Ray SternArizona Republic
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Your favorite marijuana edibles might be made at a facility where the workers didn't wash their hands before touching products.
They may have been made with dairy products stored in "danger zone" temperatures prime for bacterial growth.
But if you live in Arizona, you don’t get to know if cannabis-infused food is made in a dirty kitchen that regularly fails to meet health standards. The state keeps health inspection information about marijuana kitchens secret.
Inspectors conduct unannounced visits twice a year to each of roughly 50 marijuana-related food production facilities. But the state has never shared details of what inspectors have found, until The Arizona Republic asked for the records.
The state Department of Health Services, which runs a Marijuana Kitchen Program as part of its oversight of the state’s marijuana industry, released 200 inspection reports for the years 2022 and 2023 following a request by The Republic under public records law.
The department says such a records request is the only way the public can see the inspection results, too. But in most of the 200 reports, the health agency blacked out identifying information that would reveal which dispensary owns and operates each kitchen.
The reports show consumable marijuana products sold legally in Arizona — like infused drinks, candies, baked goods and other food items — aren’t always manufactured in pristine environments.
Dozens of reports, including some that award top ratings, highlight issues with food safety: problematic storage methods, lack of soap or hot water for handwashing, or other conditions that could lead to contaminated products.
The state agency listed the addresses, though not the names, of 22 facilities in some of the reports. Further research was required to link the facilities to their parent dispensary companies — only nine of the 22 addresses matched directly to retail dispensary locations.
Asked why so much information was redacted, the Health agency replied through a spokesperson that “marijuana facilities are highly susceptible to being targets for robbery” and the law shields medical marijuana facilities “in order to maintain public safety.”
The agency said it didn’t redact the addresses of recreational dispensaries. However, that doesn’t explain the large number of redactions. Only six medical marijuana-only licenses remain in the state. The rest of the 143 licenses are both medical and recreational, or, like the state’s 26 social equity licenses, solely recreational.
Some of the redactions were done poorly. That allowed The Republic to see the agency tried to black out identifying information for at least two facilities operated by recreational dispensaries.
Legal recreational marijuana in Arizona: What you need to know
Restaurant inspections are transparent; marijuana kitchen checks aren't
Arizona law prevents cannabis or its extract from crossing state lines, since marijuana is still illegal federally. That means all marijuana edibles have to be made in the state.
Dispensaries each sell a wide array of edible brands. But they not might make the brands they sell, instead buying them from a company with a robust kitchen facility.
The state Health agency’s inspection program makes it exceedingly difficult for Arizonans who consume cannabis to know who’s making their preferred brands, and whether those manufacturers have difficulty maintaining proper food safety standards.
This runs counter to the food inspection transparency seen in the state’s largest counties.
Read the report: Arizona Department of Health Services Food Establishment Inspection Report
Maricopa and Pima counties, for instance, allow the public to look up inspection reports for nearly any kind of restaurant or food production facility. News media organizations, including The Republic, check the records and help inform the public about troublesome trends and less-than-appetizing observations by inspectors.
Health inspections don’t usually result in a forced closing of a restaurant or food facility in business-friendly Arizona, even when violations are severe or frequent. Agencies normally work with businesses to fix violations and bad practices.
Still, viewing the results of inspections allows potential customers to decide for themselves what frequency or type of violations they feel comfortable with.
In a written response to questions, the Health agency insisted its system was protecting the public, despite the inspection program’s lack of sunlight.
Not counting the psychoactive effects of edibles that occasionally overwhelm consumers, sending dozens of adults and hundreds of children to hospitals each year, the agency has never reported any foodborne illness or other significant negative health effects from dispensary-purchased marijuana products. A recent outbreak of illness that sent 27 people to hospitals in multiple states, including Arizona, involved hemp-derived Diamond Shruumz-brand chocolate products that aren't sold in dispensaries.
Private companies, not the state, test dispensary products in Arizona. But when contamination is suspected, the agency said, it notifies consumers and the news media “swiftly.”
The agency announced 10 voluntary recalls for suspected aspergillus or salmonella contamination of dispensary products, all but one in 2023, and none involving any reported illnesses. The recalls mostly targeted flower or resin concentrates. But one, in August 2022, warned of possible salmonella in a brand of gummies made by Nirvana Center. A follow-up test showed no sign of contaminants, and the agency lifted the recall.
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What kind of health violations have marijuana kitchens been cited for?
Overall, the unredacted sections of the reports contained no "serious" violations, nor some of the revolting details sometimes seen in dirty dining reports. The kitchens are easier to maintain for health purposes than restaurants, since they almost uniformly don’t make savory food concoctions containing meat.
Yet marijuana kitchen inspections do routinely find violations.
