Fighting Dirty Weed Through OCal Cannabis Certification

The introduction of regulated medical and adult-use cannabis markets was supposed to guarantee that legal weed was clean weed, but somewhere along the line that message got reinterpreted as legal weed is tested weed, which is supposed to mean the same thing, but, as the now infamous Los Angeles Times/Weed Week story on pesticide use exposed, sadly does not, at least some of the time. The actual state of legal cannabis in California may be more nuanced than that depicted in the article, but the issue itself – trust in the safety of legal cannabis – could not be more consequential for patients, regulators, governments, businesses, and the general consuming public. The harm is all but done, though, because even if the dirty nature of legal Cali weed is not as pernicious as the article suggests, the headline alone sends a message that no industry wants out there to be repeated ad nauseam by patients, prohibitionists, and sundry malcontents.

But perception aside, the use of pesticides in California cannabis is a bitter fact unveiled by the investigation, which found unacceptable levels of contamination in many thousands of vape and preroll products, an expose that reportedly led to an all-time high number of recalls issued by the state. And the problem is surely not limited to California. Oregon has seen recent recalls, as has Missouri, and there is no reason to believe that similar recalls will not occur in other markets, many of which are experiencing high levels of product remediation in first ditch efforts to stave off worst-case scenarios in which product fails testing.

Of course, another alternative is to grow weed without having to resort to banned or unlisted chemicals, or any chemicals at all, and California certainly has its share of cannabis growers and brands dedicated to doing just that. Two such companies that are stepping up their visibility in such matters in order to directly address the concerns of consumers are California cultivator Coastal Sun and multi-state brand Jetty Extracts, each of which has fully embraced a “comparable-to-organic” standard that seeks to promote viable and preferable alternatives to cultivation methods that rely on chemicals and other undesirable methods to grow cannabis.

To get some insights into the comparable-to-organic effort, which is overseen by the California Department of Food & Agriculture (CDFA) through its OCal Cannabis Certification Program, Cannabis Business Executive spoke separately with two very knowledgeable sources: Darren Story, Chief Financial Officer of Coastal Sun, and Ron Gershoni, co-founder and CEO of Jetty Extracts.

Coastal Sun

The parent company of Coastal Sun is Strong Agronomy, a holding company that has a few different farm brands. “We started growing organic blueberries in 2015 and then later that year a local collective called WAAM – the oldest running collective in the United States for medicinal marijuana patients – lost the property where they had been cultivating for the patients,” recalled CFO Darren Story during a recent call. “They asked us if we could step in and grow some weed for their patients, and we were very successful at it. We continued growing for their patient base until 2018, when Prop 64 legalization of adult use happened in California.

“At that point,” he continued, “we could no longer sell bulk directly to dispensaries, so we had to come up with a brand. We already had our berry brand, Coastal Moon, so we came up with Coastal Sun for a cannabis brand, and we’ve been growing cannabis for Coastal Sun since 2018. We’ve always been organic growers, and we don’t know any other way to grow plants. Our berries are USDA organic certified, and our cannabis is OCal-certified, which is the equivalent of organic certification in California.”

It turns out that growing berries and weed is not that different. “The methods we use for our berries and our greenhouse cannabis is very similar,” noted Story. “We grow in pots, and we culture the soil. We put biological inoculants in the soil to make sure it is microbially rich before we transplant plants into it. Once the soil is where we want, we put the plants in and then we grow out the cycle. The difference between blueberries and cannabis is that blueberries are perennials, so they don’t come out of the pots, but stay in them all year long, whereas cannabis, as you know, is an annual, so we grow it and then we harvest it and then we take the soil out and reuse it and put new plants in it.”

Coastal Sun uses both greenhouse and outdoor to cultivate. “Outdoor, we grow in native soil, and it’s regenerative organic agriculture,” said Story. “Much like you see in movies like Kiss the Ground, we use everything we can – sheep, cover crop, biological inoculants- to really harness the power of nature to do our work for us. And with that crop, some of it goes to our sun-grown greenhouse flower line, and some of it goes to extractors like Jetty, who highly prioritize organic cultivation for their products.”

Currently sold in 150 California dispensaries, accounting for around 15 percent of the state’s retailers, Story said that Coastal Sun is the largest OCal-certified brand in California. “And it’s going pretty well,” he added. “Every year, our revenue and our profitability increases. So, we are profitable and have no investors. We started this ourselves as the founding partners..”

