What’s in My Weed?

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

This story is part 1 of “Barely Legal,” The Assembly’s investigation into North Carolina hemp. Learn more here.

If you’ve ever purchased hemp gummies from a dispensary, a cannabis-infused seltzer from a bar, or a vape from a convenience store, how did you know what it contained? 

The question isn’t as straightforward as it seems. And in North Carolina, the answer is ultimately: You didn’t. 

Our state is one of just seven that prohibit recreational and medical marijuana markets. But it allows products derived from hemp, a variety of Cannabis sativa L. that contains less than 0.3% of the psychoactive compound delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), with no regulation or oversight.

Many hemp products come with QR codes that link to certificates of analysis—lab test results that say the product is safe and legal. But experts say there’s no assurance those results are legitimate, since no one is checking. 

“There’s no standardized testing in this industry,” said Joseph Baker, co-owner of the Asheville-area hemp company Ratoon Agroprocessing. Baker holds a doctorate in organic chemistry and previously worked in the pharmaceutical industry. “What’s considered good testing is just a matter of opinion.”

As a result, consumers buy their hemp on faith, sometimes with terrible consequences. N.C. Department of Health and Human Services officials have attributed a surge in emergency department visits to hemp’s proliferation. 

The hemp industry has become a $3 billion-a-year behemoth in less than a decade. While its leaders say most businesses try to do the right thing, they know the status quo is untenable. 

Industry representatives have asked the General Assembly to enact regulations that they argue would set uniform standards and rein in bad actors without crippling commerce. Their requests have grown more urgent as a possible federal ban on most hemp products looms in November. They believe that state regulations will mitigate some of the damage. So far, though, state lawmakers remain deadlocked. 

With the industry at a crossroads, The Assembly sought to determine what’s in the products currently for sale in North Carolina. 

We purchased 21 intoxicating hemp products from retailers across the state and had them tested at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Laboratory for Forensic Toxicology Research (LFTR) for potency, additives, and contaminants. Funded by a $10,000 grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, this project aims to bring objective, high-quality data to the debate about hemp’s future in North Carolina.

Our Methodology

In December and early January, Assembly reporters purchased 21 hemp products from North Carolina convenience stores, dispensaries, and other retailers for testing. Locations and products were largely chosen at random, with a few exceptions. 

We intentionally purchased two products from Southern Ease Trading Company, a Nash County manufacturer that until last year was run by state Rep. John Bell, chair of the House Rules Committee and one of the General Assembly’s strongest hemp industry advocates. 

We also purchased two products from Naternal, a Morrisville-based company founded by Garrett Purdue, son of former Gov. Bev Purdue. His mother has appeared in ads for the brand. 

We tested four products from the Florida-based Chronic Guru, which was more than we’d planned. A budtender at Chronic Guru’s Durham dispensary gave our reporter two freebies for being a new customer and spending more than $50. 

We stored our purchases in their original packaging in our Durham office until mid-January, when an editor drove them to Richmond, Virginia, for testing. 

We’d contacted the Laboratory for Forensic Toxicology Research at the suggestion of colleagues from a partner newsroom. The director, Michelle Peace, first became known for her research on nicotine vaping, which led her to begin testing cannabis products.  

The National Institute of Justice, an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, awarded her lab an ongoing grant in 2023—totaling more than $726,000 so far—to study the best ways to analyze THC. Her research has also informed Virginia’s policies. Peace previously served on the state’s Cannabis Control Authority. 

The lab analyzed our products’ cannabinoid content using liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry. It used gas chromatography with mass spectrometry to assess the chemical composition of the products, and 3M Petrifilm plates to detect yeast and mold, aerobic bacteria, E. coli, and coliform, which were evaluated against pass-fail thresholds established by U.S. Pharmacopeia.  

We received preliminary results on March 23. The lab then ran additional tests on five products that contained synthetic cannabinoids and retested products that showed unexpectedly low THC levels. We received the final results on May 8. 

We located manufacturer-supplied certificates of analysis for 15 of the products to compare with our results. All but two stated that the products contained legal amounts of delta-9.

The results were eye-opening: 

• The tests found unsafe levels of aerobic bacteria, yeast and mold, or coliform in 13 products. Two had all three. 
• Five products clearly contained more delta-9 THC than permitted by federal and state law. Another tested just above the threshold. 
• Five contained THCO, THCP, or HHC—semisynthetic cannabinoids that are derived from hemp and designed to mimic THC’s effects. These compounds haven’t been well-studied and might pose health risks. THCO and THCP are legal in North Carolina; HHC’s status is unclear. Some products did not disclose the synthetics on their labels. 
• Few packages reflected the products’ contents. Some had more THC than advertised—in one case, 34 times more. Many had much less THC or entirely different cannabinoids. 