“Overhead vents in gummy preparation room were observed with accumulation on the surfaces,” an inspector noted in a February 14, 2023, report. “Handwashing station to the left in the chocolate preparation room was observed blocked by a trash container. Paper towel dispenser was observed empty at the same sink.”
The kitchen also had no proper sanitizer for washing cookware and an unlabeled “unknown red liquid” on a rack. It received an “S” for satisfactory rating by the inspector, instead of an “E” for excellent.
The business name and address of the kitchen was redacted in the report.
Twenty-three other inspections over the two years drew “S” ratings, often for “priority” violations like not having hot water or soap for handwashing. Two facilities got “N” ratings for Needs Improvement.
All but six of those 23 inspection reports had the facility’s name and address blacked out. Of the six facilities with addresses receiving “S” ratings, The Republic was able to match all but one to a licensed dispensary company.
The report for the unidentified kitchen noted only one of the facility’s six hand sinks was operational, but even that one had no hot water because the water heater was off when inspectors arrived for their October 2023 visit. The Republic visited the address, 1325 W. Auto Drive in Tempe, but found no indication there of a marijuana food or cultivation facility.
Inspectors noted problems in many of the 145 reports with the top-ranked “E” rating, as well. An April 2023 report for a facility in Miami, Arizona, for example, noted a spray bottle was unlabeled, a wall near a drying rack had peeling paint and “a bin of corn syrup was observed stored on the floor.”
The majority of violations in 2022 and 2023 were not “serious,” meaning they didn’t put health and safety at risk, the agency said.
Another division of the Health agency is responsible for ensuring the cannabis concentrate added to food or drinks is safe from any contaminants and matches its labeled potency.
“As of right now, we have not had to shut down any kitchen,” said Travis Ross, the agency’s public health sanitarian and supervisor of the marijuana kitchen program. Shutting down a facility would require a finding of a “major public health nuisance,” he said.
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Production facilities, parent dispensary companies hidden in inspection reports
All marijuana kitchens must be incorporated into another type of licensed marijuana facility, whether a retail or cultivation facility.
The inspection reports say nothing about which brands each facility produces, but they do provide a glimpse of how the marijuana market works that may not be seen anywhere else.
Many of the production facility addresses don't show up in the state's AZCareCheck.com site, which lists and displays inspection reports for dispensary retail and cultivation locations. Except for the few addresses in the reports that match retail stores, The Republic linked other production facilities to licensed dispensaries through online sources including company websites, product testing results posted by dispensaries, city zoning applications and Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
For example, the state regularly inspects a facility at 13454 N. Black Canyon Highway, but the state's site doesn't list it. However, a state marijuana dispensary license number matching to a Trulieve dispensary in Avondale showed up in a December 2022 online document detailing test results for a sample of marijuana.
Ann Torrez, executive director of the Arizona Dispensaries Association, said rule compliance in cannabis kitchens is a regular topic in association meetings. She said she was “surprised” the state doesn’t publish the kitchen reports on its site.
Most of the addresses for the inspected production facilities could be linked to well-known dispensary companies including Trulieve, Nirvana, Cookies and Medmen.
Some of the blacked-out addresses and dispensary company names could be seen by The Republic when the redactions were cut and pasted from the PDFs provided by the Health agency to a Word document.
One of the redacted names that became visible was Zonacare at South 1225 W. Deer Valley Road in Phoenix. Zonacare was the name of a Sedona dispensary acquired by Curaleaf, a major recreational and medical marijuana chain in Arizona.
But the Deer Valley address is currently used by the brand Goldsmith Extracts, online testing results show. The facility received an “S” rating after an April 2022 inspection in which no soap was present at a hand sink in the packaging area.
A prominent dual-license dispensary company not seen in the inspection reports is the Mint Cannabis location in Guadalupe, which has the state’s only cannabis-infused kitchen that sells hot, freshly prepared foods like hamburgers and pizza.
Despite its claim that it didn't not black out information on recreational dispensaries, the Health agency apparently redacted the name and address from Mint’s inspection reports. Mint co-owner Raul Molina confirmed the Health agency's team inspects Mint’s kitchen in Guadalupe, where it also produces some of its Sofa King gummies and other more typical edible products. The company has five other stores in Arizona that get inspected by the state Health agency’s retail inspection team.
Molina said he believes the public should be able to see the kitchen inspection reports. He’s not worried about anyone seeing Mint’s reports, adding the company works well with the Department of Health Services and has a solid record of good inspections.
Molina said he’s a fan of “dirty dining” reports and often thinks when he sees a bad report: “I’m not going back there again.”
Reach the reporter at rstern@arizonarepublic.comor 480-276-3237. Follow him on X @raystern.
