Put down the Dasani, and step away from the bottle.

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A lawsuit has accused an Oregon nurse of replacing a patient’s fentanyl IV with tap water, leading to a bacterial infection that killed him.

Horace Wilson, known to his family and friends as “Buddy” was a founding member of an award-winning Oregon cannabis company called Decibel Farms. He fell off a ladder in January of 2022, which ruptured his spleen causing him to be hospitalized. He underwent several surgeries after which he started experiencing complications, including sepsis. A blood test revealed a bacterial growth later identified as Staphylococcus epidermidis, according to the Oregonian. Wilson died on February 25 from treatment-resistant sepsis related to this infection.

At the time of Wilson’s death, his family and business partner passed it off as basic incompetence on the hospital’s part mixed with bad luck, but two years after Wilson’s death, some shocking new developments began to unfold implicating that a nurse working for Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center where Wilson was receiving care may have been siphoning fentanyl out of IV bags and replacing it with tap water, leading to the bacterial infection that ultimately killed him. His estate filed a lawsuit against the nurse in question this past Monday. The Medford Police Department released a statement about the matter on January 3.

“In early December 2023 the Medford Police Department was contacted by officials from Asante in regard to a former employee that they believe was involved in the theft of controlled substances prescribed to patients. Additionally, there was concern that this behavior resulted in adverse patient care, though the extent of the impact on those patients is yet to be determined. MPD is actively working on investigating these claims,” a Medford Police Department Facebook post said. “MPD has received numerous calls from individuals asking if they or a family member have been impacted by the suspected actions of the former Asante employee. Asante has informed MPD that they have identified the involved patients and have notified or are in the process of notifying them or their families.

It is unclear exactly how many patients may have been affected by the nurse’s alleged actions but a lawyer representing the estate of Horace Wilson told the Oregonian he has at least nine clients whose medications may have been swapped out for tap water. The nurse in question was named in the $11.5 million lawsuit as Dani Marie Schofield, though Medford police have not confirmed that she is a suspect nor has Asante released a statement about her. 

Shaun Bishop of Decibel Farms and Horace Wilson’s business partner before he passed told High Times that his friend Buddy has been dearly missed, and the recent news about the possibility that his death may have been avoidable has “added insult to injury.”

“When it came to the time of his death, we all just kind of threw our hands up and we’re like, yeah, hospitals suck, you know. That’s a good place to go if you want if you wanna die,” Bishop said. “We just saw through it and figured it was incompetence just from modern medicine and hospitals and the way they operate. But finding out that it was from criminal activity brings a whole ‘nother source of pain to the situation for me and primarily his children.”

Bishop stressed that Wilson was a great business partner, great friend, lover of cannabis and loved his kids more than anything else in the world. He left behind five children, one of whom, Bishop told High Times, was at his side the entire time he was in the hospital. To Bishop’s knowledge, that same child wrote a letter of complaint to Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center regarding Schofield and her perceived incompetence at the time, though none of them necessarily suspected criminal activity at the time.

“[Wilson’s daughter] spent the month he was in the hospital. She was there primarily by herself for most of that time except when the other kids or I would come visit. So she was the closest to the nurse,” Bishop said. “She knew that nurse on a daily basis and had really weird feelings about her since the beginning. She voiced it early, early on that there’s something wrong with that nurse. We were like, yeah, we know, [name redacted] It’s frustrating being in the hospital, but we didn’t know it was a criminal vibe she was picking up.”

The child in question whose name I’ve left out of this out of an abundance of respect for the privacy of the family declined to comment for this article because it could affect the integrity of the lawsuit. No criminal charges have yet been announced against Schofield. The business Wilson left behind is a multiple award-winning cannabis producer that helped pioneer the very early days of Oregon’s legal market. Bishop told High Times that Wilson dying was incredibly hard on the company but also that he helped lay down a solid framework so Decibel Farms could continue on without him.

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The University of California, Berkeley (UCB) recently published a scientific brief in February regarding illegal water use for cannabis plants.

Entitled “Water Use: Cannabis in Context,” the brief was conducted by individuals at the Berkeley Cannabis Research Center, which is part of the College of Environmental Science Policy & Management. The Cannabis Research Center has been reviewing cannabis water use since 2017, and the most recent brief is split into four sections posed with a question.

