Great article on California Testing and EVIO's participation in the market...
California Recreational Testing
Lori Glauser has been through this regulatory process in five states, including in Oregon, where EVIO has five labs. “The testing part isn’t too different from what we expected,” she said of California’s regulations.
In 2015, before the regulations took effect, there were 40 cannabis-testing labs in Oregon. The majority couldn’t pass all the standards the state required. On the day the regulations went into effect, there were only 12 labs open. That number has been steadily creeping back up.
Glauser took a long view of the regulatory process. It was stressful at first, particularly for growers, some of whom hadn’t paid much attention to the regulation conversation. Many in the industry lost money those first few months. “We spent a tremendous amount of time just educating the market,” Glauser said.
Oregon is a much smaller state with fewer testing regulations. If Oregon is any example though, Glauser said California labs can expect to get flooded with marijuana, see a backup in the labs, experience huge stress in the industry, and, eventually, find an evening out.
Meanwhile, EVIO is on a hiring spree in California, where they’re getting ready to open a handful of new labs in the north and the south. (The Central Valley is a bit of a dead zone for weed testing, both because it doesn’t have comparable population centers and because there’s enough pesticide drift there that Central Valley weed rarely tests clean unless it’s grown indoors.) “There are lots of people who are chemists with experience testing similar substances and using this kind of equipment – maybe they test grapes or pharmaceuticals,” Glauser said. “But I haven’t seen many migrating into cannabis yet.” She hopes to win the best of California’s fruit and pharma testers over to the weed side.
“We feel confident we can do all the tests, but I will say it is a lot to put on labs six weeks before the date,” Glauser said. “If Oregon now has 20 labs, you’ll need more than 100 labs in California to get this to work at the same scale.” EVIO is currently opening a location in Costa Mesa and eyeing a number of others in the Inland Empire, the Emerald Triangle, the Bay Area, and the Sacramento Valley. Glauser opened their first seven labs in a year and a half. “We’ve got the system down,” she said.
California Recreational Testing
Lori Glauser has been through this regulatory process in five states, including in Oregon, where EVIO has five labs. “The testing part isn’t too different from what we expected,” she said of California’s regulations.
In 2015, before the regulations took effect, there were 40 cannabis-testing labs in Oregon. The majority couldn’t pass all the standards the state required. On the day the regulations went into effect, there were only 12 labs open. That number has been steadily creeping back up.
Glauser took a long view of the regulatory process. It was stressful at first, particularly for growers, some of whom hadn’t paid much attention to the regulation conversation. Many in the industry lost money those first few months. “We spent a tremendous amount of time just educating the market,” Glauser said.
Oregon is a much smaller state with fewer testing regulations. If Oregon is any example though, Glauser said California labs can expect to get flooded with marijuana, see a backup in the labs, experience huge stress in the industry, and, eventually, find an evening out.
Meanwhile, EVIO is on a hiring spree in California, where they’re getting ready to open a handful of new labs in the north and the south. (The Central Valley is a bit of a dead zone for weed testing, both because it doesn’t have comparable population centers and because there’s enough pesticide drift there that Central Valley weed rarely tests clean unless it’s grown indoors.) “There are lots of people who are chemists with experience testing similar substances and using this kind of equipment – maybe they test grapes or pharmaceuticals,” Glauser said. “But I haven’t seen many migrating into cannabis yet.” She hopes to win the best of California’s fruit and pharma testers over to the weed side.
“We feel confident we can do all the tests, but I will say it is a lot to put on labs six weeks before the date,” Glauser said. “If Oregon now has 20 labs, you’ll need more than 100 labs in California to get this to work at the same scale.” EVIO is currently opening a location in Costa Mesa and eyeing a number of others in the Inland Empire, the Emerald Triangle, the Bay Area, and the Sacramento Valley. Glauser opened their first seven labs in a year and a half. “We’ve got the system down,” she said.
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