“60 for a 3.5, Q’s for 100 real Cali! Going rapid, (fire emoji, american flag emoji, leaf emoji) ask for strains!”
“Eazy- got the flavours of flavours in. Gelato X Skittles. Girl Scout. Mac1. Cali only certi buds. Safe. X”
Most UK consumers who source cannabis from street dealers will recognise these texts. In 2024, the UK is awash with “Cali” weed; top-of-the-line premium crops supposedly imported straight from the sun-kissed Emerald Triangle and flogged across greyer pastures. The messages above came from shottas in Hyde Park, Leeds, and Tooting, South London.
Some sellers even offer a choice between a range of Cali — an eighth (3.5 grams) of “mid-shelf” for 40 and “top shelf” deals for £75. Others pitch “UK Cali” as a slightly cheaper alternative: cannabis with “Cali genetics” grown in the UK. Still, these prices are markedly high — today, weed is one of the few commodities where prices haven’t really risen alongside inflation, with most people purchasing 3.5 grams for £20-25.
Realistically, there’s little way for UK consumers to verify a plug’s source. Dealers commonly use imitation “Cali bags”; brightly coloured, branded, smell-proof packaging that adds an aesthetic tint, allowing solid 8+/10 UK-grown buds to pass, mostly successfully, as “Cali.”
Imitation cali-packs for sale in the UK
The UK’s appetite for California-grown products can be attributed to multiple factors, including Instagram marketing and weed-culture lore. Yet, for the aficionados who do manage to source their smoke from the Golden State, the guarantee of quality is the key driver.
“For the connoisseurs who do get hold of the real deal, it’s about more than the gimmicky bags. It’s partly about having weed that’s properly cured, flushed of nutrient buildup and not containing traces of heavy metals”, Simon Doherty writes in The Face.
Yet this assumption is no longer a guarantee — or perhaps even a likelihood. In mid-June, a joint investigation by WeedWeek and the LA Times found many tested, safety-stamped products (including both flower and vapes) sold in California contained dangerous levels of pesticides and heavy metals.
“illegal, smuggled pesticides so toxic that law enforcement officers who encounter them are advised to don respirators and take blood poisoning tests.”
60% (25 of 42) of the legal cannabis purchased from retail stores for the purpose of the investigation showed concentrations of pesticides either above California’s allowable levels or at levels that exceed federal tobacco standards.
The contaminants included chemicals that have been linked to liver failure, thyroid disease, cancer, and genetic and neurological harm. This should be of even greater concern for those using cannabis for relief from medical conditions — many of whom will be at increased risk of harm from exposure to such contaminants.
The investigation also found the state’s testing requirements to be outdated, with a number of dangerous chemicals now prevalent in cultivation simply not being tested for. According to WeedWeek, these include “illegal, smuggled pesticides so toxic that law enforcement officers who encounter them are advised to don respirators and take blood poisoning tests.” The reporting mentions a pink acai vape from Stiiizy, the state’s top-selling cannabis brand, which was found to contain 60 times the maximum amount of pymetrozine allowed by federal regulators in cigarettes. Yet the company that makes Stiiizy products is not in violation of state regulation because California doesn’t require testing for the chemical.
It’s a horrifying image. It’s often easy for cannabis consumers to fall into a level of complacency around the safety of their smoke. Years of (misinformed and detrimental) prohibitionist policy have left many unsurprisingly defensive about the possible harms of long-term consumption. Yet the world’s largest legal weed market is, in 2024, presiding over a clear public health scandal, with some of the most recognizable brands pushing products teaming with harmful and illegal contaminants.
So how has this happened? What’s driving this race to the bottom?
Does cannabis have a capitalism problem?
Pesticide use in cannabis is a well-established phenomenon. The plant has long been grown with the assistance of large quantities of pest-controlling chemicals; yields can be incredibly valuable, and an insect infestation or spread of harmful microbes can result in huge financial losses for producers.
There’s also an argument that regulation may have, somewhat counterintuitively, reduced product safety.
Legal markets have brought many out of the shadows; rather than small-scale operations hidden up in the mountains, large farms are now dotted around the valley. And the geography matters. These grows (some legal, many not) can more easily become victims of cross-contamination. Pesticides are environmentally mobile and can be blown from elsewhere, contaminating neighbouring crops.
“We don’t even really know about the consequences of inhaling different types of pesticides, even those used on food,” Alex Halperin, WeedWeek’s editor and co-writer of the joint investigation tells leafie. It computes that when exposed to a combustion process, pesticides could present significantly greater health hazards than we are even aware of.
As Nate Seltenrich, author of Into the Weeds: Regulating Pesticides in Cannabis, notes: “For inhalable products, including cured flower products for smoking and highly concentrated extracts for vaporizing, (there is) … a total lack of toxicity data because pesticide reference doses are based on ingestion, not inhalation (with or without heating).
Meanwhile, in the laboratories tasked with determining product safety, both under-the-table deals and corners are being cut.
