It’s not your father’s weed. Today’s hemp products can be much more potent than allowed under the law. What guardrails are in place, and what’s left up to chance? WMRA’s Sara Prince examined a legal Virginia hemp product with the help of an independent lab, and filed this report.
When you buy a hemp product in Virginia—a gummy, vape cartridge, or smokable flower—you might assume someone tested it before it reached the shelf. Broadly speaking, that's true. But whether those tests tell consumers what's actually in a product depends on the laboratory and the standards it follows.
At Green Analytics in Richmond, technicians test medical cannabis and commercial hemp products. National Director of Operations Shannon Hoffman says medical cannabis testing faces stricter requirements.
SHANNON HOFFMAN: Because the commonwealth of Virginia has certain requirements for medical cannabis testing that we have to follow.
Virginia requires smokable and edible hemp products to include certificates of analysis, or COAs, from laboratories accredited under the ISO/IEC 17025 – international standard for lab equipment calibration. But that accreditation only verifies a lab’s competence—not that every result is accurate. Differences in testing methods and sample preparation can produce different results.
Recently, an accredited Virginia laboratory tested hemp flower purchased from a Virginia retailer, and provided their analysis to WMRA on the condition of anonymity. The analysis highlights a major challenge in hemp regulation.
Under the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp was defined by its low delta-9 THC. But because the law did not account for THCA—a compound that converts to an intoxicant when heated—products with high THCA were able to be sold legally as hemp.
Virginia addressed that loophole in 2023 by adopting what is called a “total THC standard.”
The anonymous laboratory analysis found the sample contained illegally high levels of both THC and THCA, elevated moisture levels, microbial contamination, and the pesticide myclobutanil.
Michelle Peace, a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher who studies cannabis science, says findings like these are not unusual, and pose health risks to consumers. She cited cases from her own lab involving consumers reporting symptoms from headaches and gastrointestinal distress to nausea and delusions.
MICHELLE PEACE: Just a brief case study – we had somebody who brought us a product. It was purchased in one town, and it was three girls who drove to Richmond and went to an outdoor concert, and all three of them shared this one joint and one of the girls started having seizures so bad that the lead singer of the concert saw her, stopped the concert and got her medical attention. After we tested it, you know, we found that the THC concentration was much higher than what was actually on the label, and it had microbiologicals in it. … so, now you've got something that, at least for that one young woman, you kind of understand why she had that episode. However, here's what is interesting. The other two girls apparently also consumed from the same joint and didn't have any of that experience. So it does sort of highlight the idiosyncratic nature of what to expect with these products. And maybe these girls didn't really draw, inhale and hold as much as the girl that had the adverse event. Who knows? This is where we have to stop denying that people are having adverse events from consuming high concentrations of these products.
Dr. Chris Holstege, director of UVA's Blue Ridge Poison Center, says the dose makes the poison, as quoted by the 15th century toxicologist, Paracelsus. The theorem still holds true today and is a concern for Dr. Holstege, with research showing increased exposure leading to increased toxicity.
CHRIS HOLSTEGE: What really worries me is a lot of those studies were done where people were smoking cannabis products that had lower content and we certainly have been watching the content increase as time goes on.
The sample tested for this story contained myclobutanil, a pesticide that converts to toxic hydrogen cyanide gas if smoked or vaped.
PEACE: There is definitely a problem with pesticides being burned, and at the end of the day, if the consumer is not aware and able to make decisions as to what they actually put into their bodies, that's problematic.
Peace says another concern is inconsistent testing. Laboratories may prepare samples differently, making results difficult to compare.
PEACE: We need to have some kind of standard threshold - across the board, nationwide, every single lab, so that we can actually make the head-to-head comparison.
Virginia has expanded inspections and tightened testing and labeling requirements for many hemp products. But researchers say enforcement nationwide has not kept pace with the growing market.
PEACE: I would venture to say that most states have not hired scientists to actually monitor and oversee a laboratory regulatory process to see if there is veracity to an accreditation, because it's so complicated.
One laboratory test cannot tell us what's on every shelf in Virginia. But researchers say this sample illustrates a broader problem: without consistent testing standards and stronger oversight, consumers may not know whether a hemp product’s label—or the testing behind it—can be trusted.
