An email obtained by The Times shows that one committee leader, Representative Sharon Wylie, a supporter of the industry, shared a draft of the bill with a cannabis lobbyist. “Thank you for being open to the compromise approach,” she wrote.
In an interview, Ms. Wylie said that “the jury’s still out” on the potential harms of cannabis, and that regulated business brings revenue to the state.
Ms. Davis is not giving up. She plans to introduce legislation to another committee this month that would prohibit all concentrates exceeding 35 percent THC, with exemptions for medical use.
“The industry needs limits,” she said.
METHODOLOGY
The New York Times examined sales data from two cannabis industry data firms, BDSA and Headset, for October 2023 to September 2024. Because the two firms’ rankings differed somewhat, The Times looked at all brands included in either firm’s top-20 list — 24 brands in total.
Reporters then located each brand’s page on Weedmaps, where available. Four were excluded, because they did not have a presence on Weedmaps, their listings lacked product-specific descriptions or they had very few products listed.
In November 2024, The Times downloaded the entire Weedmaps product catalog for each of the remaining 20 brands: a data set containing nearly 18,000 products. The Times identified dozens of medical- and health-related keywords that appeared in the descriptions. For each brand, reporters confirmed that the keywords were used to suggest that products could help treat specific health issues.
After contacting the brands for comment, The Times again examined Weedmaps descriptions for all products in the initial analysis, to identify whether any of the health-related language had been removed.
Weedmaps listings do not necessarily include all products sold under a particular brand and may reflect some items no longer widely sold.
The Times conducted a separate analysis of health claims on Stiiizy’s website, focusing on its guides to individual cannabis strains. Each guide included the strain’s flavors, purported effects and conditions it “helps with.” The Times programmatically identified 82 of these guides in December and January, based on the website’s sitemap, and extracted conditions listed in each one.
Carson Kessler contributed reporting, and Julie Tate contributed research.