Interestingly, the company employs a less-is-more strategy. “We have two SKUs right now that are sun-grown – that’s our quarters and our ounces – and we have four greenhouse SKUs,” he noted. “We also have two versions of prerolls, a non-infused 10-pack and an infused two-pack, and then we have greenhouse eighths and greenhouse half-ounces. Not a huge few offering, but it’s very effective.”

Production consists of a big harvest for the outdoor grow once a year and greenhouse harvests three times a year. “Another unique part of our business model is that we have the only OCal-certified nursery in the state,” said Story. “So, because we know we can’t grow all the weed ourselves, and there are certain strains and genetics that don’t do well in our area, we take our nursery and send out our starts to growers throughout Northern California. They’re all OCal-certified organic growers, they grow the weed out for about three months, and then we bring it back to Santa Cruz, where we process it and package it. We have a total of 12 farms that feed into the brand, and this year we’re on target to sell 17,000 total pounds of dried flower.”

Story added that there are many reasons why Coastal Sun is able to run a lean operation, but one stands out above the others. “It’s a little bit of everything, but the number one thing, and the key to our success, is people, getting the right people and putting them in the right places,” he said. “The people we find are passionate about regenerative organics and plant-based medicines, so they tend to go the extra mile; they’ll make a sacrifice that they need to make, or they’ll put in an extra hour if they need to. So, it’s just finding the right people, and growing products that people want to buy and that they feel good purchasing.”

I asked him why it is necessary to have this OCal standard and to get the word out about it. “The reason it’s important is because cannabis, in its essence, is plant-based medicine, and to grow the plant correctly in nature and in harmony with its environment requires a strong immune system, and the immune system is developed by a microbiology that’s symbiotic with the plant, and the only way you can culture that microbiology is using organic nutrients and certainly not by using pest control pesticides,” he said.

“Even though a lot of cannabis growers aren’t using pesticides,” he added, “as we know, some of them are cheating and using pesticides that aren’t being tested for. But even if they were growing with pesticides, using the conventional salt-based fertilizers disrupts the ecosystem of the plant, and the microbiology doesn’t have a chance to establish the immune system of the plant, and it’s that immune system of the plant that holds the medicinal compounds. The actual medical power of the plant is the plant’s immune system – the secondary metabolites, the terpenes, the cannabinoids, etcetera. That’s why organic is so important, because growing organically increases the medicinal value of the plant, and cannabis is a medicinal plant.”

I wondered what arguments counter that? Did he hear from large producers that it’s hard to do at scale, or that they can’t pass the onerous testing because of it? “You hit the nail on the head,” he said. “The biggest argument we hear is from the European Union-type of people, who think you need to grow cannabis, and it needs to be sterile and needs to be grown in a sterile environment, because otherwise it can’t pass the onerous testing, in particular the microbiological testing for Aspergillus.”

It is the antithesis of growing organically, where you depend on the microbiology to develop symbiotic relationships with your plant. “But a lot of the big-scale producers are like, ‘We need to get rid of the microbiology,’” said Story. “They’re at odds with nature, because we know that that’s not how plants grow in nature. So, time will tell whether or not that’s important to patients and consumers. We think that there probably is a space for sterile weed for a very small subsection of cannabis users who are immunocompromised and are highly allergic or susceptible to Aspergillus aflatoxins. We think that carving out a niche for those consumers so they can access those if they need to, is fine, and all we need is just to carve out that niche and make those products available. The rest of the people should be able to enjoy the power of the full plant-based medicine, and that includes the power of the symbiotic relationship between the microbiology and the plant.”

Does sterile refer to irradiated flower? “That’s one way to get there,” he said. “There are multiple ways to create this sterile plant or the sterile product, but one of the ways is to grow in a really controlled environment indoors, with fake light, basically a completely antiseptic environment that prevents the microbiology from establishing itself it all. We don’t know if that’s what the plant likes, though. It’s kind of like growing a baby inside an incubator for their entire life. It’s boy-in-the-bubble type of stuff, and I don’t know if anybody thinks that is healthy for the boy, but that’s the strategy of growing a plant in a bubble. The other way is post-harvest remediation, with irradiation or microwaves or gamma rays, and most of the feedback I get from consumers is that that’s not what they want. So, we’ll see.”

How bad is the problem in California and does it run throughout the state? “Well, it’s important to know that dirty weed can have a few different definitions,” said Story. “The DCC got put under the radar because they’re letting stuff hit the shelves that shouldn’t be, but most of the stuff that’s hitting the shelves is either people who were cheating on their pesticide test, or people using pesticides that aren’t being tested for. So, what did DCC go out and do? They went out and started recalling a bunch of stuff for Aspergillus. We take the position that Graham Farr recently did that Aspergillus actually isn’t dirty and weed containing Aspergillus actually isn’t dirty weed. Aspergillus is superfluous in the environment. It’s everywhere. It’s actually here to help us. It’s an important part of composting, and composting is a very, very important part of organic agriculture.