First, “How much water does cannabis use relative to stream flow?” explains that cannabis water use in regions along the Northern California coast and semi-inland areas (primarily Humboldt and Mendocino County) represents a “small fraction” of surface water supplies year-round, and especially during the months of July, August, and September. However, cannabis grows aren’t spread out evenly amongst these areas, with many farms gathered near one another. In those areas, “cannabis water demand represents >10% of available supplies during the dry season.” Researchers also make an important note that the watershed samples they refer to include demand mainly from unlicensed farms.

The researcher’s second section addresses the comparison between water demand between unlicensed versus licensed farms. “Unlicensed cannabis accounts for significantly more cultivated area than licensed cannabis farming and therefore has a much larger water demand footprint,” researchers explained. “Furthermore, because unlicensed cannabis farms often have little to no water storage on-site, water is extracted from watersheds on demand, which tends to peak in August.”

Ultimately, unlicensed farms consume much more than licensed farms throughout the year. “Water demand for unlicensed cultivation therefore exceeds that of licensed cultivation to an even greater extent in the driest time of year when stream flow is lowest,” the authors stated, recommending that incentives be provided for licensed farmers to be able to obtain or retain their existing licenses while “increasing off-site stream storage” to use as irrigation during the summer months.

The third section explores how much residents in Humboldt and Mendocino Counties consume in comparison to the amount of water that licensed grows utilize. Researchers studied 91 watersheds and found that resident’s demand for water usage far exceeded that of licensed cultivators by 97%. “On average, licensed cannabis farm demands are one-tenth the amount of water as residential demand,” the brief states. “Water demands for other forms of agriculture in the region far exceed those of cannabis and residential use.”

Finally, the last section examined water used licensed cannabis grows and found that those cultivation sites only used 4% or less of streamflow in the month of August, some even without additional water storage. “If licensed cannabis farms had enough water storage capacity to accommodate at least half of their annual water demand, there would be no watersheds among those sampled exceeding 2% of their estimated streamflow availability,” the authors concluded. “If licensed cannabis farms had storage capacity equivalent to their annual water demand, licensed cultivation would not require more than 1% of available flow in any sampled watershed.”

The release of this brief is well-timed to educate voters as spring approaches, which is also when they will have the opportunity to choose, approve or reject the Humboldt Cannabis Reform Initiative (HCRI) which will appear as Measure A on the upcoming ballot. If approved, it would severely hinder local growers by banning them from making any changes to their farms. A report analyzing the HCRI was prepared for Humboldt County Board of Supervisors by the Humboldt County Planning Department in March 2023, explaining the harms of such a measure. “HCRI has been written to effectively discourage existing permit holders from modifying their permits in any way,” the report stated. “This includes adding infrastructure intended for environmental protections or modification of activities or site configuration to adapt to the evolving industry. These restrictions affect the smallest of farms permitted in Humboldt County to the largest cultivation sites.” 

More recently, former Board of Supervisors member Mark Lovelace, who has spent the past seven years advising other California counties and cities on cannabis regulations, wrote an op-ed for Times Standard urging voters to vote no on Measure A. “Based on my professional analysis, I believe that Measure A will deal a devastating blow to the small cannabis businesses it purports to want to help,” Lovelace wrote. “The measure will impose an unrealistically small limit on the size of any new cannabis farms and will deny even the smallest ‘craft’ farmers any opportunity to grow or adapt their operations within Humboldt County. With cannabis prices continuing to fall, small farmers will be assured of making less money every year until they are no longer viable.”

Lovelace described the measure as “grossly uninformed and demonstrates a deep lack of understanding of the cannabis industry and basic economics.” Measure A cites any grow larger than 10,000 square feet (which he describes as slightly larger than the average suburban lot), is a “large grow.” Additionally, the average size of all licensed Californian cultivator lots are more than 27,000 square feet, 93 cultivators are larger than 100,000 square feet, and nine include more than one million square feet.

