Oregon Cannabis: OMMP Growers Forced Into METRC

Back in March 2018, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) issued temporary rules outlining the requirements for Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) grow sites to track the propagation and production of medical marijuana. The deadline to start tracking in the Cannabis Tracking System (Oregon uses METRC) is today, July 1. You can view the OHA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which contains a draft of the new rule, here.

The temporary OHA rules required medical marijuana grow sites that service three or more patients to designate someone as the “grow site administrator” by May 31, 2018. The grow site administrator is responsible for signing up for METRC, successfully complete all required METRC training; and ordering unique identification tags and tagging all marijuana items. Oregon Medical Marijuana Program notified grow sites regarding the requirement to designate a grow site administrator by May 31, 2018, so hopefully no registrants missed this deadline. Failure to meet this deadline could result in revocation of the grow site and revocation of the registration of all persons responsible for the marijuana grow site.

The other important deadline is today. Required growers (those who grow for three or more patients) must start using METRC at all times going forward. Medical marijuana producers must also have an approved grow site administrator capable of entering required information in METRC (meaning you must have completed the training); an active METRC user account; unique identification tags for the plants; and all medical marijuana items tagged with UID tags and all inventory recorded in METRC. Not coincidentally, today is also the cut-off under Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) rules for nondisclosure of “start-up” inventory by new producer licensees. Previously, that inventory could be from “any source in Oregon” under OAR 845-025-2060(1)(a).

Beyond having inventory recorded in METRC, required grows must use METRC to record all transfers of marijuana items to patients, designated primary caregivers, registered medical marijuana dispensaries, processing site, and laboratories. The rules require the following be entered into METRC:

1. the amount of usable marijuana transferred to each patient or designated primary caregiver, the patient or caregiver’s OMMP card number, and the date of the transfer;
2. the amount of usable marijuana, seeds and number of immature plants transferred to each registered dispensary, the dispensary’s OMMP registration number (if any still exist!) and the date of transfer;
3. the amount of usable marijuana transferred to each registered processing site, the processing site’s OMMP registration number and the date of the transfer; and
4. the amount of usable marijuana transferred to each laboratory for testing, the laboratory’s license number, and the date of the transfer.

METRC must be reconciled at the end of each day. That means, each day, METRC needs to be updated an essentially perfect. Failure to meet the requirements of the temporary rules caould mean registration revocation.

This might seem like a lot—and it is for medical marijuana growers that have not seen the regulation the recreational growers have. These rules are one of the responses the OMMP and OLCC have adopted to curtail the black-market and out of state transfers. If all goes well, compliance with the rules just might keep the federal government out of Oregon’s legal marijuana market.