“There is a very small subsection of cannabis consumers that it might be dangerous to, and we can control for those consumers,” he added. “We can create products just for those consumers, but I don’t think we need the entire market to be removed from the advantages of growing organic cannabis just to try and get rid of Aspergillus for one small subsection. I think that’s overshooting. The big problem with the dirty weed is the pesticides, because pesticides actually are carcinogenic. They will cause cancer. It’s not a matter of whether or not they do, it’s just a matter of when. So, I think that is a problem. I don’t know the extent of the problem. There are some pretty good labs out there trying to figure it out, and I know there’s been a lot of work in that area, but I do think it’s a warning shot, and I think most of the producers are going to clean up their act. I think the processes and the wheels are already in motion to encourage people to clean up their act.

“I’m hoping that people take it one step further and just go from growing conventional into just growing organically, because the ways that we control pests and organics are completely different,” he concluded. “We use beneficial habitat to create predator pests that come in and eradicate the invasive pests, and it’s a completely different ballgame. We get away from using chemicals to suppress pest threats, so I’m really hoping that California steps up and goes in the organic direction.”

Should state regulators go a little lighter on microbial thresholds and a little harsher on pesticides? “I think so,” said Story. “That’s my vote.”

It also sounded like all of this is leading to an established appellation for California cannabis. “I think we’ll get there,” agreed Story. “The California Department of Food and Agriculture does have the appellation program in place for cannabis. No one’s stepped up and done it yet, because it’s a time-consuming and expensive process, and we haven’t had to do it yet, but I do foresee that when we can export across state lines it will quickly become very important. Because as a consumer, if it’s from Santa Cruz County or Mendocino County, or wherever the appellation might be, you’re going to gravitate towards the strains you like growing in the geography that you know they grow best in. I think that’s when it really starts to happen, but for now, in California, consumers are a little more educated, and they buy based on the brands they like, they know where they grow, and they know how they grow, so I do think it’ll be important when we can export it.”

Do proponents of this program, like Coastal Sun and Jetty Extracts, see themselves as leaders on this issue? “Well, it matters because it’s plant-based medicine, and we’re trying to do something bigger than create a profitable company or create a startup like in the tech world, where you create a startup with an exit strategy, and you know you’re just trying to sell it to a bigger company,” said Story. “We’re trying to disrupt the medical world. We’re trying to create a path for people to utilize cannabis as a tool towards self-wellness and self-healing. So, it’s important for us to grow products and continue to expand our understanding of how to grow these plants correctly so that humans have the tools to help heal themselves. If they do that, they will remove their dependence on pharmaceuticals or commercialized health care, so it’s really a lot more disruptive than just another industry.

“I also think it’s important that we establish ourselves as leaders and share knowledge with other growers, wherever they might be, whether in California or other states, on how to grow this plant correctly,” he added. “That’s why I think it’s really scary, with all this microbial testing, to try and prevent people from introducing products to the market that are grown in harmony with nature. They may have some microbials, but if these microbials aren’t harmful to most patients, and in fact the overall wellness benefits are a lot more powerful than any potential contaminant, I think it’s very, very important that people have those options.”

Powerful arguments, but what does he tell his fellow CFOs, especially from the big companies, when they respond to him, ‘Darren, if we do it your way at this point in time, we lose our shirts. We simply can’t do it.’

“I tell them you’ve got to do it a little bit at a time,” he quickly replied, as though such a conversation had happened. “That’s the entire argument with regenerative organics right now, not just with cannabis but throughout agriculture. You have to do it a little bit at a time and continue getting better until you get to the point where you can peel off the band-aid and go all in. And I encourage them to think of it like it’s just an R&D budget item. Just continue to invest, and develop the processes, and learn, because overall it is more profitable in the long-term to grow in this style. You definitely take a hit, there’s a learning curve, and in the first three to five years or maybe longer, you’re going to lose money, so you just have to set it up like an R&D budget – as in, how much money can I afford to lose – and you just have to keep getting better at it until you get to the point where you are profitable.”

