California Recalled West Coast Cure Vapes Labs Had Passed

California pulled West Coast Cure Orange Cookies vape cartridges from stores on June 25, 2024, for the insecticide chlorfenapyr. The Department of Cannabis Control said the CUREpen had been sold on or after September 29, 2023, at 169 licensed shops.

A state-licensed lab had already signed a passing certificate for that batch. A second licensed lab had told Sacramento in November 2023 that the oil failed.

Orange Cookies Left the Lab With a Passing Grade

The order covered a single CUREpen Premium THC Oil cartridge in Orange Cookies, made by Alkhemist DM LLC. Verity Analytics, the San Diego lab that certified the lot, put the run at nearly 5,000 vapes. Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs, also in San Diego, had already tested the same September production and sent the state a complaint.

Infinite’s work did not stop at one flavor. It flagged a dozen West Coast Cure batches made that September, more than 62,000 vapes in assorted flavors, all of which other labs had marked safe. On the Orange Cookies oil, Infinite also named paclobutrazol, a growth chemical barred at any level, and trifloxystrobin at four times what California allows. The department’s public order cited only chlorfenapyr. Officials would not say why the other two chemicals were left off.

Chlorfenapyr sits on California’s hardest pesticide list. Licensed labs must fail a batch if they find it. That is the entire point of the Category I screen, and it is why a passing certificate on this cartridge is the part of the file that still does not add up.

West Coast Cure, whose legal name on later lots is Shield Management Group LLC, has said from the start that every product it sells carries a passing test from a state-licensed lab, and that failed batches are destroyed. That defense tracks the letter of the rules. It also puts the failure on the labs the state licenses, and on the months the product stayed for sale after Infinite’s complaint arrived.

Seven Months Sat Between the Complaint and the Pull

Infinite filed on the Orange Cookies batch in November 2023. The mandatory recall landed seven months later, on June 25, 2024. From October through April, Infinite and Anresco Laboratories in San Francisco sent the department 85 complaints on contaminated goods already in stores. Compliance staff did not start pulling many of those products until February.

THE ORANGE COOKIES CLOCK

1. September 2023: Alkhemist DM LLC makes the Orange Cookies CUREpen lot that later sells in licensed shops.
2. November 2023: Infinite Chemical Analysis files a complaint on that batch, naming chlorfenapyr, paclobutrazol, and trifloxystrobin.
3. April 19, 2024: The department suspends Verity Analytics, the lab that had signed the passing certificate.
4. June 25, 2024: Sacramento orders the Orange Cookies cartridge off sale at 169 retail licenses.

By the time the notice posted, most of a nine-month-old vape run was already smoked. The department did not say how many units were still in jars. It did post the shop list, and it told anyone with symptoms to call a doctor and anyone with a matching package to throw it out or bring it back.

The delay was not a one-off paperwork jam. Josh Swider, who runs Infinite, said he had handed regulators about 100 certificates from dirty products that other labs had passed, some with pesticides more than 200 times the state limit. “I’m telling them of health problems on the shelf, and they’re acting like all I’m trying to do is get a competitive advantage,” Swider said.

What Chlorfenapyr Does Once It Is Inhaled

Chlorfenapyr is a greenhouse insecticide, not a cannabis input. California lists chlorfenapyr as a Category I residual pesticide, CAS 122453-73-0, and a licensed lab must fail any sample where it shows up above the limit of detection. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency registered it in January 2001 for non-food greenhouse crops. It is a pro-insecticide: the body converts it into a compound that shuts down cellular energy production.

HOW THE CHEMICAL IS CLASSED

• Legal status: Barred on California cannabis at any detected level, with labs required to set a limit of quantitation of 0.10 μg/g or lower.
• EPA file: The agency’s human-health risk assessment for chlorfenapyr rates acute oral toxicity in Category II and acute inhalation toxicity in Category III.
• What it hits: Animal studies point to the central nervous system, including changes in brain and spinal cord tissue after repeated doses.
• Why vapes raise the stakes: Oil extracted from trim and other biomass concentrates residues that might have been thinner on flower, so a fail in a cartridge is a denser fail than the same spray on a bud.

Acute poisoning case reports, mostly from swallowing the concentrated agricultural product, describe delayed fever, sweating, and white-matter injury, and they are a different exposure than residue in a legal vape. The department still treated any detection as enough to pull the cartridge, and it told customers with reactions to see a physician at once.