In addition to other important points of defense of local cannabis growers, Lovelace summarizes the effect that Measure A may have on small cultivators. “Measure A would put Humboldt County’s small cannabis farms at an extreme disadvantage against large growers elsewhere in the state, rendering them largely unviable in an increasingly competitive industry. I urge Humboldt County’s voters to vote NO on Measure A,” Lovelace concluded.

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A Humboldt County cannabis grower will pay at least $750,000 to settle a dispute with state water and wildlife agencies over alleged environmental violations at a 435-acre cultivation site in California’s famed Emerald Triangle. In the settlement agreement, licensed weed grower Joshua Sweet and his companies, The Hills LLC and Shadow Light Ranch LLC, admitted to violations of state water regulations over a period of several years. 

“It is critical for all cannabis cultivators to be environmentally responsible and protect California’s water supply and water quality,” Taro Murano, program manager for the State Water Board’s Division of Water Rights cannabis enforcement section, said in a statement from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). “Sweet chose to operate his business while ignoring regulations designed to protect the environment. He must now remediate the environmental damage he caused and pay a significant penalty. No one should get a business advantage by ignoring the law and harming the environment.”

The settlement calls for Sweet to pay $1.75 million for the violations, which include illegally diverting and collecting water from unnamed tributaries of the South Fork Eel River that cross the property. According to the settlement terms, $1 million of the fine was suspended, but Sweet will be responsible for paying the additional $1 million if remediations to the property are not completed as agreed.

Multiple Environmental Violations at Cultivation Site

The settlement cites several violations, including building an unpermitted pond on a waterway to collect water for irrigating cannabis plants. Other violations include the destruction of wetland habitats and stream channels, converting oak woodland to cannabis cultivation and failure to work with state and local officials to satisfy permitting requirements.

Yvonne West, director of the State Water Resources Control Board’s office of enforcement, said that Sweet and his companies did not have the authority to divert water on the property and use it for cannabis cultivation. According to an email from the water board to nonprofit news outlet CalMatters, Sweet took about 16.2 acre-feet of water, approximately enough to supply about 49 households for a year, for a total of three ponds on the property between 2017 and 2020.

“This case represents years of hard work by dedicated staff to remediate damage to streambed channels, wetland habitat and oak woodlands,” said Nathaniel Arnold, acting chief of law enforcement for CDFW. “The settlement also speaks volumes to the egregious nature of this case and should send a strong message to those working outside of state regulations to cultivate cannabis. Our natural resources deserve to be respected.”

Included in the settlement agreement is a $500,000 payment for water rights violations, a record penalty for such a violation in the state of California. The defendants are also required to remove unpermitted ponds and restore wetlands and waterways as part of the agreement.

Grower Says Penalty Is Unfair

Sweet believes that the fines are unfair and excessive and that the case could have been handled differently.

“If the full penalty and remediation costs were due today it would take everything I own,” Sweet said in a statement to CalMatters.

“Although I will follow through with my end of the settlement, I do not believe this is fair or just, and I believe I have already suffered way too much,” Sweet said in the emailed statement. 

“Even during our court-mandated settlement conference, they were asked why they would go after a small independent businessman with these type of enormous fines usually reserved for huge corporations that destroy ecosystems,” he added.

But state and local officials defended the settlement, saying it is justified by the actions taken at the property.

“The ordered penalties are modest given the scope of damage, the length of time the site has been left unremediated and considering the unjust enrichment or benefit to Mr. Sweet from running a business for several years without going through the necessary permitting process,” said Jeremy Valverde, assistant chief counsel at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, in a statement emailed to CalMatters.

Joshua Curtis, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board’s assistant executive officer, said that Sweet and his businesses “for years resisted our attempts to cooperatively work on restoration and recovery of those resources, leaving formal enforcement as our only option.”

“This was an ongoing use by Mr. Sweet and the penalties are over an approximately four-year period for unauthorized diversion and use of water to support cultivation,” said West of the water board. “Five hundred dollars a day, multiple violations over a four-year period, does really add up. And then again we did have the additional types of violations at play here as well.”

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Images taken using radar technology of an area near the equator of Mars have revealed what appears to be massive deposits of ice buried underneath the surface of the Red Planet.

