge of natural cultiva- tion methods. “When you go to the grocery store, you may not typically buy the organic produce. But when you do, it feels good to do some- thing healthy,” Rojas says. “We strive to be pesticide-free. The purity, the taste, and just the overall effects of the cannabis come from the organic harvest.” Goldflower has grow operations in Bra- denton and Mount Dora and retail locations in Bradenton, Sebring, and Largo. The Gulf Coast-based company plans to expand its dis- pensaries to South Florida, where it currently offers daily delivery but has yet to open a brick-and-mortar outlet. Licensed growers must submit cannabis samples for testing in Florida, but a lack of transparency about pesticide use on the part of some companies raises questions about crop safety. New Times contacted five of the largest licensed marijuana growers in Flor- ida — Trulieve, Curaleaf, Surterra, Ayr Wellness, and Verano — to ask what pesti- cides they use and what safety measures are in place to keep contaminants off their flower products. Only one responded: Verano, a national cannabis company that owns the Müv brand in Florida. “Our strict focus on in- door-grown cannabis en- sures quality, consistency, and safety maintained across every part of the seed-to-sale process, and eliminates potential hazards often associated with outdoor cultivation including tempera- ture, humidity, lighting fluctuation, pests, and external contaminants,” Verano said in a state- ment a company spokesperson provided to New Times. Verano says it has a compliance team that audits its Apollo Beach and Palatka grow facil- ities and uses a tracking system that ensures its products can be traced to specific harvests. The spokesperson called the U.S. legal cannabis industry “one of the most highly regulated sectors in the nation that requires all operators to follow stringent protocols and state-mandated guidelines that often exceed food and agriculture industry health and safety regulations.” Marijuana Cultivation Regulations in Florida Florida’s rules regarding what can be sprayed on and around plants are governed by the Department of Agriculture. The rules permit the use of certain chemicals that are under a federal “minimum risk” classification and those classified as food- safe, so long as they are cleared for use on tobacco and in enclosed spaces, among other restrictions. In addition to pest control, commercial cannabis growers face microbial contamination challenges in mass-scale production, most prominently mold and mildew growth inherent to moist cultivation environments. It’s a balancing act of trying to curb fungus while minimizing the use of fungicidal chemicals. Several of Florida’s cannabis recalls have stemmed from the presence of Aspergillus mold, which can cause lung disease, especially in immunocompromised consumers. Goldflower tells New Times that proper plant spacing and humidity monitoring are examples of practical means of controlling mold without employing synthetic fungicides. At the heart of Florida’s cannabis health regulations is its third-party testing system, whereby large-scale labs, such as ACS Labo- ratory, test for biological contaminants (e.g. mold) and chemical contaminants in prod- ucts ranging from flower to edibles to con- centrates. The state requires product samples to be tested for dozens of pesticides, fungicides, and residual solvents. But because test batches represent a small portion of the total volume of cannabis sold, the system functions as a canary in the coal mine for weed contam- ination, not a failsafe screening method. In 2023, New Times spoke with ACS about its 20,000-square-foot testing facility in Sun City Center, where it assays cannabis samples from states coast to coast using mass spec- trometry and high-performance liquid and gas chromatography. ACS president Roger Brown said he warns his family members who are medical mari- juana patients not to buy pot off the street. “Consuming contaminants, like pesticides and heavy metals, which come from the soil, and residual solvents, which come from the solvents used to extract marijuana to make vape cartridges or oils or edibles, can be very, very dangerous,” Brown told New Times. Critics of the testing process have claimed that large labs in Florida produce rushed and sometimes inaccurate results for cannabis screening. They point to a string of fines levied against ACS and other labs, in some cases over calculations of THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. In August 2022, for example, ACS was fined for misreporting THC con- tent in a batch of cannabis. The company re- sponded that its certificates were accurate but that a summary field for THC content was misreported as a result of an isolated clerical mistake. Regardless, strict cannabis testing regimes appear to incentivize safer grow practices with lower levels of chemical residues in the final product. A 2023 study showed that in Maine’s medical marijuana market, which lacked product testing requirements, more than 20 percent of tested samples showed ex- cess levels of pesticides and other contami- nants. By contrast, only 3.8 percent of samples from the more heavily regulated rec- reational market in the state returned excess contaminant levels. [email protected] Goldflower photos Goldflower says cannabis sold under its Ideal brand is organically grown and harvested by hand. IN THE WAKE OF LICENSED MARIJUANA RECALLS, PESTICIDE SAFETY GROUPS CLAIM MORE NEEDS TO BE DONE TO ENSURE CLEAN CANNABIS. How Clean Is Your Cannabis? from p7