“These lab results are deeply alarming and underscore the urgent need to protect North Carolinians, especially young people,” Gov. Josh Stein told The Assembly in a statement. “If we want to keep people safe, we need a legal, regulated market that requires testing so people know what is in the products and how intoxicating they are.”

State Rep. Jeffrey McNeely, an Iredell Republican who has introduced several bills to regulate hemp, agreed. “If these analyses are correct, then this only confirms the need for the regulations that I have been pushing for the last three years,” he said. “The citizens of North Carolina must be protected from these dangerous products.”

Several manufacturers questioned our findings or the lab’s methodology. But lab director Michelle Peace, a past president of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists, said she’s been testing hemp products since 2015. These results weren’t unusual. 

“This is all pretty par for the course of what we see in the unregulated cannabis space,” Peace said. “We see so much contamination and adulteration and strange chemicals being put in that, frankly, nothing really surprises us.” 

What Our Tests Found

An Assembly reporter was the only customer inside Smoke Kings the morning of January 6. The Wilmington vape shop smelled like a Yankee Candle store, but for weed. Electronic dance music blared from the speakers. 

Our reporter told the clerk, who looked to be in his 30s, that it had been a while since she’d used cannabis. He pointed her to a vape with both indica and sativa cannabis, as well as the store’s “most popular” gummies. 

The URB Blue Watermelon gummies claimed to have 10 milligrams of delta-9 and 90 mg of delta-8 each—the “sweet spot,” the clerk said. He recommended she start with half. The products were legal because state law provided “a lot of leeway,” the clerk said. 

What Else the Lab Identified

The Laboratory for Forensic Toxicology Research performed what’s called an untargeted analysis to identify dozens of chemical compounds in each product. Some of them you’d expect to find, like cannabinoids. Several gummies contained glycerin, a carbohydrate used to retain moisture. The brownie had caffeine and theobromine, both inherent to chocolate. 

Others might sound worse than they are. Most of the gummies contained furfuryl alcohol, an industrial solvent and possible carcinogen. But it’s also found in coffee, baked goods, and other foods, and research on its health risks has focused more on inhalation than on ingesting trace amounts.

That’s true of many chemicals the testing identified—especially in products designed to be eaten.   

“Very little is understood about any of these, and particularly the manner in which we are consuming them,” lab director Michelle Peace said. “Regularly consuming it in these microdoses has not really been assessed that well.” 

Products that are smoked or vaped present other concerns. Cannabis smoke contains many of the same carcinogens as cigarettes. Vapes can also wreak havoc on frequent or long-term users, albeit in different ways. Some of their risks stem from what manufacturers add to vape juice. 

“If we find a vape that’s 75% THC,” Peace said, “the question is, what is the 25%?” 

Peace said she frequently tests vapes with flavoring additives and medium-chain triglycerides, which are fats found in coconut oil that are used to dissolve THC. They’re safe to ingest, but they cause respiratory problems and lung damage when inhaled, which has led several states to ban them in vapes. None of the vapes we had tested contained those or the specific additives Peace mentioned.

Peace said that many vape manufacturers also add terpenes, naturally occurring hydrocarbons that give plants their aromas. Cannabis has 146 known terpenes, some of which are thought to have health benefits and enhance psychoactive effects.  

Vapes often contain terpenes at much higher doses than the plant itself, which can become a health hazard, Peace said. All of the vapes we tested had these terpenes, but the tests couldn’t determine if they had enough of them to cause harm. 

Our tests found that the vape—Hidden Hills Club Gold Gumdrops—contained five times the legal limit of delta-9. 

Last winter, reporters from across The Assembly Network had conversations like this with hemp retailers throughout North Carolina—in sketchy-looking convenience stores and suburban wine emporiums, in strip-mall vape shops and well-appointed dispensaries—and purchased an array of gummies, edibles, drinks, flower, and vapes. We chose them mostly at random, in an attempt to obtain a representative sample of what’s for sale in our state. 

Of the 21 products we sent to the lab, 12 contained unsafe levels of aerobic bacteria, microbes that thrive in oxygen. Five had unsafe levels of yeast and mold. Three had coliform bacteria, which are found in the environment and the feces of warm-blooded animals. 

Our tests couldn’t identify which species of bacteria, yeast, or mold were present. Instead, they gauged whether there were enough contaminants to pose “a potential threat to the consumer,” Peace said, based on a threshold set by the scientific nonprofit U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP).

