Key Takeaways
- The Maine Office of Cannabis Policy issued a patient advisory after discovering unsafe levels of microbial contaminants in products from The B Maine.
- OCP lacks the authority to order recalls for medical cannabis, which contrasts with its power over the adult-use program.
- Maine’s medical cannabis program does not require mandatory testing for contaminants or potency, exposing patients to unregulated products.
- OCP found that 42% of tested medical cannabis products contained contaminants that would be disqualified in the adult-use market.
- Lawmakers have yet to adopt recommended updates for the medical program, raising concerns for the safety of vulnerable patients.
On October 14th, the Maine Office of Cannabis Policy issued a medical cannabis patient advisory covering cannabis flower and pre-rolls produced and sold by The B Maine, a cultivator and manufacturer based in the town of Lebanon, Maine, formerly known as Dr. Melo’s. The advisory followed a complaint OCP received in mid-September about conditions at the company’s cultivation facility.
What regulators found was concerning on its own. What they could legally do about it is the part of this story that deserves more attention. Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy has openly acknowledged it lacks the statutory authority to order a recall within the Maine Medical Use of Cannabis Program, a power the same office holds over the state’s adult-use market.
That asymmetry did not appear overnight. It traces back to a medical cannabis program built in 1999, long before testing, tracking, and recall authority became standard practice in state-legal cannabis markets.
What Did Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy Find?
OCP’s investigation began after a complaint about facility conditions at The B Maine’s cultivation site in Lebanon. Regulators tested flower of the strain Florida Oranges first. The results showed unsafe levels of microbial contaminants, including aerobic bacteria, coliforms, and Enterobacteriaceae, along with yeast and mold.
That initial finding prompted broader testing. OCP went on to test additional products from the company and found varying unsafe contamination levels across two flower strains, Florida Oranges and Skunk Hero, and four strains of one-gram pre-rolls: Bad Apple, Cherry AK, Head Candy, and Tropsicles.
The B Maine cooperated once the results came back. OCP stated the company voluntarily surrendered the contaminated products for destruction. That cooperation matters, but it also highlights the point regulators themselves raised: without recall authority, voluntary compliance is the main tool available.
Why Can’t Maine’s Cannabis Regulator Order a Medical Cannabis Recall?
This is the detail that turns a single contamination incident into a bigger policy story. OCP stated plainly that it does not have authority under Maine law to issue a recall in the Maine Medical Use of Cannabis Program. That stands in contrast to its authority in the Adult Use Cannabis Program, where OCP can issue recalls and require product removal ahead of administrative penalties, suspension, or revocation.
The medical program also isn’t subject to the same mandatory inventory tracking or contaminant testing requirements that apply to adult-use cannabis. OCP said this combination limits how much detail it can share in a medical advisory compared with an adult-use recall notice, since there’s no tracking system to confirm exactly where affected products ended up.
Reporting from The Maine Monitor in July 2024 traced this gap back to timing. Maine’s medical cannabis program started in 1999, when the industry was smaller and less commercial. After voters approved recreational cannabis in 2016, the state built out a detailed adult-use regulatory framework through 2019, complete with mandatory testing for mold, toxins, and other contaminants, potency testing, and a 10 mg THC per serving limit for edibles. The medical program never received the same update.
Linda Frazier, a public health consultant who worked on the 2019 adult-use rules, told The Maine Monitor the original plan was to update medical regulations to match adult-use standards afterward. That didn’t happen. She said the medical cannabis industry pushed back on the pace and cost of new requirements, telling the outlet: “Right now the loudest people in the room the committee is listening to and the legislature hears from are medical providers.”
How Does Maine’s Medical Cannabis Testing Compare to Adult-Use Testing?
The difference between Maine’s two cannabis programs is evident once you line them up side by side.
- Contaminant testing: Required for adult-use products before sale. Not required for medical cannabis.
- Potency testing and limits: Adult-use edibles are capped at 10 mg THC per serving, with potency verified through testing. Medical products carry no such limit or verification requirement.
- Inventory tracking: Mandatory in the adult-use market, allowing regulators to trace a contaminated batch to specific retail locations. Not required in the medical program.
- Recall authority: OCP can order recalls and require removal of adult-use products. It cannot do either for medical cannabis.
John Hudak, who became OCP director in 2022, told The Maine Monitor he noticed the medical program had no testing requirement even though patients generally assumed one existed. In his words: “We kept hearing from the medical cannabis industry to essentially just trust them that everything was clean. We decided to test that question.”
OCP did exactly that in fall 2023, testing 120 samples pulled from medical sellers. Forty-two percent contained at least one contaminant that would have been disqualified from sale in the recreational market, including pesticides, heavy metals, yeast, and mold. The most common pesticide detected was myclobutanil, which releases cyanide gas when burned. Hudak called the medical program “wildly outdated.”
A 2022 Safe Access study cited by The Maine Monitor found Maine was one of just two states, alongside Louisiana, among 35 states with medical cannabis programs that didn’t require testing.
Why Didn’t Maine Fix the Medical Cannabis Testing Gap Already?
OCP’s fall 2023 findings led the agency to recommend mandatory testing for the medical program. Lawmakers didn’t adopt that recommendation. Instead, they passed legislation aimed at reducing stigma around cannabis use, which took effect in July 2024 and largely loosened restrictions across both the medical and adult-use programs.
