HARTFORD, CT – Tuesday, May 28, has a special significance. It was the day Norwalk Attorney Erin Gorman Kirk became the nation’s first Cannabis Ombudsperson, officially starting in her new role in Connecticut.
Kirk is an accomplished lawyer as well as consumer advocate and entrepreneur and has been influential in helping to develop cannabis and hemp policies in several states, Connecticut included.
She is also a medical marijuana patient herself, and it was her own use of cannabis and that of the people she’s helped in the past that was among the driving forces behind her applying for the role.
Kirk said she started to notice she was having adverse effects from using medical marijuana flower here in Connecticut and stopped using it and her symptoms cleared up.
“Someone said to me, oh, there’s a lot of mold in it,” she said in an interview a few days ago. “So I started to do some research. I went to some of the people that I help with recommendations and caregiving, one of whom is a 95-year-old Parkinson’s patient, who’s a Korean War veteran, and asked them how they were feeling. Everyone was feeling poorly. And I became concerned when I realized these mold levels and or remediation levels, of which we have not been apprised, something was going on, that was different from what you get at a farm.”
Kirk said she also noticed things started to change in the state when adult-use was legalized.
“There was an absolute dearth of product availability but lacking consistency,” she said. “Patients could not get the same product week after week. So, we learned that people were driving to Massachusetts to get their medicine, which concerns me deeply as an attorney. Unfortunately, as absurd as it is, you cannot take your medicine with you on vacation. And so that presented a problem and it was also a loss of revenue, and it was clear that the medical-marijuana patients had been left behind as far as I was concerned.”
Kirk comes across as deeply passionate about the medical-marijuana industry and the people who use their products.
“I am not a lobbyist. Never have been. I’m an advocate. I do probably 750 to 1,000 hours of pro-bono a year. I’m the only lawyer in the country who did every application on a pro-bono basis for social equity candidates. That’s how much I care about people and patients.”
And that’s likely part of the reason she was selected for the role of ombudsperson, which is “an official who investigates complaints (usually lodged by private citizens) against businesses, public entities, or officials.”
As Kirk points out, if you’re a medical marijuana patient you either have some kind of compromised immune system or other health issue. That means it’s vital for you to know what’s in the medical marijuana product you’re consuming.
After all, it’s your medicine, she says, just like taking any other medication prescribed by your doctor.
And since adult-use became legal in Connecticut in January 2023, medical-marijuana sales have been decreasing month over month mainly because more dispensaries are opening across the state, making it easier for medical patients to find an adult-use dispensary near them, where they can make their purchase instead.
But it hasn’t all been positive news since the legal cannabis market opened up in the state.
The price of cannabis in January 2023 was over $12 per gram. Although it dropped to $9.68 in September 2023, since then it has continued to rise in price in part based on demand and availability as the state had limited cannabis growers or producers, something state officials have been trying to remedy by allowing micro-cultivators to open up to help boost production.
But that increase in production is also fueling issues over the quality of the cannabis being grown and what’s called remediation.
All cannabis sold legally in the state by dispensaries must be tested to make sure it’s safe, measuring whether it contains acceptable levels of various compounds as well as mold and yeast. That’s where health advocates and Kirk are taking issue, because there are no industry-wide standards for producers or growers to follow. She says it’s different state to state.
By that she means that cannabis in one state that fails testing based on a given amount of mold or yeast in the flower could very well pass in another state because that state deems those levels acceptable.
Kirk wants to see that change.
“There’s a company called ASTM,” she says. “And they are trying to create standards and I think standards would be great in other states. I think Missouri, for example, won’t let you even use hybrid or Sativa or Indica. They are demanding you utilize terpenes,” referring to the strains of cannabis you can get over compounds found in them. “So, I would love to see universal standards brought in.”
Kirk knows that’s a tall order and as the state’s ombudsperson she has no statutory powers to make growers and producers change the way they conduct business.
But she says her reputation, her own use of cannabis products, and working with state agencies like the state Department of Consumer Protection, which licenses and oversees the adult-use and medical-marijuana markets in Connecticut, she hopes to work with them and share information and vice-versa.
And she says she knows all the players in the Connecticut cannabis industry, and she knows they want to do the right thing. And she said that if the federal government finally reschedules cannabis in the US, that could be the biggest kick-start for change.