“If we want to keep people safe, we need a legal, regulated market that requires testing so people know what is in the products and how intoxicating they are.”

Gov. Josh Stein

Of the five products with synthetic cannabinoids, one stood out: Ghost Reaper gummies—produced by Ghost Hemp Company in California and purchased at the Apotheca Cannabis Dispensary in Greensboro—contained 171.05 mg of THCP, which is thought to be longer-lasting and more powerful than delta-9. 

Several industry sources said that amount could be dangerous. “That’s really a lot of THCP,” Peace agreed. Because North Carolina has not regulated THCP or set any dosage limits for hemp products, these gummies are perfectly legal. 

Ghost Hemp did not respond to requests for comment. 

We’ve made the full test results available here, along with a spreadsheet detailing what was found, additional information about the products, and where we purchased them. Peace and her colleagues have also published a journal article detailing their methodology.

What Manufacturers Say

Testing cannabis isn’t like you see on TV, “where they inject something into a machine, and it spits out an answer,” said Baker, the chemist and Ratoon co-owner. 

To measure cannabinoids, labs have to separate them from other compounds—the biological material in flower, the food components of an edible—that can interfere with the results. At the same time, they have to ensure that the process itself doesn’t alter the sample. 

Law enforcement labs typically use gas chromatography, which heats samples to analyze their compounds. That process, however, converts THCA (and sometimes CBD) into delta-9, which critics say can render legal products illicit. The police counter that it measures a product’s available THC. 

Peace’s lab uses liquid chromatography, which uses a solvent to separate compounds. The hemp industry generally prefers this method, but that doesn’t mean our findings went unchallenged. 

The Assembly attempted to contact the manufacturers of all the products we tested. Most did not respond to our requests for comment, but we sent our results to those who did. 

Allyson O’Brien, a co-owner of Chronic Guru, criticized LFTR’s microbiological analysis for failing to quantify the contaminants or identify species. “From a consumer safety standpoint, those details matter,” O’Brien wrote in an email. 

She also took issue with the standard used to assess contaminants. The USP threshold is a “drug standard, not the one cannabis is held to,” she wrote. “What regulated cannabis safety actually turns on, including Florida’s medical marijuana program, is whether the dangerous organisms are present.” 

O’Brien supplied The Assembly with a certificate of analysis for Chronic Guru’s Hawaiian Punch gummies, which showed the gummies passed tests for pesticides, heavy metals, and specific bacteria, including Aspergillus flavus and Salmonella.  

“If these analyses are correct, then this only confirms the need for the regulations that I have been pushing for the last three years.”

State Rep. Jeffrey McNeely (R-Iredell)

She argued that the time between when we purchased the products and when they were tested could have affected our findings. The brownie’s expiration date was December 25, two days after we purchased it. The lab’s microbiological analysis—the brownie tested positive for yeast and mold and coliform—began on January 29. 

“A perishable food product evaluated after its labeled shelf life is not being evaluated in the condition it was manufactured, distributed, or sold to consumers,” O’Brien wrote.

Peace said that several states, including Virginia, have adopted the threshold set by USP, “the world standard-maker for drugs.” Peace considers the standards used by states like Florida that target specific pathogens too lenient. Though many individual contaminants aren’t dangerous, high concentrations can indicate unsanitary practices in a production or packaging facility. 

“The dose makes the poison,” Peace said. USP’s thresholds “are mindful of those who are most vulnerable in our population. If somebody is immunocompromised, it might not matter what the species is, because bacterial infection of any kind could be damaging to their health. Some states have chosen to take a more conservative route.”

Peace dismissed O’Brien’s shelf-life argument. “If it’s got coliform in it, that contamination came not because it was over its expiration date.” And the yeast and mold had to be present before the product was packaged, she added. 

Other manufacturers were skeptical of low THC levels in the drinks and some gummies. 

Trophy Brewing co-owner and chief brewer Les Stewart said our results for Starry Eyes look “like almost a calculation problem.” He expressed confidence in the lab tests he gets from the Raleigh-based Delta 9 Analytical. 

Downstream Testing

Both products we tested from Morrisville-based Naternal, which was founded by the son of former Gov. Bev Perdue, showed much less THC than the packaging promised. 

Their gummies were supposed to have 10 milligrams of delta-9 and 25 mg of CBD. The test found no THC and only trace amounts of CBDA and CBG. The seltzer was supposed to have 5 mg of delta-9 and 5 mg of CBD. The test found 0.18 mg of CBG and 0.2 mg of delta-9—not nothing, but close. 