Jetty Extracts

Jetty is simply one of those brands that seems as though it has always existed as a staple in the California cannabis market. Known as a quality producer, it operates out of Oakland in a 13,000 square-foot industrial building where they do all of their own production. “We’ve been in the same location since 2016,” said founder and CEO Ron Gershoni of the company’s early days. “We started in San Diego, and then we were in Grass Valley, where we were extracting until we got raided by a local sheriff in 2014. We ended up moving like five times during the first couple of years, and then we came to Oakland, because it was fairly friendly to cannabis operations at that time. We got here in 2015 and found this building in 2016, and when we moved in, we actually rented half the building to Plus gummies because it was too big. And then over time they left, we grew into the space, and now we’re bursting at the seams.”

Acquired by Canopy Growth in 2022, with the finishing touches applied in May of this year, Jetty products are currently available in California, Colorado, New York, and New Jersey, indicating a cautious if consistent growth strategy.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is that this is our 11th year in about a month, and we’ve had revenue growth in 10 out of 11 years,” noted Gershoni. “So, we’ve been very consistent, and I think that we never grew too fast, and we’ve never strived to be and never been the biggest, but we’ve always been relevant, and we always feel like as long as we’ve seen some growth, we’re in a good position.

“From a percentage standpoint, I would say our biggest growth was probably sometime around legalization in 2018,” he added. “The last couple of years have also been pretty good as we expand, but we were very focused on California for most of our history. We never expanded out until 2023, when we entered Colorado and New York, and then in 2024, when we entered New Jersey. So, we’re now in four markets across the country.”

Regarding the OCal certification, I asked Gershoni how long the relationship with Coastal Sun has been in place, and if it is being replicated in other markets. I also inquired about their processes and whether they’ve evolved or stayed the same over the years.

“First of all, Darren and Coastal Sun are tremendous partners,” stressed Gershoni. “I have so much respect for them as a business and as really passionate plant people that are growing the cleanest possible weed. As far as our evolution, we were doing CO2 extraction when we started in 2013, we’ve moved through ethanol, hydrocarbon extraction, and now we mostly do rosin, or solventless extraction. That’s all been a progression, of course, and we’ve worked with probably dozens, if not hundreds, of different farmers over the years, because we don’t cultivate, so that’s never been part of what our business is. We always felt that focus is a good thing for us and that we wanted to be the best at extraction and making the cleanest possible concentrates.

“When we moved to Oakland,” he continued, “we actually started doing testing on what we call micro-extractions, which is any input material that we brought into our facility. Back then, there were very few testing labs that would even touch cannabis, and for most companies there were no requirements to do any testing, so most companies were not testing. So, when we began doing testing in 2015, it was something we did specifically for our own knowledge, because we wanted to put out the cleanest products that we possibly could. We had set up a program in 2014 that we called the Shelter Project, where we donated free oil to cancer patients, and so we knew that our products are going to people who are compromised. These also are products that we use, that we give to our families, so we want to know that we have the absolute cleanest product, and that’s always been part of the way that we operate. But I would say that it’s evolved quite a bit, since there really weren’t many organic farmers, and certainly not any organic certifications.”

It was a time that rewarded innovation. “In 2014, for example, we were the first company to launch a vape that had no cutting agents,” said Gershoni. “Back then, there was PEG or MCT, and people were taking the same kind of formulations that existed in the e-cigarette market, adding different things to homogenize and reduce the viscosity to a level that would be good for vaporizing. We were the first ones to ask, how can we get all of these additives out and put just what’s in the plant into the finished product? We did that, and that’s what we’ve been striving for since inception.

“In 2015,” he added, “we started experimenting with rosin and solventless and made a really concerted effort to move in that direction, and a lot of it is because it’s just a cleaner process. We’re not using harsh chemicals like butane and propane on those products, so it really only touches ice and water. And that is our flagship product, that is what we sell the most of, and we’re now the number one rosin vape in the country based on sales of just that product in California and Colorado, and we’ll be launching it shortly in New York with plans to bring it to New Jersey. So, wherever we expand, we do want to know that we can use our solventless process, which creates the highest quality and cleanest product available.”

How important is the raw or source material in the Jetty process? Can it be cleaned if there is any issue or problem with it, or is it essential that it is as clean and pure as possible from the get-go? “That’s a great question,” said Gershoni. “There are companies who develop techniques for removing pesticides or cleaning up dirty products, but we don’t use any of those techniques. We test everything before it comes in, and we will only run the cleanest possible starting material. It’s garbage in, garbage out, so the starting material is extremely important. That’s why we work very closely with any cultivators that are partners, and with Coastal Sun, we’re out there specifying the strains that they’re going to plant for the season and working with them on how they’re harvested. Even though that’s their business, we’re really involved with them to ensure that when it comes to Jetty, we’re getting the best possible starting material so that we can have that high-quality product.

