Getting Answers: regulations at Massachusetts cannabis facilities

SPRINGFIELD, MA (WGGB/WSHM) – We’re persevering with to dig deeper on a narrative we first dropped at you on Tuesday concerning the dying of hashish cultivation worker, Lorna McMurrey, in Holyoke. The U.S. Division of Labor’s Occupational Security and Well being Administration (OSHA) related her dying to marijuana mud inhaled at her job at Trulieve.

McMurrey died within the hospital in January. An OSHA report has now related her dying to inhaling marijuana mud whereas packaging pre-rolls on the Trulieve facility on North Bridge Avenue in Holyoke. Western Mass Information is now digging deeper into the rules at the moment in place for hashish services in Massachusetts.

“I believe one of many issues we’re seeing is that there’s a lot of mud created. Now, whether or not that was Causley related on this specific occasion to what occurred to her stays to play out,” stated Western New England College Professor Julie Steiner.

Steiner advised us why it is crucial for marijuana services to comply with correct security protocols on this newer business.

“Whether or not any person is injured to a small diploma or to a tragic diploma like with Ms. Mcmurrey, so , there must be correct coaching, there must be correct monitoring of this factor. It’s a must to have correct security units…Mud is mud and we have to be very cognizant, as an business, about ensuring the operators are doing the precise factor on their very own and that the regulators are doing that the precise factor to pressure the operators to do issues too,” Steiner added.

Following McMurrey’s dying, OSHA has filed three citations towards Trulieve associated to the shortage of acceptable coaching and obtainable security data for hazardous chemical compounds. We now have discovered from the Massachusetts Hashish Management Fee that licensees, equivalent to Trulieve, are chargeable for compliance with the next:

“Buildings, fixtures, and different bodily services shall be maintained in a sanitary situation.”

Incident Reporting Necessities – Public Security Personnel (OSHA): “An alarm activation or different occasion that requires response by public security personnel, together with however not restricted to native legislation enforcement, police and hearth departments, public works or municipal sanitation departments, and municipal inspectional companies departments, or safety personnel privately engaged by the marijuana institution/MTC.”

Western Mass Information additionally digging deeper into the corporate, Trulieve. In accordance with OSHA’s web site, Trulieve has seven violations at completely different areas in Florida, Pennsylvania, and their Holyoke location in Massachusetts.

Steiner additionally shared this message.

“I believe the Hashish Management Fee, and all states which have the equal, have to assume by way of what their very own rules are saying, utterly other than OSHA, to verify they as regulators are defending office security in these specific circumstances, particularly round kief mud,” Steiner famous.

An investigation stays ongoing into Trulieve by OSHA and the Massachusetts Hashish Management Fee.

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