8 APRIL 16-22, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | even buy it,” Johnson complains. The MED, which is responsible for regu- lating Colorado’s cannabis industry, has issued a series of testing requirements for pesticides, heavy metals, mold, yeast and aspergillus (a specifi c but common type of mold), as well as several other contaminants. The MED has established a quarantine and recall system for cannabis products that fail post-processing testing, instituted a “best by” date label for dispensary product packaging, and is working with the CDPHE to conduct a fi eld study largely centered on dispensary product inspection. The rate of recalls hasn’t slowed as more testing requirements are added, however, and the MED’s processes are being audited at the request of state legislators. “Despite Colorado’s reputation as a leader in cannabis regulation, these fi ndings indi- cate a serious breakdown in enforcement, necessitating immediate legislative attention to protect consumers from unsafe products and misleading claims,” reads a 2025 letter from state senators Byron and Ron Pelton, who referenced the CPR report. But business owners argue that Colo- rado’s testing regulations are too strict, and a large reason why so much cannabis seems lackluster. Westword recently interviewed over a dozen licensed cannabis business owners and employees; they all note that a signifi cant amount of cannabis sold in Colorado is treated by ozone machines, large-scale microwaves, forms of X-rays or other kinds of remediation — perfectly legal under state rules since 2021. Remediation methods must be approved by the MED, and the companies behind them claim to kill upwards of 99 percent of microbial presence in cannabis. But the jury is still out on the long-term effects of consuming remediated fl ower, and surveys have registered consumer hesitation regard- ing remediated fl ower and a preference for labeling to indicate when cannabis has been remediated. For example, ozone machines, a popular technology used by real estate agents to rid homes of nicotine and other odors left by former occupants, remove most aromatic compounds as they kill off contaminants. According to growers interviewed by Westword, it’s common to subject cannabis to remediation before it’s submitted for test- ing, out of fear of failing and having to pay lab fees twice. These precautionary post-harvest tactics are used by good and sketchy players alike, says Phil Jenkins, owner and operator of Fremont’s Finest extraction. “Some of these businesses are paying people the bare minimum now to run their grows. They don’t care about powdery mil- dew or the growers, and it’s all going to go through remediation, and they can sell it for $60 an ounce,” explains Jenkins, who worked on cultivation staffs in Denver before starting his own business. “There are compa- nies that mark their fl ower as pesticide-free, but they just remediate everything.” Femont’s Finest makes hash rosin for the medical marijuana sector, and sources its cannabis from an outdoor grow owned by Jenkins. Keeping things relatively small and outdoors has allowed Jenkins to keep a close eye on his starting material while also maintaining affordability in Colorado’s rosin market. But if someone is looking for the best fl ower in Colorado, he’s not certain it will be found at a dispensary. “When you look on the black market, people are paying $300 to $400 an ounce, and it is more fl avorful and it doesn’t have some ozone-y hum that a lot of shit on dis- pensary shelves has nowadays,” Jenkins says. “There are a lot of glass jars in dispensaries with a bunch of that dry kief-crumble-trim mixture at the bottom, because it just all gets thrown around [after harvesting]. It sucks for the growers and producers, and we’ve defi nitely gotten walked on a lot.” Jenkins agrees that inspections and contaminant testing are a necessary part of legalization, but he and other growers believe the MED’s testing rules are too harsh and question how effective they really are in keeping cannabis safe for consumption. It’s not like most cannabis growers want to grow mediocre or uninspiring weed. De- pending on who they work for, some claim they don’t have much of a choice. Another common argument: The majority of dispen- sary shoppers don’t care as long as prices are low and THC percentages high. “I think we’ve been oversaturated for a while. There has been a lot of overproduc- tion, which has led to, for lack of a better term, ‘price wars,’ and people focusing on survival fi rst,” explains Malek Noueiry, the owner of Malek’s Premium Cannabis, an award-winning, Denver-based growing and extraction operation. “And during price wars, a lot of corners are cut, and quality is one of the fi rst things that goes.” After over a half-decade, this war has growing a body count. Red Market The money coming to Colorado’s cannabis industry has been plummeting for about fi ve years. Since the state Department of Revenue began keeping track in 2014, wholesale prices have never been lower; the market is being fl ooded by desperate growers and major operations trying to liquidate thousands of pounds at once. The dropping prices have been mirrored by tanking dispensary sales, which decreased by over 40 percent from 2021 to 2025, to around $1.3 billion at the end of last year, state records show. Growing operations have been hit hardest by the pot recession. The