According to a press release from the European Space Agency, if the radar images do turn out to be water ice, it would be enough to cover the entire planet in a shallow ocean of water anywhere from 1.5 meters to 2.7 meters deep. This could potentially prove an extremely useful discovery for future human exploration and potential occupation of Mars.

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express Orbiter was responsible for the discovery. The Mars Express was launched in June of 2003 and has been used to research the fourth planet from the sun ever since 2004. Since that time it has found striking evidence of current or past presence of water on Mars including the discovery of hydrated minerals which, according to NASA, form only in the presence of water. 

This is not the first time evidence of ice has been found on Mars, but the new discovery represents the largest potential deposits of ice found thus far in an area known as the Medusae Fossae Formation, which was studied about 15 years ago for its deposits which were not able to be clearly seen at the time. 

“We’ve explored the MFF again using newer data from Mars Express’s MARSIS radar, and found the deposits to be even thicker than we thought: up to 3.7 km thick,” said Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian Institution USA, lead author of both the new research and the initial 2007 study. “Excitingly, the radar signals match what we’d expect to see from layered ice, and are similar to the signals we see from Mars’s polar caps, which we know to be very ice rich.”

The MFF is an area of Mars known for its massive amounts of dust which can create harrowing dust storms all around the planet. When the Mars Express originally identified images of the deposits 15 years ago, it was suspected the deposits might just be more dust, but researchers have said that the new images show greater evidence that the deposits appear to be water ice. 

“Here’s where the new radar data comes in! Given how deep it is, if the MFF was simply a giant pile of dust, we’d expect it to become compacted under its own weight,” said co-author Andrea Cicchetti of the National Institute for Astrophysics, Italy. “This would create something far denser than what we actually see with MARSIS. And when we modeled how different ice-free materials would behave, nothing reproduced the properties of the MFF – we need ice.”

The discovery was made from an orbiting spacecraft far above the surface so it will likely be several years, decades even, before we can find out for certain but the European Space Agency emphasized the importance of the discovery as crucial information to a well-rounded understanding of the planet which very well could house humans one day.

“This latest analysis challenges our understanding of the Medusae Fossae Formation, and raises as many questions as answers,” said Colin Wilson, ESA project scientist for Mars Express and the ESA ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). “Unfortunately, these MFF deposits are covered by hundreds of meters of dust, making them inaccessible for at least the next few decades. However, every bit of ice we find helps us build a better picture of where Mars’s water has flowed before, and where it can be found today.”

In the event that a human-occupied spacecraft lands on Mars, it’s near impossible with current technology to land near the polar caps of Mars, which have been known for a while to contain water ice. If the MFF deposits do turn out to be water ice, it would be a much easier area to access based on proximity to potential landing zones for humans to access water. 

“How long ago did these ice deposits form, and what was Mars like at that time? If confirmed to be water ice, these massive deposits would change our understanding of Mars climate history. Any reservoir of ancient water would be a fascinating target for human or robotic exploration,” Wilson said. “Together, our Mars explorers are revealing more and more about our planetary neighbor.”

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California legislators have approved regulations for water companies to begin purifying sewage water for people to drink.

In a state with over 39 million residents regularly stricken by years-long droughts, water companies will soon be permitted but not required to recycle toilet water, extensively treat it, and send it right back to kitchen sinks. California is the second state after Colorado to approve such measures.

“Water is so precious in California. It is important that we use it more than once,” said Jennifer West, managing director of WateReuse California, an advocacy group 

“After 13 years of steady advocacy, fundraising and outreach by WRCA, California is posed to adopt statewide regulations for Direct Potable Reuse,” a portion of the WatReuse California website reads. “It is a major milestone for the state and WRCA as DPR regulations have long been one of the primary objectives of the association. 

According to an article by the Associated Press, California has actually been using recycled waste water for quite a while just about everywhere besides kitchen faucets. Waste water is used to make ice skating rinks, to water crops and if you’ve gone skiing in the mountains surrounding Lake Tahoe your skis were likely gliding over – you guessed it- recycled sewage. So much for ‘don’t eat the yellow snow.’

The new regulations dictate that water companies will be required to treat the waste water for all pathogens and viruses, even if none are detected. This differs from traditional purification which only treats the water for known pathogens. The waste water purification process also strips the water of its minerals, which have to be added back in at the end of the process unlike regularly treated drinking water. Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the division of drinking water for the California Water Resources Control Board said this will likely make the recycled waste water taste better than traditionally processed drinking water.

