Massachusetts cannabis regulators are beginning to compile a catalog of the myriad marijuana products available to adults at the state’s pot shops and expect they will soon require product manufacturers and retailers to provide detailed information on all of their products.
Cannabis Control Commission Executive Director Shawn Collins said Thursday that the agency sent an e-mail to all licensees on May 22 informing them that the product tracking system they are required to use now has fields where manufacturers and retailers can upload information like a product’s THC or CBD potency, serving size, ingredients list, a broad description, and a photo.
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“This information is optional, currently, for the licensee for them to assist us in developing this product catalog ... We do anticipate that some of these fields could at some point become a requirement,” he said.
Commissioner Britte McBride, who spearheaded the effort to develop the product catalog, said, “We do anticipate that this will become part of our regulations and be a regulatory requirement going forward.”
The idea for a database of the many marijuana edibles and marijuana-infused products approved for sale in Massachusetts came about in 2018 after members of the CCC balked at a licensee’s request to manufacture marijuana-infused cake pops. The idea is to compile information in one place so that regulators, consumers, parents, and law enforcement can get a better sense of what type of products are out there, so they can better discern between legal products and illicit ones.
Collins said the catalog would have come in handy last fall, when the CCC banned the sale of vaping products amid a national outbreak of vaping-related lung disease. He said the CCC “did not have the ability to search any database whatsoever of all ingredients that were included and specifically we didn’t have the ability to search for Vitamin E acetate,” which federal public health officials identified as a possible culprit in the illnesses.
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