Colorado’s attorney general is investigating several marijuana businesses over concerns the word “organic” in their names or advertising might be misleading to consumers.
The office is reviewing complaints from consumers that the “merchants have been misrepresenting their product when they say ‘organic’ or ‘organically grown,’” said Roger Hudson, spokesman for Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman. “We’re looking for information inside those complaints to make a determination on what those next steps are. Is it consumer fraud? Is it criminal?”
The inquiry focuses in part on grow operations — some with the word organic in their names — recently caught up in , said a lawyer who represents a marijuana business contacted by investigators.
The AG is ensuring businesses that use the word are at least “consistent with the concept of organic,” attorney Sean McAllister said.
Because marijuana is illegal under federal law, and use of the term organic is federally regulated, a licensed cannabis business cannot be certified as organic no matter their practices.
As such, no marijuana business in Colorado can technically use the word in its name or in selling its product, according to officials and industry insiders.
Potential fraud penalties under the Colorado Consumer Protection Act include fines of up to $10,000 per violation. Federal rules say that business wrongly selling a product as organic could face fines of up to $10,000.
Home growing
Yet those rules have not been enforced in Colorado’s marijuana business until now.
State marijuana license records show 29 businesses — growers, retailers and dispensaries — use the word “organic” in their name. Some use a trade name containing the word organic to market marijuana products or use the term in their advertising, although itap unclear how many.
A spot check of websites by The Denver Post showed a number of businesses claim to sell “100% organic” cannabis, offer organic treatments of medicinal marijuana or use only “organic methods” to produce their product.
Some shops use creative website semantics and marketing materials, describing their product as “grown in organic soil” or that they “use organic growing techniques.”
Another website touts a “certification of organic standards and testing that mirrors the USDA organic certification.”
Brooke Wise, owner of Growing Kitchen in Boulder, said she’s willing to take the risk of labeling her company’s edibles — made with certified organic seeds and fruits — as organic, even if the marijuana in them isn’t.
“Itap taboo to apply that term to cannabis. Itap a principle, an ideology that doesn’t belong to anybody,” she said, noting her plants would be certified organic if that existed. “On the list of sacrifices and gambles I take, (organic) is definitely on there.”
But RiverRock Cannabis in near-downtown Denver has backed away from using the term. It had been known until recently as RiverRock Organic Medical Cannabis.
“The attorney general sent something saying that no dispensary can be certified as organic,” retail manager Chris Haggerty said.
The company changed signs, stopped handing out promotional items with the company’s name, and even stopped selling T-shirts with the old company name, Haggerty said.
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Some in the industry say the word has been used indiscriminately with little regard for the truth.
“The word organic is being used inappropriately by people who are using very toxic chemicals. There’s no governing agency that is regulating that,” said John Paul Maxfield, co-founder of the Organic Cannabis Association in Denver, an organization that aims to have marijuana certifiable as organic.
“In the absence of a body coming through and branding organic cannabis, that term can be used by everybody, even if itap not done properly,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture accredits companies and state governments to certify any farm as complying with federal organic regulations for agricultural products. No company may use the term without this certification.
“Marijuana may not be certified organic under the USDA organic regulations,” said a USDA spokesman who could not be named because itap the agency’s policy when discussing marijuana. “Marijuana is considered a controlled substance at the federal level, and organic certification is reserved for agricultural products.”
The USDA’s National Organic Program rules say companies with organic in their name cannot prominently display it on a product, and cannot use the name at all if it misrepresents that a product has been certified organic.
It falls to the Colorado Department of Agriculture to certify and accredit agricultural businesses in the state as organic — as well as police for inappropriate and illegal uses of the word — on behalf of the USDA.
CDA officials say while they could create their own organic certification program for marijuana, itap unlikely.
“If we chose to ignore the USDA NOP regulations and start our own ‘organic’ program, it would take legislative action to provide CDA authority to operate a different organic certification program,” said Mitch Yergert, director of CDA’s plant industry division.
The state’s inquiry came after the Denver Department of Environmental Health earlier this year quarantined more than 100,000 marijuana plants over pesticide concerns.
One company, Organic Greens, tested positive for unapproved pesticides. But because it operates publicly as Natural Remedies, the AG’s office allowed it to keep its name, said McAllister, its attorney.
“Their actual corporation name is Organic Greens, but they don’t use it in advertising, they don’t publicize themselves as ‘organic’, they don’t do any advertising as organic … so nobody’s being misled,” McAllister said, confirming the company came under AG scrutiny.
McAllister said the AG is focusing, at least in part, on companies that have used pesticides not allowed by the state for use on marijuana.
“They understand you can’t get federal certification for the word organic in marijuana,” he said. The AG’s office is “not substituting themselves for a certification agency, but if itap clearly not organic, if someone’s using Mallet or Eagle 20, they are also looking for those cases.”
Mallet and Eagle 20 are pesticide trade names whose active ingredients contain chemicals the state has not approved for use on marijuana.
Although no chemical pesticide can obtain federal approval for use on cannabis, whose restrictions are so broadly worded that using them on marijuana would not be a violation.
David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com or twitter.com/davidmigoya
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394, rbaca@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bruvs
