California Cannabis Businesses Not Using State Tracking System

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]S[/dropcap]ixteen months after legalizing recreational cannabis, most of California’s cannabis industry isn’t using the state’s seed-to-sale tracking system.

As of last month, only nine of the 627 licensed cannabis dispensaries were entering data into a seed-to-sale tracking system, which was established under an estimated $60 million state contract. Only 93 of the more than 1,000 licensed manufacturers and 254 of the nearly 4,000 licensed growers were using the network.

“Track-and-trace was definitely supposed to be one of those tools to define who is operating in the legal market and who is not,” Josh Drayton of the California Cannabis Industry Association said. “We clearly are not getting the results we were hoping for.”

Only companies with full annual business permits are required to upload their inventory data to the system, while businesses using a temporary license don’t require the use of the system.

For the companies not entering data into the system, state regulators are relying on a paper trail using paper invoices and shipping manifests and an honor system. A spokesman with the Bureau of Cannabis Control said he wasn’t aware of any problems with fraudulent or altered paperwork.

The track-and-trace system, often referred to as seed-to-sale, intends to track cannabis plants from the time they are planted to the time they are purchased as products in a dispensary. State law says the tracking system is required to provide data points for the different stages of commercial production, including cultivation, harvest, processing, distribution, inventory and sale.

Oregon is also in the process of establishing a cannabis tracking program. The Oregon Liquor Control Commission has requested $7 million to help support the cannabis tracking program that was established during the 2018 legislative session.