“It’s at the same drinking water quality, and probably better in many instances,” Polhemus said to the Associated Press.

The regulations took over ten years to develop and underwent thorough, extensive scrutiny by several teams of scientists before they were approved ahead of the Dec 31 deadline set by state law for the California Water Resources Control Board to approve the new regulations.

It turns out this new development in water purification is actually somewhat arbitrary when modern water treatment practices are considered. According to Joaquin Esquivel, chair of the Water Resources Control Board, waste water is often treated and then pumped into rivers. That river water flows into neighboring water districts where it is used as regular drinking water.

“Anyone out there taking drinking water downstream from a wastewater treatment plant discharge — which, I promise you, you’re all doing — is already drinking toilet to tap,” Esquivel said to the Associated Press. “All water is recycled. What we have here are standards, science and — importantly — monitoring that allow us to have the faith that it is pure water.”

These somewhat icky realities of current water treatment practices notwithstanding, public perception of waste water treatment will almost certainly be a tall mountain to climb for water companies. According to the Associated Press, a waste water treatment center in San Jose is offering tours to the general public to educate the public about the process and ease any concerns they may harbor about the water they will soon be using to cook, bathe and drink. Kirsten Struve, assistant officer for the water supply division at the Santa Clara Valley Water District told the Associated Press this water is already being used to irrigate parks and soccer fields and such.

“We live in California where the drought happens all the time. And with climate change, it will only get worse,” Struve said. “And this is a drought-resistant supply that we will need in the future to meet the demands of our communities.”

Water companies across the Golden State are gearing up to begin treating waste water as soon as possible. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, for instance, plans to produce up to 150 million gallons per day of treated waste water, according to the Associated Press. In fact, nearly half of San Diego’s drinking water is slated to come from treated waste water by 2035.

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An earthquake rocked Humboldt County on Sunday, shaking California’s famous Emerald Triangle cannabis cultivation region for the second time in two weeks. The earthquake on New Year’s Day, which measured 5.4 on the Richter scale, followed a stronger quake that shook the area on December 20, leading to the death of two people. Sunday’s quake was one of more than 300 aftershocks that have rocked the region since.

“It’s typical to have an aftershock that is about one magnitude unit less than the main shock,” Lori Dengler, a former geology professor and an expert on earthquakes and tsunamis, told local media after Sunday’s temblor. “So this is very typical of most aftershock sequences.”

“Today’s earthquake (was) clearly on a different but related fault,” Dengler added.

Sunday’s quake occurred at 10:35 a.m. local time and was centered about nine miles east of the Rio Dell area of Humboldt County, according to information from the U.S. Geological Survey. There were no reports of casualties or major damage, although California Route 211 through the area was temporarily closed to give inspectors time to check a bridge over the Eel River for potential damage associated with the quake, the California Department of Transportation reported. 

Earthquake Results In Power Outage

The temblor caused a power outage in the Rio Dell area, which bore the brunt of the earthquake that shook the area 12 days earlier. Pacific Gas and Electric reported that the outage affected between 500 and 5,000 utility customers, according to media reports.

Gage Dupper was displaced by the December earthquake, which knocked his home off its foundation. He told reporters he has been living as a “nomad” since then.

“Today was another pretty big one,” said Dupper. “Still feels like we are shaking to me. We just can’t catch a break it seems.”

Gage noted that he was working in Fortuna, adjacent to Rio Dell, when Sunday’s quake shook the area again.

“But even just here it felt like the ceiling was going to come down,” Dupper said. “We nearly lost our power here as well. I was in the middle of talking to a resident of the assisted living community I work for and you could just see the panic in their eyes when it started. She was just trying to pay her rent. It certainly tossed us around a bit.”

Sunday’s Quake Follows 6.4 Shaker Last Month

The earthquake that shook the Humboldt County area on December 20 measured 6.4 on the Richter scale and caused significant damage in the region. That quake injured 17 people and was blamed for the deaths of two residents, a 73-year-old and an 83-year-old, who died as “a result of medical emergencies occurring during and/or just following the earthquake,” according to a statement from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office’s Department of Emergency Services.