Seeing those results, we decided to do an additional experiment. I had a few cans of Naternal’s seltzer left from our purchase. They came in the same order as the ones we sent to Richmond for testing. 

I drank one per day for two days. On the third day, I bought an at-home drug test to see if it would register any THC. 

The idea, as you’ve probably guessed, was twofold: First, to see if I felt any psychoactive effects from the drinks. Second, to see if I’d fail a urine test. 

I hadn’t consumed cannabis for a long time before this, which meant that I should be very sensitive to THC and that a positive result would owe entirely to the beverage. 

As to the first part: I wouldn’t say I felt nothing after drinking it. I also wouldn’t say I was high or even buzzed. A little relaxed, sure—perhaps a slight, pleasant tingle. But nothing that appreciably altered my senses. (Suffice it to say, I had sufficient faculties to write this paragraph after partaking.) 

As to the second: My test came back clean.

“We’ll do manipulations and send it off to our lab without telling them the difference, and they produce results in the final product that correlate with the changes that we make,” Stewart said. “So over the last year, we’ve created a relationship of trust with our lab, and we have every reason to believe that they’re absolutely right.”

Garrett Perdue, the CEO of Naternal, said that while he didn’t doubt the scientific rigor of our tests, he would know if his products are missing THC. 

“We’ve sold hundreds of units of both of those products,” Perdue said. “We have a 100% satisfaction guarantee on all of our products. Both products you’ve flagged would have an impact you could feel. Our customer complaint rate would have been massive.” 

Sound Science

The Assembly did not test any of Ratoon’s products, but after reviewing our findings, Baker questioned the cannabinoid levels in several of the products we did test. For example, the results for Heritage Hemp’s Slurricane flower showed THCA, but nothing else. 

“No one has bred all of the cannabinoids except for THCA out of these things,” Baker said. “That’s an impossible task.”

Peace said the other cannabinoids in the Slurricane flower fell below the lab’s threshold for measurement—in this case, 0.25%.

Baker’s business partner, James Hurlston, pointed out that LFTR’s final testing step involved heating samples to 300 degrees Celsius, which he called “extremely hot and destructive. More accurate tests require longer methods, which consume equipment time and increase the lab’s costs.” 

Peace said the heat doesn’t affect the material being tested. Instead, it burns off the liquid used to separate the samples’ compounds, allowing the lab to observe them. This method is “really standard,” she said, and it’s “outright not true” that liquid chromatography protocols with less heat are more accurate. 

Hurlston also noted that the lab’s method-validation data allow for a 20% error margin for cannabinoid levels. With that much wiggle room, Apotheca’s flower—which our tests pegged at 0.37% delta-9—could be legal. 

In general, Hurlston argued, THC testing isn’t precise enough to make conclusions about products that are close to the line. “Anything that’s within 0.5%, maybe even up to 1% delta-9 THC, it’s arguable that that is within the margins,” he said. 

But he thought LFTR’s 20% error margin reflected poorly on the lab’s work. “This is not sound science,” Hurlston wrote in an email. “This speaks to the method’s repeatability and accuracy.” 

Private labs often claim tighter error margins because they need to. Many states with recreational or medical marijuana markets require that products’ cannabinoid levels fall within 10% or 15% of what’s on their labels. Companies operating in those states want assurances that they’re close to the mark. Research labs don’t face those pressures. 

Peace said that’s not why she opted for 20%, however. She said it’s standard in the pharmaceutical industry, and she used it when she ran a private lab. 

“Plus or minus 20% allows for expected natural variation in the manufacturing process, compounded with some human error,” Peace said, adding that she doesn’t think her results miss by that much. “We’re giving the benefit of the doubt to the industry.”

For consumers, there’s a negligible difference between cannabinoid levels that deviate 10% or 20% from the label, she said. But anything more raises questions about whether “this product is really different than what’s on the label.” 

All of the drinks and most of the gummies we tested deviated from their labels by more than 20%. (The exception was Southern Ease’s pina colada gummies.) Besides Ghost Reaper’s gummies, which had 171.05 mg of THCP, all had less THC than advertised. Several had next to nothing—and, in the case of Naternal’s Play gummies, actually nothing.   

Four of the five beverages we tested initially showed undetectable THC concentrations, but retests found some in each. Peace said the lab refined its technique so that “we were actually able to see [the THC] and quantitate it.” 

To an extent, Peace agreed that lab errors are more likely with low-THC products—including many drinks and gummies—than with higher ones, in part because small mistakes can significantly affect the results. 

