OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority (OMMA) called a recent retest on cannabis products an immediate risk to public health and safety. 

This week, the OMMA suspended the license of Green Leaf Labs, one of the largest cannabis testing labs in the state. The state agency said they retested 19,000 samples that were originally cleared for sale and the results came back and the samples failed yeast and molding tests. 

There has been no official recall from OMMA despite calling it an immediate health risk. 

FOX23 reached out to Green Leaf for comment and has not yet heard back. However, another testing lab helped put in perspective just how many people this could impact and what businesses and cardholders need to be aware of. 

“The biggest thing to be aware of with the announcement last night, if dispensaries have a product on their shelf that has a test-failed status in their seed-to-sale tracking system, they need to stop selling that sample or that product immediately. They have to quarantine it and pull it off. They are allowed to retest it,” said Matthew Phillips, CEO of Oklahoma Cannabis Testing Lab (OKCTL). 

OKCTL is one of the oldest and largest cannabis testing labs in the state. They are just one of 15 with active licenses in Oklahoma. 

“We do everything from potency testing terpene testing, heavy metals, pesticides, microbials, and residual solvents,” said Phillips. 

Green Leaf is also one of the largest labs in the state and they work with hundreds of processors and growers who sell to thousands of dispensaries, who then sell those products to medical card holders. 

OKCTL is not affiliated with Green Leaf, but they shared a little about the process and laid out what cardholders and businesses need to be aware of. 

“That is a tremendous amount of samples to be flagged. I would say a very busy lab, like ours, typically runs anywhere from 100 to 200 samples a day,” said Phillips. “Some 19,000 samples is over our typical day’s workload. You’re talking a month or two of work to catch up on that. But also, at dispensary level, I’ve heard dispensaries are facing 30% or more of their product being pulled off their shelf so, it’s a significant impact on them as well.” 

Here’s what local dispensaries need to know: 

“Patient safety is the number one priority for our lab and for the state agency in my opinion,” said Phillips. “At the end of the day, if a patient is consuming a product that has mold in it there are health risks associated with that. So you definitely do not want that to be sold anymore, and there will be further processes to notify patients and so on. I assume that they may have consumed a product that had been contaminated.” 

Another resource for patients and businesses is the Professional Cannabis Association (PCA), where OMMA, labs, dispensaries, and other state agencies release educational resources for patients and medical card holders. 

“They’ll have a dispensary committee, a lab committee, and a processing committee. If we had enough patients to join I’d bet we’d have a patients committee. And so that’s something that they can communicate throughout the month and then the actual PCA will meet once per month, usually in OKC but sometimes in Tulsa,” said Brandon Foutain, Sales Manager with OKCTL. “OMMA, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, the State Fire Marshal, all types of different state agencies will actually come and join the discussion and be a part of it. It’s a great thing if you’re a cannabis business and it’s a great thing if you’re a patient if you want to know that these laboratories and these companies are working together to self regulate, keep each other honest, it’s a great thing for the industry.” 

PCA is a large-scale group that works in step with OMMS and several other state agencies. The group focuses on advocacy and education on the need for medical marijuana. 

“It’s a good thing to keep a lot of the businesses as one unified voice. We want to make sure that we’re sharing the same points at the capital,” Fountain said. “There’s a lot of patients in this state that need to be represented. And it’s a good way that we can reach all of them and understand the needs of everybody including the business owners.” 

To view OMMA’s public notice about this incident, click here.

FOX23 will continue to provide updates on if a recall is announced or if more information for dispensaries and cardholders comes out.