The December quake also resulted in a power outage in the Rio Dell area, with more than 72,000 customers affected, and a water main break caused the area to lose water service, as well. Damage from the quake was reported in Ferndale, Rio Dell, and Fortuna, Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci said in a press conference in Sacramento. Damage was most extensive in Rio Dell, where at least 15 homes in the community of 3,000 were deemed uninhabitable. Another 18 homes sustained moderate damage, officials reported after a partial assessment of the area. 

Rio Dell’s water system was shut down while leaks in the vital infrastructure were repaired. The local firehouse was distributing drinking water, and portable toilets were set up outside City Hall for area residents to use. Local resident Cassondra Stoner said that she was shaken awake by the early morning quake that rocked the area last month.

“It felt like my roof was coming down,” Stoner said. “The only thing I could think about was, ‘Get the freaking kids.’”

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For the first time since Heath Canada began tracking it after legalization, they report that over a quarter of their domestic cannabis crop was destroyed in 2021. Over 425 million grams, a full 26% of the unpackaged dried flower produced last year was destroyed, along with all the resources that went into growing it, leading to an environmental nightmare for a supposedly green industry. 

Glut of Unsellable Products Leads to Astronomical Rate of Product Destruction

In addition to the unpackaged dried cannabis that was destroyed, more than 140 million grams of unpackaged extracts (17%), edibles (4%), and topicals were destroyed (4%). If that wasn’t bad enough, more than 7 million packaged products were also destroyed (on average, 3% of the total). The percent of the crop destroyed has gone up every year that Health Canada has data available, with last year seeing a dramatic increase from 19% to 26%, but experts suspect that is still an undercount. “The 425 million grams destroyed is likely only a fraction of the cannabis that was grown but has no market, tons of product remains in inventory in various formats,” says Stewart Maxwell, a crop consultant and founder of Elevated Botanist, adding “I have seen fresh frozen product offered on the market that is several years old.”

Tammy Jarbeau, Senior Media Relations Advisor for Health Canada, told High Times that the reasons for product destruction “include, but are not limited to: crop losses; post-harvest disposal of unusable plant material (e.g., stalks); recalled products; and elimination of unsold or returned products.” Maxwell noted that when it comes to packaged products, “any typo on a label can cause a recall,” which may be a contributing factor to the millions of packaged products destroyed. While, thankfully, “Producers must have recall insurance,” that costs tens of thousands of dollars per year. Unfortunately, Jarbeau was clear that, due to how they collect their data, Health Canada does not know “the amount or percent of cannabis destruction that can be attributed to recalled products.”

Quantities of Unpackaged Cannabis Destroyed (January – December 2021)

Quantities of Packaged Cannabis Destroyed (January – December 2021)

Source: Health Canada

The Root Cause Of Oversupply – Speculative Investment

The huge increase in crop destruction last year is quite paradoxical, as it came at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic drove up cannabis sales in Canada. So, while sales were very good, they were not good enough to deal with a severe oversupply in the market. Jarbeau called the destruction “a part of normal business practices” and attributed the escalating rate of destruction to “the increase in number of the federal license holders since 2018.” Maxwell had a more pointed view, “The glut of product on the market is entirely a factor of overproduction driven by investment hype.” At the onset of legalization, many large companies “were able to raise billions on promises to dominate a brand-new industry,” using square footage of cannabis canopy as a selling point, which Maxwell says led to “an exponential overbuilding of cultivation facilities.” Making matters worse, that cannabis was not very good and didn’t sell, which led to “many of these facilities were shuttered,” such as the Aurora Sky facility in Edmonton. 

An Environmental Catastrophe with Incalculable Costs

Maxwell says that based on the typical cost of goods sold, “the cost of the product destroyed is in the billions,” but that doesn’t take into account the cost of the facilities themselves and other resources spent to grow the cannabis. “This overproduction is an environmental catastrophe and the energy required to cultivate this glut is incalculable,” says Maxwell, “When facilities costing tens of millions of dollars are built, then closed without ever producing product of any quality, the destruction of capital and energy resources is astounding.” 