number of regis- tered cultivations in Colorado has dropped by over 44 percent since January of 2021, from 1,179 to 659 (this includes both medical and recreational licenses). Over that same period, dispensary licenses have dropped by just under 9 percent, according to the DOR. Noueiry’s days as a licensed grower date back to the 2010s with MMJ America, one of many defunct Colorado dispensary chains “that tried to grow too big, too fast,” he says. The Texas native launched his own grow in 2020, and Malek’s has found critical acclaim while slowly expanding the product line, from fl ower to eventually hash rosin and pre-rolled joints. But growth and acclaim haven’t fi lled Noueiry’s bank account, he says, and each reinvestment in his business feels risky. “When I bought this license in 2019, the people who sold it to me didn’t sell it to me because they thought the market was in a good place. They thought it was dipping and would continue to dip – and for the most part, they were right,” he says. “How could they have seen COVID happening?” Wholesale prices and dispensary rev- enue indicated that Colorado cannabis was headed for an industry dip in 2020, but then the pandemic hit. Months of intermit- tent stay-home orders breathed life back into dispensaries — too much life, perhaps. Growers expanded their plant counts and new licensees continued to open across the state as dispensary sales rocketed from $1.75 billion in 2019 to almost $2.2 billion in 2021. Then the bottom dropped out. “The mar- ket just fell off so fast, right around Septem- ber of 2021,” Noueiry recalls. Although the number of growers has decreased significantly since 2021 and sales keep falling, dispensary licenses have dropped at a rate less than a quarter of that, disrupting the cycle between stores and vendors. But there are cracks at the retail level, too. Over the last two months, Colorado’s largest dispensary chains have shown signs of serious fi nancial strain. In March, Phar- maCann Inc., the Chicago-based corporation that now owns LivWell Enlightened Health, announced it would lay off 132 employ- ees as it closes a major Denver cultivation and processing facility. Minneapolis-based Vireo Growth had agreed to buy LivWell’s Colorado assets last December, but only seventeen of its 21 stores and zero cultivation facilities were included in that deal. LivWell is currently tied with Native Roots for the most storefronts in Colorado, at 21 locations each. However, Native Roots announced in March that it, too, had agreed to be sold to a cannabis capital investment fi rm, which agreed to buy seventeen of Na- tive Roots’s 21 locations — and none of its major grow facilities. Weeks before the top two dispensary chains announced major shakeups, Colo- rado’s third-largest weed retailer, the Canna- bist Company, owner of the Green Solution and Medicine Man dispensaries, was sued by a vendor over an alleged non-payment of almost $400,000 across seventeen locations. Since purchasing the Green Solution in 2020, the Cannabist has closed six of its locations. Schwazze — a publicly traded cannabis operator based in Colorado that owned 24 dispensaries under the Emerald Fields, Ev- ery Day Weed, Lightshade, Standing Akimbo and Starbuds banners, as well as stores in New Mexico — was offi cially sold to Vireo in March after defaulting on creditors. Both the LivWell and Schwazze deals were reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars, but that was largely based on Vireo stock shares and debt acquisition, not actual cash. “The big chains try to push their weight around a lot. They think they have the buy- ing power of a Walmart or Costco, but the truth is they don’t have the cash to pay like Costco pays. They might say they can sell your product in X amount of stores, which is more than the next guy, but chains also typically want special treatment, pricing or special delivery terms — and then, after all that, many of them don’t pay on time,” Noueiry says. “It deters most people from wanting to continue in the industry, or they get caught in this cycle of trying to pay their bills, do whatever sells, or selling bulk weed for the lowest dollar.” Chris Kaiser was facing that fork in the road last year. He chose the exit path. The founder of Bubba’s Kush, a wholesale cultivation that quickly gained fans for his cuts of Georgia Pie, the Soap and Roadkill Skunk, went from winning Westword’s Best New Grower in 2023 to closing his grow last November. According to Kaiser, he got sick of paying the MED’s fees and waiting on a long list of IOUs from dispensaries. Almost six months after surrendering his grow licenses, Kaiser says he’s still owed over $50,000 by two store accounts, but he’s stopped paying legal counsel to pursue them. He wants state regulators to punish dispensaries that don’t pay their vendor bills by withholding licensing renewals or issuing disciplinary orders. The MED says it doesn’t have legal au- thority to impose enforcement on unpaid invoices between cannabis licensees, “which is a private contract matter between parties,” according to a statement from the division. “However, the MED has advised licensees on this subject.” That advisement was an industry bul- letin in 2023, reminding business owners that cannabis-related Malek Noueiry says growing legal cannabis isn’t for the faint of heart. COURTESY OF MALEK NOUEIRY continued on page 10 News continued from page 6