Cost is central to the debate, and it isn’t a minor concern to dismiss. Catherine Lewis, a board member with the advocacy group Medical Marijuana Caregivers of Maine and a caregiver herself, told The Maine Monitor she would only support mandatory testing under specific conditions. Her worry is that adult-use-level testing requirements would push small, often home-based caregiver operations out of business entirely. She put it this way: “If we allow them to put the laws in place the way they have for adult use, the medical industry and smaller producers would crumble, and patients would lose access to their medicine.”
Lewis also raised concerns about lab consistency, saying she once sent portions of the same sample to different labs and got conflicting results, one pass and one fail. OCP has pushed back on that concern specifically. The agency reviewed nearly 8,000 potency results across three certified labs over two years and said the variation it found was explained by differences between cultivators, not by inconsistent lab performance.
Hudak’s counterargument centers on what medical cannabis patients are actually being asked to tolerate. Pricing data from OCP’s open data dashboard shows the average price per gram of adult-use flower fell from $15.83 to $7.30 between 2020 and 2024, suggesting testing costs haven’t prevented the recreational market from becoming more affordable over time. Hudak’s view, as quoted by The Maine Monitor: “If producing uncontaminated cannabis, that is demonstrated to be uncontaminated, is too expensive, you probably shouldn’t be producing medicine for patients.”
What Do Caregivers, Labs, and Public Health Advocates Think Should Change?
Not everyone close to the medical program wants a simple copy-paste of adult-use rules, and the proposals on the table reflect that nuance.
Lewis suggested a middle path: testing cannabis oil before it’s made into a final product, spot-checking finished goods rather than testing every batch, and labeling untested products clearly as “not tested” so patients can make informed choices. Her broader critique of Maine’s current approach was direct: “They are overregulating adult use and under-regulating medical.”
Keri-Jon Wilson, who runs Pot + Pan Manufacturing in Portland, takes a different approach in practice. The company has voluntarily tested every batch since 2021, despite no legal requirement to do so. Wilson told The Maine Monitor the cost is worth it, pointing to one edible that tested at 50 mg of THC instead of the intended 10 mg dose, a mistake caught before it reached shelves. Wilson said counterparts in other states are often stunned to learn Maine has no medical testing mandate at all.
In the adult-use process, a failed batch can sometimes be remediated if the issue is microbial, through treatment that kills the contaminants, but batches that fail for heavy metals cannot be salvaged and must be destroyed.
It’s also worth noting that even the adult-use program, with its mandatory testing, isn’t flawless. The Sun Journal reported that Maine issued three adult-use cannabis recalls within a three-month span in December 2025, the most recent tied to a prohibited pesticide found in NorCO Outdoor Cannabis products. Part of the scrutiny stems from the fact that Maine allows cultivators to choose which material from a batch gets submitted for testing, raising questions about how contaminated products still make it through a mandatory system.
What Does This Mean for Medical Cannabis Patients Right Now?
Medical cannabis patients are often managing serious or chronic health conditions, and some have compromised immune systems that make contamination exposure more dangerous than it would be for an average adult-use consumer. That’s precisely the population Maine’s current rules leave most exposed.
Routine screening can’t catch problems before products reach a dispensary shelf or a caregiver’s client, because testing isn’t mandatory. Regulators also can’t easily trace which specific patients received a contaminated batch once it’s been sold, since inventory tracking isn’t required. And with no recall authority, OCP’s only tool once a problem is found is a public advisory and a request for voluntary cooperation, which is exactly what played out with The B Maine.
At the time of this writing, no independent patient or caregiver reaction to The B Maine advisory specifically had surfaced in public reporting. The caregiver and advocacy perspectives referenced above come from earlier reporting on the broader testing debate, not from direct responses to this incident. That gap is itself notable. Patients affected by a specific contamination event currently have limited channels to confirm whether their own products were part of the recall, let alone to seek a public accounting beyond OCP’s advisory.
What Should Maine Do Next?
The B Maine incident didn’t happen in a vacuum. OCP flagged this exact structural problem in a report nearly three years ago, and lawmakers chose a different legislative path.
The debate over cost is legitimate. Smaller caregivers operating out of home facilities genuinely could struggle under adult-use-level testing mandates, and Catherine Lewis’s proposed middle ground, testing oil before production and spot-checking finished batches, deserves real consideration rather than dismissal.
But the current setup asks patients, some of the most medically vulnerable cannabis consumers in the state, to accept less protection than someone buying cannabis for recreational use at the shop next door.
Closing that gap doesn’t require copying the adult-use program exactly. It requires lawmakers to decide that medical patients deserve verified safety, not just a promise that everything was clean.
Frequently Asked Questions
A complaint in mid-September 2026 about conditions at The B Maine’s cultivation facility in Lebanon, Maine led the Office of Cannabis Policy to test products. The agency found unsafe levels of microbial contaminants, yeast, and mold in two flower strains and four pre-roll strains, prompting the October 14, 2026 advisory.
OCP does not have statutory authority to issue recalls within the Maine Medical Use of Cannabis Program, unlike its recall authority over the adult-use program. Without that power, the agency relies on public advisories and voluntary manufacturer cooperation, as happened when The B Maine surrendered contaminated products for destruction.
No. Maine’s medical cannabis program does not mandate contaminant or potency testing, unlike the adult-use program, which requires testing for mold, toxins, and other harmful substances before products reach the market. A 2022 Safe Access study found Maine was one of only two states with a medical program that lacked a testing requirement.
Maine’s adult-use program requires mandatory contaminant testing, potency testing, inventory tracking, and gives regulators recall authority. The medical cannabis program has none of these requirements, a gap that traces back to the medical program’s 1999 origins and lawmakers choosing not to update it alongside the 2019 adult-use framework.
