Dennis Laing didn’t know his cannabis had been recalled until he saw it on the news.

It was November 2024, and the Office of Cannabis Policy had put his business, Leb City Greeneries in Lebanon, on blast after one of its cannabis strains failed mandatory yeast and mold testing. It was only the third time OCP had initiated a cannabis recall.

The first came just two months prior — nearly five years after Maine’s recreational cannabis market got off the ground. Since then, nearly 25 strains of cannabis products have been subject to mandatory recalls or safety advisories.

For Laing and many other growers affected, the advisories have been frustrating.

Most of OCP’s recalls have been over failed yeast and mold tests. Maine’s limits on those contaminants are much tighter than other states where cannabis is legal. Mold grows naturally just about everywhere, Laing and others said, and the mandatory testing doesn’t differentiate between harmful and harmless spores.

“It feels like the testing system is broken. It’s sporadic,” said Laing, who has since split from his business partners at Leb City. “People fail for things that aren’t even dangerous.”

The recent product recalls and warnings have highlighted a number of disparate dynamics between Maine’s medical cannabis markets, namely the differing regulations between the state’s medical and recreational industries and the distrust between many growers and the regulators overseeing them.

Maine is one of the few in the country to govern its medical and recreational marijuana markets differently. Seed-to-sale plant tracking and product testing for things like mold, chemicals and heavy metals are mandatory in Maine’s recreational industry, while such safeguards are optional in the medical industry.

Accordingly, authorities can initiate recalls of recreational cannabis but can only issue “patient advisories,” or consumer warnings, about tainted medical cannabis. OCP issued the first such advisory in January this year, nearly 30 years after medical cannabis was first legalized in Maine.

“(The state) issues medical cannabis patient advisories to ensure patients have the information they need to make informed decisions about the cannabis they consume,” agency spokesperson Alexis Soucy wrote in an email.

Soucy attributed the advisories in part to a 2024 revision of OCP’s confidentiality provisions that allowed the agency to disclose more test results and consumer complaints. But the office still needs more authority to truly tackle the issue of tainted weed, she added.

“OCP is likely to continue issuing medical cannabis patient advisories until mandatory testing is required and contamination standards are established in the medical program,” Soucy said.

The timing of the recalls and medical advisories, coupled with OCP’s messaging, has raised the eyebrows of many growers across the state.

Not only was the first advisory issued decades after Maine legalized medical cannabis, but it came on the heels of the state’s latest failed attempt to mandate product testing and plant tracking in the medical market. Longtime legalization advocate Paul McCarrier said it seems like OCP is trying harder to cast doubt on an industry that’s resisted stricter regulations than to protect consumers’ health.

“This is obviously just more scare tactics being done by the failed Office of Cannabis Policy,” McCarrier said. “They have not been able to get (testing and tracking) through the Legislature, so they continue to use scare tactics in an attempt to intimidate not only the patients but also the people in the industry.”

WHAT’S CAUSING THE RECALLS ANYWAY?

The majority of recreational recalls have been for yeast and mold contamination: Products that contained more spores than OCP says are safe. Most of the medical advisories were issued for cannabis with high amounts of toxic pesticides.

Moldy cannabis can cause respiratory and sinus infections, headaches, dizziness and skin rashes. In some cases, deadly mycotoxins (natural chemical byproducts produced by some molds and fungi) can be inhaled and cause acute and sometimes long-term health issues.

The pesticides detected in recalled cannabis can cause fevers, sweating, nausea, vomiting and “an altered mental status” if inhaled, OCP said.

Each of the medical advisories issued to this point were issued after OCP received a complaint from a consumer about “adverse reactions” to ingesting tainted cannabis flower, vapes and concentrates, Soucy said.

Recreational growers are required to submit samples from each batch of their cannabis products to be tested for mold, pesticides and other contaminants. Each of the recreational recalls was initiated after independent tests by investigators of purchased products from a dispensary came back with results different from those reported to the agency.

“OCP has found those discrepancies to be attributable to licensee error — some accidental and some not — in the process of sampling, handling, and treating samples sent out for testing differently than the rest of the batch,” Soucy said.

Some in the industry have speculated the increase in recalls and advisories, especially pertaining to pesticides and chemicals, has nothing to do with Maine growers at all.

In recent years, hundreds of formerly illicit “grow houses” allegedly linked to Chinese organized crime groups have sought Maine medical cannabis growing licenses. It’s weed from those growers, McCarrier and others have posited, that’s finding its way into legal markets and bringing contaminants with it.

As the price per gram of cannabis has fallen drastically over the last five years, thousands of medical cannabis growers and shop owners have left the market amid stagnating sales. As a result, those remaining have been more inclined to purchase cheaper product to stay afloat, even if it’s produced by less-than-legal growers.

Chemical testing of cannabis from both licensed and unlicensed Chinese grow houses has found high levels of mold, pesticides and arsenic, among other contaminants. Many of the specific pesticides and pollutants found in grow house weed have turned up in the cannabis recalled by OCP.

For illicit growers, obtaining a medical Maine growing license serves two purposes: It subverts law enforcement scrutiny of an illegal grow and provides an opaque legal market through which they can launder black market cannabis and proceeds from it.

“The Chinese growers are inverting product through the medical market,” McCarrier said. “They’re using the medical cannabis program not only as a shield for illicit operations, but also as a way to destroy local operators.”