When asked if they collect information on the water, fertilizer, and other resources used when growing cannabis, Jarbeau told High Times that “Health Canada does not collect this information from license holders.” That means there is no way to accurately know exactly how much of and which resources were destroyed along with those 425 million grams of cannabis. This is one area where data collection can be improved both in Canada and the US to better understand how cannabis can be most efficiently grown.

Can Remediation Be Salvation?

You may be wondering, with billions of dollars of cannabis being destroyed every year, who is left in the red? Maxwell says that “Cannabis producers, and their investors are the losers here, and consumers are the winners.” Costs have dropped consistently both in Canada and around the US, where “it is now possible to purchase an ounce of decent weed for just over a hundred bucks.” According to Maxwell, that plummeting price has “almost entirely disrupted the legacy market,” and even growers using artisanal methods to produce premium flower “struggle to achieve profitability due to the glut of product on the market, excise tax issues, and the regulatory cost burden.” 

Anyone familiar with the cannabis industry has likely heard the term “remediation” before, meaning, to remedy something, which can range from methods of reducing contaminants in a product (pesticides, heavy metals) or reducing the THC content of a hemp product to ensure it legally can be sold as hemp. Remediation is a way for cannabis producers to salvage a batch of products that otherwise would be unable to be sold, and would be a massive waste of money and resources. 

Unfortunately, it does not appear that remediation is an option here. “To my knowledge, there is no avenue to direct excess cannabis flower to other product streams,” says Maxwell, “The product must be destroyed as per Health Canada guidelines,” which include incineration, composting, or mixing with kitty litter. “It may be possible for cannabis to be used in other applications,” says Jarbeau, “however, depending on the activity, it could still be subject to the requirements under the Cannabis Act and its regulations as well as requirements under other Acts and regulations.” Those regulations and requirements can be pretty burdensome, to the point where attempts to remediate products might not even be worth it. One bright spot Jarbeau mentioned was that “Certain cannabis plant parts (e.g. mature stalks stripped of their leaves, flowers, seeds, and branches) … are exempted from the application of the Cannabis Act,” and could be remediated into other uses without a license.

Bigger Than Canada, Bigger Than Cannabis

Unfortunately, the problem of widescale product destruction is not unique to Canada or to the cannabis industry. While Canada destroyed 26% of their unsold or unsellable cannabis flower last year, the US destroyed nearly 11% of our hemp crop because it tested “hot,” above the 0.3% THC limit. While 11% is the average, it is much worse in some states, like Tennessee, where the Department of Agriculture reports “42% of crops are being found non-compliant.”

While the reasons are different, the end result is the same, millions of pounds of cannabis and hemp plants being destroyed rather than used to make products, with investors, farmers, and other businesses left in the red. And remember, it isn’t just the cannabis being destroyed here, but all the water, fertilizer, and other resources that went into growing it. On a deeper level, in many cases it is someone’s dream being destroyed as well, with legacy farmers being forced out of the industry they created while being offered insultingly low prices for artisanal quality flower. 

Now that 2022 draws to a close, Health Canada will be compiling their data from this year, and if current trends hold, Canadian cannabis businesses will be destroying around 1/3 of their unpackaged cannabis crop next year. 

Follow Up After Hearing Back from Health Canada

“I didn’t realize that that number represented total cannabis waste destroyed,” says Maxwell. “Cannabis waste is regularly destroyed during the growing process and at harvest. The weight of this waste varies dramatically based on water content. Sometimes waste is destroyed right away, and the weight is mostly water weight. Other times the waste is weighed, then stored until there is a large amount, then weighed again, the discrepancy is justified in documentation as due to water loss, and the dry waste is then destroyed. As you can imagine, with all of these variables, it is not possible to determine which portion of the total waste would be saleable (but unsold) flower, as compared to stem and leaf waste. I would estimate that for every gram of saleable flower, 2 or more grams would be destroyed as unusable byproduct.

“It would be much more interesting to know the ratio of finished saleable product produced, relative to the annual consumption in Canada,” Maxwell adds. “This would give a much better insight into the scale of overproduction. I would estimate that the vast majority of finished product that is destroyed is excess product rather than recalled product. I hope this helps.”

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