Colorado was one of the first states to ban hemp products containing harmful chemicals. But legislators and regulators have not adopted critical regulations to keep those items off the shelves.
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Colorado, which once served as the model for marijuana regulation, generated billions of dollars in tax revenue while promising to keep consumers safe. Now it’s scrambling to keep harmful hemp off the shelves.
Leaders in the Colorado marijuana industry have complained in recent years that intoxicating products derived from hemp are endangering consumers and creating unfair competition, threatening to upend the first regulated recreational marijuana market in the United States.
While labs have developed the technology to distinguish between hemp and marijuana, the state has been slow to implement a random testing program to check the quality of products on dispensary shelves.
In the absence of official testing, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica set out to test whether the claims of widespread hemp substitution were accurate, purchasing 14 vapes at dispensaries across the Denver area. This is what we found.
In North Carolina, a state that had legislated its commitment to life, Ciji Graham spent her final days struggling to find anyone to save hers. Listen to Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana’s story on the ProPublica Narrated feed on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