Ishqa Hillman, CEO of Canna Boss Babes and cannabis business consultant, explained:
“Many of these brands will say ‘Well, my lab does it for me this way and guarantees these specific results, so how can you match that’”.
With intense competition between testing labs, profit trumps consumer safety; for Hillman, this is an inevitable symptom of how the market works in capitalist America. Add an uncertain and developing regulatory environment to the mix, and a level of barely concealable chaos ensues.
“There’s also like an old boys network where many brands and labs built relationships prior to the DCC (Department of Cannabis Control) setting standards for everyone. No standards were initially set when Prop 64 passed. I’m told they just granted licenses to whoever was a testing lab, then everything else was kind of going to be figured out later.”
The result is a (literally) toxic ecosystem of labs battling for every customer while reporting one another for inconsistencies and malpractice.
“The lab is the agent of the cannabis company. They’re not actually trying to protect the consumer because that’s not their client.” Trent Hancock, grower and owner of Creswell Organics, tells leafie.
“If you’re a cannabis company getting for example 100 tests done in any given month at £500 a test, we’re talking serious figures, so that contract is extremely valuable to the lab. And that’s why they came up with the term lab shopping because labs will do just about anything to land that contract.
“It’s the difference between making it or not in the industry. The lab’s hands are tied because they are put in the position where they have to compete for our business. Any of them that are honest and expose things typically don’t get the business.”
It’s somewhat of an open secret that many US testing labs inflate THC percentages for clients (a response to consumer willingness to pay more for products with high THC quantities).
“Before, everyone knew what labs were up to but it never really had anything to do with consumer safety,” Halperin points out. But, in green-lighting products contaminated with heavy metals and other chemicals never intended for human consumption — let alone inhalation — it’s a different story.
While laboratories are rubber stamping contaminated products to make a quick buck, the Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) also has questions to answer.
The LA Times/WeedWeek investigation found that the California state agency that licenses and regulates cannabis businesses was aware of the dangerous chemicals present in the cannabis products being passed as “safe”.
“The cannabis recall process plays an important role in ensuring defective or potentially unsafe products are removed from the commercial market” reads the DCC’s website. Yet, the regulator only acted after the investigation was published, having received the information about defective and unsafe products months prior.
At the time of publication, there had been a total of 4 product recalls, all for vapes confirmed to exceed safety limits for a single chemical, the insecticide Chlorfenapyr.
For Halperin, who’s reported on the industry for close to a decade, the context of these failings is crucial. Regulated markets operate under almost impossible conditions. There’s a 35% tax rate, and the legal supply now only holds about a third of the market share.
“It’s been incredibly tough for growers and businesses in California. There’s still this backdoor path in the state, where legal products are diverted to non-regulated markets en-masse,” Alex explains.
“So there’s really this sort of veneer of functionality. There are these nice shiny shops and dispensaries. We‘re the home of weed culture, and everything looks professional with products on shelves, and nice branding. But behind the curtain, it’s a mess. It’s an incredibly complicated and complex industry.”
In short, regulators have little incentive to pull back the curtain, look more closely, and expose the issues. The DCC is playing Jenga, avoiding pulling out the middle block of wood. If they do, there’s a risk the entire tower will tumble.
“The main reason to legalize is to make sure the product is safe. So any exposure to these loopholes and the fact that the public is exposed to pesticides and fungicides is bad for the big cannabis entities and bad for the regulators because it’s an embarrassment,” Hancock explains.
That £70-eighth that *might* have made its way across the pond from Humboldt County or Santa Barbara? It’s probably not worth it.
For activist, writer, and podcaster Simpa Carter, the investigation exposes the empty promises of state regulation and control.
“(It) highlights a glaring misconception and issue around legalization: that cannabis is inherently dangerous and therefore the only way it should be made accessible to the masses is under strict governance, restriction and regulation by the state and venture capitalists. This (testing scandal) proves that isn’t true. When greed is the motivator, the product suffers, and the health of the consumer suffers as well.”
Emerging regulated markets should also take notes.
“If possible, the lesson would be not to go for that heavy commercialization straight away. When you have thousands of brands competing against each other, all for the same market, with competition so fierce, there becomes this huge incentive to cut corners.
“Maybe easing into a commercial market makes the most sense. Not giving licenses to hundreds of players at the same time, instead maybe allowing people to grow a certain amount and sell to their neighbors or in their area or something, rather than giving a green light to these mass operations,” Halperin says.
“I don’t think there’s a way to stop corruption in cannabis or in any industry,” Hillman says. “(But) having already established testing standards is really important. Maybe an organization where the labs where the leaders of these labs come together and agree to prioritize safety. Building a coalition among the people who are responsible for safety is key, as is consumer education”
Alternatively, Hancock proposes a greater role for the state as a possible answer. “The only way to reverse (this) is to have the labs contract through the state and still have very high volume testing, but to break up the business relationship between compliance labs and cannabis companies.”
In the meantime, there’s one actionable takeaway for the UK cannabis community. That £70-eighth that *might* have made its way across the pond from Humboldt County or Santa Barbara? It’s probably not worth it.
