Advocacy group urges Missouri to revise testing rules due to ‘very toxic’ chemical found in marijuana products

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

An advocacy group is calling on the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to change its rules surrounding a substance found in marijuana products that they are calling “very toxic.”

Missouri’s National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, wrote in a Thursday release that it is concerned that the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services Division of Cannabis Regulation revised the testing rules of cannabis concentrates and other marijuana products sold in the state to allow up to 25 times more Vitamin E Acetate.

“Vitamin E acetate causes severe lung damage when it's inhaled,” Dan Viets, Chair of the National Board of Directors of NORML said. “Back in 2019, more than 2000 people went to the hospital and more than 50 people died as a result of inhaling vitamin E acetate in cannabis products.  It's most often found in vaporization cartridges.  And the  purpose of putting it in there is to make the  fluid,  the vaporization oil appears more fiscus and more  desirable.” 

According to the CDC, Vitamin E acetate is an addictive condensing agent, most commonly found in e-cigarette or vaping products containing THC. After a 2019 outbreak of a condition referred to as "product use associated lung injury," for e-cigarettes and vaping products, a CDC study found that 2,051 people got sick and 54 people died from vaping-related injuries. State and national data showed that Vitamin E acetate was strongly linked to the EVALI outbreak. 

In February the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services revised the amount of Vitamin E Acetate tolerated in legal cannabis products from 0.2 parts per million up to 5 ppm, something that Viets found concerning. 

“It was done very quietly,  but it is it is a published fact that DHS has increased the tolerance or the allowed amount of vitamin E acetate by 25 times,” Viets said.  “We've written to DHS several times about this, and the responses we've gotten are just nonsense. They don't make any sense. DHS has claimed that they increased the tolerance, the allowed amount of this poison  in order to avoid having this poison  be  in legal cannabis products,  which clearly  makes no sense.”

However, a spokeswoman for the department, Lisa Cox, told ABC 17 in an email that NORML’s claims that DHSS that they “granted the variance” are “simply not true.” Cox acknowledged that mandatory testing of vitamin E acetate is necessary to protect public health and safety saying that both the CDC and FDA have stated vitamin E acetate should not be added to e-cigarettes and vaping products.

However, she says the change was made to raise the Vitamin E acetate limit because Missouri testing licenses contacted the Department of Cannabis Regulation with concerns over false failures “due to natural vitamin E levels in plant material encountered during their validation processes.” 

“Licensees expressed concern that the initial action limit of ≥0.2ppm may be so low that failures may appear in products not produced with VEA at all,” Cox told ABC 17 News in an email. “DCR conducted additional research in response to the concerns expressed by the testing licensees. It was determined that raising the VEA action limit to 5ppm (0.0005% by weight) accounts for any naturally occurring vitamin E, which has not been identified as a health and safety concern upon inhalation and prevents false failures for VEA screening. This allows Missouri to remain hyper-vigilant in screening for VEA while also preventing natural vitamin E concentrations from interfering with our true purpose.”

However, Viets believes that the change was only made to help the cannabis industry in the state.

“I think that DHS and the Division of Cannabis Regulation are accommodating the industry, and generally DHS has done a good job,” Viets said. “But here, they're doing a bad job. They are not looking out for the interests of cannabis consumers and the health and the well-being of consumers should take precedence over the interests of the industry.”