Regulators in New York this week lifted a stringent requirement that cannabis growers in the state had decried as an “existential threat” to their operations. 

NY Cannabis Insider reports that the state’s Office of Cannabis Management on Tuesday sent an email to cultivators to note that it had “updated its Laboratory Testing Limits document to remove the pass/fail limits associated with the Total Viable Aerobic Bacteria Count and Total Yeast and Mold Count for unextracted cannabis products (e.g. cannabis flower, pre-roll, etc.).”

New York marijuana growers complained that their testing requirements for yeast, bacteria and mold were too strict, which hampered them from getting the product to customers. 

An earlier version of this year, the state granted conditional licenses for cultivators to grow cannabis outdoors. 

However, it was difficult for outdoor growth to reach those limits. 

“This is a step in the right direction for the success of this new market,” said Aaron Leentjes, a conditional cultivator and co-founder and owner of UNIFI Cannabis, as quoted by NY Cannabis Insider. “Because growers were not given an option to cultivate indoors, it’s nice to see OCM adjusting their testing guidelines to be more in line with the realities of outdoor cultivation.”

In its email sent on Tuesday, the Office of Cannabis Management said that, although testing will still be conducted, “there will not be a defined limit for unextracted cannabis products in the adult-use program.”

“It is the responsibility of the licensee to consider these results and any impact to the stability and expiration dating of the product, as well as any risks to the health of consumers,” the OCM said in the email, as quoted by NY Cannabis Insider. 

Recipients of the first two-year “conditional cultivator” licenses were given the green light to grow up to an acre’s worth of weed outdoors, although they were also permitted to keep some plants in greenhouses. 

“There’s a market that we’re building for small players, for big players, for medium-sized players, for family businesses, for big corporations as well,” Chris Alexander, executive director of the Office of Cannabis Management, said of the first round of cultivation this summer. “We do think it will be sufficient to provide that initial supply to our dispensary locations that we get up and running.” 

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is up for re-election and said last month, that first marijuana dispensaries in the state are on schedule to open before the end of the year.

“We expect the first 20 dispensaries to be open by the end of this year,” Hochul said at the time. “And then every month or so, another 20. So, we’re not going to just jam it out there. It’s going to work and be successful.”

Hochul also claimed credit in the interview for getting legal marijuana up and running following her takeover for ex-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo last August. 

“Talk about the rollout being jammed up,” she said. “When I became governor, nothing had happened. Nothing. It was shut down because there was a battle between the administration and the legislature over who would be the executive director and the chairs of the cannabis review boards,” she said. “So, I was given a lot of credit because within one week, I named people. The things I did were successful. So, when I speak to people about being part of this industry, the first thing they say is ‘thank you.’ Because otherwise we could still be waiting and waiting and waiting, even for the most basic steps to be taken. So we’ve been moving along quickly.”