“You have to know what your limits are, and you have to be conservative with those limits,” she said. “You have to be sure of what those low numbers are.”

Peace said she’s used to industry criticism. But she pointed out that she had no stake in the results; her lab would have been paid the same no matter the findings. “I don’t have a dog in this fight,” she said. 

A Scientist’s War

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. 

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 board of the Cannabis Control Authority, which oversees medical marijuana in the state. Peace was removed this spring, several months after Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger took office. 

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 partisan 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 Tuesday, Spanberger announced that she had reached a deal with the legislature on a new recreational marijuana bill.

LFTR has the same accreditation as many private labs, which indicates that it has a valid testing protocol and can follow it. But accredited labs can churn out bad data, Peace said. What sets her methodology apart, she said, is that she published it in a scientific journal, which required her to spend months defending it to other scientists during peer review. 

“I get so pissed off with these yahoos who, you know, look at the data just to pick it apart and say, oh, that’s a bad way to do it,” Peace said. “Nobody else is publishing in the scientific literature.

“There have been multiple eyes on all of that data and on all of our methods that get adopted nationwide by crime labs. At the end of the day, they can be critical all day long, but I will stand up in court and testify to our results.”

Sticky Problems

Alleged lab errors aside, there are several reasons our tests might show different THC levels than products claim.  

For starters, THC levels degrade over time, especially when products are stored in lighted areas without refrigeration. The longer a product sits on the shelf, the more delta-9 it loses. We don’t know how old many of the tested products were when we bought them. (Several listed expiration dates. Southern Ease’s pina colada gummies, which we ordered online in early December, had a best-by date of November 2025.)

Another issue: Cannabinoids aren’t always distributed evenly in gummies and edibles. That means THC levels can vary from product to product and gummy to gummy. The two Southern Ease gummies we tested each promised 10 mg of delta-9. One had 8.16 mg; the other, just 0.48 mg. 

They can even vary within a single gummy. The test samples only a small amount of each gummy, then extrapolates the gummy’s cannabinoid content from the sample. So if the tested portion had more or less THC than the rest, that would affect the results. 

“It’s always an asterisk,” Peace said. But that doesn’t make it unfair, she argued. “There are some people that might not want to eat the whole gummy. So what if you just happen to lop off a part that didn’t have much in it? Or you lop off the part that had all of it in it? 

“The burden is on the manufacturer—if they get a result that they don’t like—the burden is on them to create a homogenized product,” Peace said. 

Our results also highlighted a potential thorn in the side of the fast-growing beverage market: THC sticks to cans—more specifically, the plastic liner inside the can. The longer a can sits, the more THC it absorbs.  

THC doesn’t dissolve in liquid, so drink manufacturers use a process called nanoemulsification to keep it from sinking to the bottom. But that doesn’t prevent the THC from sticking to the liner. 

There are can liners designed to ameliorate this specific problem, Peace said. But they’re expensive. “Why would they choose a more expensive liner if nobody’s really watching?”

Stewart said Trophy decided it didn’t really matter. “We looked into whether we had to get a different type of liner,” he said. “And we were prepared to do that.” But they tested how much Starry Eyes’ THC levels changed over six months and found only slight degradation. 

“When we got the results back,” he said, “we decided there was no reason to change anything. I don’t think the liner effect is all that impactful, at least in our trials.”

Caveat Emptor

Despite our best efforts, it’s impossible to say how well our purchases reflect the overall hemp market in North Carolina. 

We don’t know whether the products at your local vape shop or dispensary are better or worse, safer or more dangerous. We don’t know if they’re loaded with bacteria, heavy metals, or unadvertised synthetic cannabinoids. We don’t know if the certificates of authenticity that sing their praises are worth the paper they’re printed on. We don’t know if their contents even faintly resemble what the package says. 

Maybe everything’s fine. But maybe not. That’s kind of the point.  

“Why would they choose a more expensive liner if nobody’s really watching?”

Michelle Peace, toxicologist

Peace said she’s tested thousands of hemp products from unregulated markets. “I would say that easily 90% of them were bad,” she said. “Bacteria, yeast and mold, it’s adulterated with analogs, it’s got a lot more THC in it than it’s supposed to, or it has nothing in it.”

In regulated markets, “there’s accountability,” she said. “The overwhelming majority of the products are safe.”

In North Carolina, however, caveat emptor. 

“I don’t care if you walk into the bougiest of stores or a hole in the wall, you have no idea what you’re getting,” Peace said. “And so I would say in any unregulated marketplace, buyer beware—and know who you’re going to call when you have an adverse event.”

Additional reporting by Johanna F. Still and Tori Newby.