Massachusetts Cannabis Commission Releases Draft Testing Rules

The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission on Thursday, October 22, 2026, began reviewing and released draft regulations that would create a new chapter of state cannabis rules devoted entirely to Independent Testing Laboratories and the testing of cannabis and cannabis products, the agency announced.

The proposal, developed by the Commission’s Testing Regulatory Working Group, would establish 935 CMR 503.000, Independent Testing Laboratories and Testing Requirements. According to the Commission, the updates include a new section under 935 CMR dedicated entirely to cannabis testing to promote public health and safety; specified authorized activities and operational and laboratory quality assurance requirements for testing laboratories; detailed requirements for cannabis sample collection, storage and retention; expanded testing standards and action limits for contaminants of concern; and rules for the repurposing, reanalysis and remediation of cannabis products that fail regulatory compliance testing.

Commissioners will discuss the proposed regulations and associated policy questions at the next public meeting on November 12, 2026. The Commission will accept feedback on the draft beginning in January 2027 during a larger public comment process for regulatory updates related to Ch. 65 of the Acts of 2026, and it intends to take up additional testing regulation updates in spring 2027.

A New Chapter Devoted to Testing

The working group’s October 22, 2026 memorandum presents the draft chapter with sections covering purpose, definitions, laboratory agent registration, licensing and authorized activities, general operational requirements, sampling, required testing, reporting of results, testing failures, waste management, and suitability standards for laboratory agents. The draft leaves its effective date as a placeholder.

Alongside the draft, the working group recommends retiring and archiving the existing Protocol for Sampling and Analysis of Finished Marijuana and Marijuana Products and rescinding Administrative Orders 4 and 5 once the new chapter is promulgated and implemented, with their content incorporated into 935 CMR 503.000, and issuing new guidance for the chapter’s requirements. Companion amendments to the adult-use and medical-use regulations, 935 CMR 500.000 and 935 CMR 501.000, would move testing definitions and laboratory agent provisions into the new chapter, replace the Marijuana Vaporizer Device definition with a Vape Product definition, and authorize personal caregivers to transport marijuana on behalf of a registered qualifying patient to and from an Independent Testing Laboratory solely for authorized testing.

The working group also recommends referring one labeling question to the Ch. 65 Working Group: finished marijuana that does not exceed the metals action limits specified for ingestion use only would bear the label “THIS PRODUCT HAS BEEN EVALUATED FOR IMPURITIES BASED ON ORAL CONSUMPTION ONLY. DO NOT INHALE THIS PRODUCT.”

Several items in the draft remain marked as policy questions for commissioners, including which sample types must undergo each required test, the standards laboratory license class, and reanalysis procedures.

Laboratory Standards and Action Limits

Before final licensure, a testing laboratory would need accreditation to the ISO 17025 standard by a third-party accrediting body that is a signatory to the Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated Multilateral Recognition Arrangement, or certification, registration or accreditation by an organization approved by the Commission. Laboratories would run documented competency programs with initial and at least annual assessments of laboratory agents, validate or verify each analytical method before regulatory compliance testing, and follow minimum quality control elements by method category. Manual integration of chromatographic or mass spectrometric data would be prohibited except to correct a previously documented software processing error or a demonstrated instrument or software issue.

Laboratories would participate in blind proficiency testing at least annually covering, at minimum, cannabinoid profile, microbial characterization, mycotoxins, residual solvents and processing materials, pesticide residues and plant growth regulators, water activity, and moisture. The Commission could also initiate blind interlaboratory comparisons, which may be conducted without advance notice. Records supporting laboratory activities would be retained for a minimum of five years, and a laboratory would have to notify the Commission no later than 48 hours after notifying affected parties of corrected or withdrawn results from nonconforming work.

For sampling, licensees would submit no less than 30 grams of flower and no less than 10 grams of any other material per production batch. Post-harvest batches for cured and dried flower would be limited to 15 pounds, and fresh-frozen flower test sample packages could be drawn from up to 60 pounds. Each sample would be analyzed for cannabinoid profile, terpenes, microbial contaminants, mycotoxins, metals and trace elements, pesticide residues and plant growth regulators, residual solvents and processing chemicals, water activity and moisture content, foreign organic matter, and vitamin E acetate where applicable.

The draft’s action limits include a combined limit of 20 micrograms per kilogram for five mycotoxins; non-ingestion metals limits of 200 micrograms per kilogram for arsenic, 200 for cadmium, 500 for lead and 100 for mercury, with separate limits for ingestion-use products; water activity of 0.65 Aw and 15 percent moisture for flower and pre-rolls, and 0.85 Aw for solid edibles; and pass-fail pesticide and plant growth regulator screening with a limit of detection of no more than 10 parts per billion per analyte. Single servings of cannabis products tested for potency would be held to a variance of no greater than plus or minus 10 percent.

Laboratories would upload certificates of analysis to the seed-to-sale system of record no later than 72 hours after completing compliance testing and would report all results, including initial failures, regardless of whether later testing produces a passing result. Test results would remain valid for one year, after which products would be deemed expired and could not be sold, transferred or dispensed until retested.

Under the draft, production batches that fail compliance testing could be repurposed, reanalyzed or remediated only for specified failure types. Remediation would be capped at two attempts, with a minimum five-calendar-day hold on the batch before a new sample is submitted for full-panel retesting, and edibles could not be remediated. Pesticide or plant growth regulator failures could not be repurposed, reanalyzed or remediated at all; those results would be referred to the Department of Agricultural Resources, which has exclusive jurisdiction over pesticides under M.G.L. c. 132B.

The review is part of the Commission’s implementation of Ch. 65 of the Acts of 2026, An Act Modernizing the Commonwealth’s Cannabis Laws, which took immediate effect when it was signed on April 19, 2026. Among other changes, the law raised the adult-use daily purchase limit from one ounce to two ounces of marijuana flower or equivalent product, expanded the potential for adult-use delivery service to the entire Commonwealth, raised the retail license cap from three to six, and ended the vertical integration requirement for medical marijuana licensees. In an April implementation announcement, the Commission said it was working on a first round of cannabis testing protocol reforms as part of a wider standardization effort.

The draft released Thursday incorporated feedback gathered during an informal public comment period and public hearing on the testing rules held in August 2026, input from an earlier Independent Testing Laboratory listening session, and the Commission’s existing testing protocols.