Stakeholders at OMMA hearing press for clearer testing rules, due process protections and public lab data
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Summary
Licensees, laboratory operators and lawyers told the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority during a public comment hearing that proposed permanent rules need clearer testing standards, protections for adjudicative independence and broader access to Metrc (metric) data; OMMA said it will respond in writing and the comment period closes today at 5 p.m.
At a public comment hearing before the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority, business owners, testing-lab managers and attorneys urged changes to proposed permanent rules implementing Title 4, Chapters 1 and 10, focusing on testing standards, adjudicative process changes and access to testing data.
Stakeholders repeatedly pressed OMMA to clarify laboratory-testing requirements, particularly for yeast and mold and for potency confirmation on distillate. "Let's get back to counting colonies on an auger plate," said Brandon Mosley of Baseline Laboratories, arguing that colony-forming-unit plate counts are more reliable than some genetic (qPCR) methods that produce divergent results. Several lab representatives asked OMMA to narrow or redefine which methods require enrichment or confirmatory testing and to harmonize numeric thresholds among peer states.
Legal advocates, including Stephanie Davis of Amber Law Group and Matthew Phillips of OKCTL, objected to proposed changes that would replace independent administrative law judges with OMMA hearing examiners. "An ALJ is a neutral decision maker," Davis said, warning that making the adjudicator an OMMA employee would collapse the separation between prosecutor and judge, reduce discovery rights and push licensees into costly district-court appeals.
Multiple speakers called for greater transparency in OMMA's testing records. "The public should have access to this metric data," Jeff Havard, owner of Havard Industries, told the authority, saying publicly accessible Metrc data would allow analysts and citizen scientists to detect anomalies and hold the market accountable. Supporters argued public data would help explain wide inter-lab variation and questionable certificates of analysis.
Commenters also raised practical operational problems that they said the rules and agency processes must address: repeated portal authentication failures that delayed renewals; lengthy phone hold times for OMMA customer service (multiple speakers reported waits of several hours); requests to allow individual transporter-agent licensing rather than business-level assignment; and calls for a published list of violations the authority will deem "correctable" with a 30-day cure period.
Several dispensary- and processor-operators sought transition windows for label changes. Jeremy Woods and others asked OMMA to allow 90–120 days for dispensaries to sell existing inventory before stricter labeling or warning-language rules take effect, pointing to conflicts between current administrative-language and Title 63 definitions that can restrict relabeling.
Speakers also flagged interagency communications as a reputational problem. Nick Serrano of Southwest Genetics and others said public statements from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics that suggest "1 pound = 1 plant" or large volumes of "missing" product undermine confidence in the regulated market and urged OMMA to publicly correct misleading or technically inaccurate claims.
OMMA chair Barrett Brown closed the hearing after the scheduled speakers, reminded attendees that the written-comment period remains open until 5:00 p.m. today, and confirmed that every person who spoke would receive a written response from the authority.
No formal votes or rule adoptions occurred at the hearing; the session was for public comment on the proposed permanent rules and is part of OMMA's rulemaking process.