“So, it’s tremendously important, as is the OCal certification,” he added. “We first got our OCal certification about a year ago, which we’re very excited about. We were one of the first, if not the first, OCal-certified products on the market. We’re the biggest right now and it’s on all of our solventless products. If you’re concerned about pesticides, OCal is the single best way to know that you are getting a clean product. It’s third-party certified, and part of the challenge in the entire ag market is that the chemical companies are always making new pesticides and new things and are moving faster than the regulators. The benefit of OCal is that you can’t use anything other than what’s on an approved list, so it’s not like a new chemical can pop up that the regulators are not testing for. You can use those pesticides on most products, but not on OCal products.”

Are many farms currently OCal-certified and are more getting consistently certified? “It’s not a lot but more are getting certified, and there are also more manufacturers getting certified,” said Gershoni. “What’s interesting is that you can’t get OCal certification on hydrocarbon extraction, so for most of the products in the market that are not solventless, that are not rosin, you actually cannot get that OCal certification. Our OCal products come from an organic source material, and the manufacturing qualifies for OCal, so they have gone through two of the cleanest stages of possible ways to make these products, and that’s what you’re getting. So, yes, there are certainly more farms coming online that are moving toward OCal. We’re California, people like cleaner products here, and I think we’re going to continue to lead the way on cleaning up the products.”

Now that Jetty is moving into new markets, how does it maintain standards similar to OCal without an OCal certification program in place? “We are only going into markets where we know we will be able to do solventless extraction, which, again, from the manufacturing side, is the cleanest way to make a concentrate,” said Gershoni. “That’s really been the main focus of our business as an extractor: how to make sure that we do the extraction in the cleanest possible way, and a big component of it is the extraction techniques we’re using that we know will create that clean, finished product.

“But I hope to see OCal in more places,” he added. “All we can do is continue to highlight the benefits of OCal and what California is doing, and California leads the way in this industry. This is where most of the weed you saw when you were growing up came from. California is widely known to be the epicenter of cannabis cultivation and product quality, and by continuing to lean in on OCal here, we expect that other states will take note and over time implement their own cleanliness certifications.”

Are they finding source partners in each of these markets that have a similar mindset about clean material? “I think that one of the biggest challenges for having more clean growers, more organic growers, is just that this industry is so hard to operate in for anybody,” he replied. “Even if you’re not clean, it’s very, very competitive. There’s very high taxation and regulatory costs, so just staying alive for any operator is a big, big challenge. For the ones like Coastal Sun that are doing things to the cleanest standards, it’s often more expensive to do that, so there has to be a resulting premium or brand strength that you can achieve by having that certification, to justify the higher cost in what’s already a tough market.

“What I’ve seen for Jetty is that it’s well worth it,” he added. “Jetty is known for having the cleanest products, the highest quality, and for always being consistent. I think that the OCal, as small as it is, is beginning to resonate and people are becoming more familiar with it, so I think there’s always going to be an incentive. The more people are talking about cleanliness and pesticides, the more there are going to be growers that pop up in every market and say, ‘You know what, I’m going to be the organic one. I’m going to win on cleanliness.’ So, it’s still small, but if you look at even organic food as a percentage of what’s available in the market, it’s still in the single digits across the country. So, I think it’s unlikely that in any near term we’re going to see it become a majority of what’s out there, but the more we talk about it, it helps people know about it, and as people learn about it, it’s really education.”

Will Jetty always be a California company at heart no matter where it is sold? What is its future as a brand? “Ultimately, what would be the best would be interstate commerce, where we could send our OCal-certified products to anyone who wants them around the country,” said Gershoni. “The rescheduling news helped in that direction, but we still have a long way to go before it’s truly an open market. So, yeah, we are a California brand at heart – it’s where we were for the first decade and we never transacted outside – but we also believe that everyone deserves access to high quality products. We think we have the highest quality products and want to get them out to more people who can benefit from them, and that’s why we’re expanding in the way we are, into just a few states, and over time I expect that we will continue to expand, that Jetty will be available in more markets, and that you’ll see our solventless products available in more markets as well.

“We did get a deal done with Canopy Growth a couple of years ago,” he added, “so along with Wana, their leading edibles brand, we’re part of the Canopy family, and we are starting to work more closely with the Wana team to build out a sales team together in New York. I see a lot of synergies in having a leading edibles brand along with a leading vape brand together in a sales portfolio, and as we continue to grow, I do expect that you will see more of the two of us going to market together. As far as 2025 goes, it’s likely that we will continue to expand our product lineup within Colorado, New York, and New Jersey.”