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This story is part 1 of “Barely Legal,” The Assembly’s investigation into North Carolina hemp. Learn more here.
Michelle Peace saw the hemp boom coming.
Shortly after Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill, she and two fellow forensic toxicologists opened Cardinal Quality Laboratories in a Richmond suburb. Peace, a professor who also manages Virginia Commonwealth University’s Forensic Toxicology Research Laboratory, saw the side hustle as a way to capitalize on her experience running a drug-testing lab.
In 2019, Virginia expanded its medical marijuana program, allowing dispensaries to sell edibles and cannabis flower. That provided another revenue stream. Companies paid her to test their products and then provide certificates of analysis showing they contained the correct cannabinoid levels and were contaminant-free.
But they didn’t always get the results they wanted. “We started getting requests to falsify our lab reports,” Peace said. She refused, and her lab lost some clients, she said.
Then she began publicly criticizing the hemp industry—biting the hand that fed her.
By 2022, delta-8 products of varying quality had swamped Virginia stores. A 4-year-old died after consuming delta-8 gummies; a 2-year-old was hospitalized after eating what looked like cereal but actually contained THC. Peace, whose interactions with hemp companies had raised her suspicions, had the VCU research lab test dozens of delta-8 products. The results showed that some had up to 10 times as much THC as advertised.
“I fired out really hard against the hemp industry for lying to consumers and saying that this was legal weed, and this was safe, and it’s a little sister of delta-9,” Peace said.
Her lab’s remaining business quickly dried up. It closed in 2023.
“I fired out really hard against the hemp industry for lying to consumers and saying that this was legal weed, and this was safe, and it’s a little sister of delta-9.”
Michelle Peace, toxicologist
Peace pressed forward. She argued in an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that semisynthetic compounds, including delta-8, “have minimal or no scientifically robust research to describe their effects, safety, and potency,” and urged strict regulations. She testified before Virginia’s legislature, denouncing products that proclaim themselves as “hemp-derived” but are actually “synthetically produced in somebody’s laboratory, garage, bathroom—who knows?”
She also secured a federal grant to study best practices for cannabis testing. “The thing we were infuriated by was how rapidly the hemp industry pushed out all of these [THC] analogs,” she said.
Hemp companies told her she was fearmongering and destroying jobs. “I have told more than one manufacturer, ‘Damn you for shaming the scientist who wants to protect the public,’” she said. “‘Really, this is the fight you want to have?’”
Last year, Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin appointed Peace to the Cannabis Control Board, which oversees medical marijuana in the state. Peace was removed from the board this spring, several months after Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger took office in January.
JM Pendini, executive director of the marijuana advocacy organization Virginia NORML, told The Assembly that Peace was purged along with other Youngkin appointees. The new administration didn’t realize she was a subject-matter expert and not a party hack, Pendini said. Spanberger’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
In May, Spanberger vetoed a bill to establish a recreational cannabis program in Virginia, saying it needed stronger enforcement mechanisms. On June 16, Spanberger announced that she had reached a deal with the legislature on a new recreational marijuana bill.