While OCP acknowledges having received complaints of illicit growers selling black market cannabis to brick-and-mortar dispensaries, Soucy said the lack of mandatory inventory tracking and product testing in Maine’s medical industry makes it “effectively impossible” for the agency to know whether grow house cannabis is making it to medical dispensary shelves.

Maine’s medical industry had dealt with large swaths of contaminated cannabis before Chinese grow houses began entering the market, Soucy noted. A 2023 report from OCP, about a year before the grow houses began obtaining licenses, found close to half of Maine’s medical cannabis would have failed the standards established for the recreational market.

HOW ARE RECALLS AFFECTING THE MARKET?

It’s unclear whether the recreational recalls and medical advisories have had much impact on consumers’ cannabis consumption habits. But for each of the growers affected, whether they’ve had one strain recalled or eight, the warnings have been detrimental to say the least.

Nick Ferer, co-owner of Green Trap Cannabis, was subjected in June to the most recent recreational recall. One strain of cannabis flower from the operation was found to have heightened levels of yeast and mold, and product was pulled from shelves in seven dispensaries in western and Midcoast Maine.

Ferer said his business has taken a hit from the recall, even though only a single batch of a single strain was affected and all contaminated products were quickly removed from the market.

He said the process has been “incredibly challenging,” but that his operation has changed its operating procedures and purchased new equipment to reduce the risk of mold contamination in the future.

“It reinforced our commitment to quality and consumer safety,” Ferer said. “We learned from the experience and strengthened our processes to help ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Laing, the grower with Leb City affected by a recall in 2024, had a similar story: He lost some business initially but then separated from his business partner and shifted into processing cannabis products rather than growing plants himself.

He, Ferer and other growers affected by mold and yeast recalls have questioned Maine’s mold testing system. While some states, like California, test for different types of specific harmful mold, Maine does not. Most mold spores are benign and will grow just about anywhere, given enough heat and humidity.

“It comes down to the fact that the testing levels for our food are incredibly more relaxed than the testing for our cannabis,” said McCarrier, the legalization advocate and medical grower. “And nobody needs adult-use cannabis. But many people rely on medical cannabis.”

Frank Berenyi, owner of the statewide chain of MarijuanaVille medical dispensaries, was subject to the state’s first ever medical cannabis advisory in January.

A consumer’s complaint of an “adverse health reaction” prompted five strains of cannabis concentrate to be removed from stores statewide for having unsafe levels of multiple pesticides.

Berenyi estimated he’s lost more than $2 million in sales since the advisory was issued six months ago. He noted that MarijuanaVille doesn’t grow its own products, but sources them from growers across the state.

The recalls have had a pronounced effect on the growers subjected to them, but they don’t seem to have had much impact on broader consumer habits. Maine cannabis sales are known to ebb and flow with the seasons, and those trends have stayed consistent despite the spike in product safety warnings.

Like many others affected by the advisories and recalls, Berenyi said he thinks OCP is unevenly enforcing its rules and trying to push recreational cannabis regulations onto a medical program that’s exempt from them. He speculated the fact OCP’s advisory called MarijuanaVille out rather than the producers of the tainted cannabis was an example of selective enforcement.

“I don’t know why they’re recalling some products but not others,” Berenyi said. “Why aren’t they inspecting the grows to stop the stuff from getting into the stores? When they did my advisory, why didn’t they put out an advisory on the companies that sold us the product?”

For its part, OCP said the limited inventory tracking requirements in Maine’s medical cannabis program “make it difficult to trace products through the supply chain and back to their source.” As a result, the agency was “limited in the amount of information and detail it can provide” about the tainted products, OCP director John Hudak said at the time.

RECALLS IN MAINE VS. OTHER STATES

While the pace of recalls has ramped up in Maine, the number is still smaller than in most other states that have legalized cannabis.

New York has recalled several dozen products in just the last year over failed pesticide tests. Massachusetts issued a safety advisory for thousands of products last year after a single testing lab allegedly misreported hundreds of results. Colorado has issued nearly 100 product safety warnings since becoming one of the first states to allow legal recreational cannabis sales in 2014.

Gillian Schauer is the director of the Cannabis Regulators Association, a national group of state cannabis authorities that includes New York, Massachusetts, Colorado and Maine’s state cannabis agencies. She said many of the association’s members only began issuing recalls several years after legal markets got off the ground.

“It is not uncommon for regulatory agencies to expand product recall capabilities once they are sufficiently staffed and funded,” Schauer wrote in an email.

That’s true here. OCP attributed recent recalls in part to the agency becoming better staffed and funded. The agency’s budget has grown from $4.7 million in 2021 to more than $7.5 million in 2025, and the office now has more than 50 employees.

Similarly, the agency has made it easier for consumers to report “adverse health reactions” to contaminated cannabis through an online form on the OCP website.

“Cannabis patients and consumers have become more aware of adverse reactions and the possible connection of an adverse reaction to the consumption of cannabis,” Soucy wrote in an email.

OCP said it expects the number of recalls and safety advisories to continue growing. The agency is in the process of “enhancing” the recreational testing and tracking systems, Soucy said, and will likely continue pushing for mandating such safeguards in the medical market during the next legislative session.

Growers, however, remain nervous the advisories will erode the public’s faith in Maine’s cannabis industries at a time in which recreational cannabis sales are stagnating and medical cannabis growers are fleeing the industry at a rapid clip.

“It’s like we’re in an abusive relationship with the Office of Cannabis Policy,” McCarrier said. “It feels like the deck is stacked against us.”