Verity Analytics Signed the Certificate, Then Lost Its License

Paul Hamrah, who owns Verity Analytics, did not treat the second-lab fails as settled science. He said pesticide testing is sloppy in practice, and he accused the labs running the store checks of stacking the deck.

You could give it to 10 different labs and get 10 different results.

Paul Hamrah, owner, Verity Analytics

Hamrah’s lab is the one that passed West Coast Cure vapes later pulled for chlorfenapyr. The department suspended Verity’s license on April 19, 2024, after earlier citations. That sequence is the quiet core of the recall: the signature on the safety ticket came from a lab the state then took off the board.

It was not the only lab whose paperwork collapsed. California Cannabis Testing Labs had reported chlorfenapyr as not detected on a cartridge the state later measured at 59.2 μg/g, nearly 600 times what the rules allow. The department revoked that lab’s provisional license in July 2024 and listed faked pesticide bench sheets among the charges. Four labs that had issued clean certificates for products later found dirty lost licenses through suspension, denial, or revocation.

Anresco Laboratories in San Francisco and SC Labs in Santa Cruz screened products bought from licensed dispensaries for more than 100 pesticides, well past the 66 chemicals California requires. The expanded pesticide panels from those store screens found 25 of 42 legal products over state limits or over federal tobacco standards. Infinite and Anresco later sued 13 other California labs, claiming some had pumped THC numbers or missed mold and pesticides. Three large dispensary chains did not wait. They sent their own inventory out for extra testing and pulled items with no public order from Sacramento.

West Coast Cure Says It Only Followed State Labs

Shield Management Group, doing business as West Coast Cure, put the blame on the architecture of the market. The company said it had asked the department more than once for a list of labs Sacramento trusted more than others, and that the department refused to rank them. “West Coast Cure is not a testing laboratory, nor are we permitted to be one by California regulations,” the company said after the July pulls. “The system set up by the state requires us to rely on tests conducted by third-party laboratories that have been licensed and certified by the state of California to perform the required tests in accordance with the regulations.”

That is accurate as a description of the rulebook. Brands pick a licensed lab, pay for the work, and live with the certificate. When two licensed labs disagree, the one that said pass is still the one that let the oil out the door.

On October 7, 2024, the company posted a voluntary recall of remaining units tied to 20 UIDs. It said the department had kept calling about products named in a newspaper story from four months earlier, and that all of those products still had passing compliance tests. The notice called the pull not an admission of any wrongdoing and said West Coast Cure “continues to dispute all allegations made by people who WCC believes are doing this for financial gain.” Customers with a matching UID were told to bring the product back to the shop for a refund and for destruction.

Co-founder Jerett Wasserman recorded Instagram videos that framed the chlorfenapyr orders as payback for questioning the store-lab results. A customer had already filed a proposed class action in Orange County Superior Court in June 2024, alleging the company hid contaminants and issued bad certificates. Shield asked a judge in September 2024 to throw that case out. The company denied it had shopped labs to bury fails.

A separate disciplinary track landed on storage, not on the oil chemistry. Department staff cited Shield for cannabis held in Conex containers and for missing cameras in rooms that stored bulk flower. A stipulated settlement adopted as a final decision on December 29, 2025, set an administrative fine of $62,500 on those citation cases, payable in monthly installments starting January 15, 2026.

The Same Insecticide Showed Up in More Flavors

Orange Cookies was the first public chlorfenapyr pull on a West Coast Cure vape. It was not the last. On July 2, 2024, the department ordered five more Shield lots off sale, all for chlorfenapyr: Birthday Cake, Lemon Cooler, Lucky Charmz, and Watermelon Sorbet CUREpens, plus a Slymer live resin cartridge. On August 29 it added another CUREpen, sold on or after September 14, 2023, at 93 shops in 25 counties, and a Live Resin Diamonds concentrate sold on or after November 2, 2023, at 105 shops in 30 counties.

WEST COAST CURE CHLORFENAPYR PULLS

The department posted the August notice on its own account the next morning, with package photos and a link to the recall pages.

The Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) is issuing this notice of recall for multiple West Coast Cure products, due to pesticide.

Product details: https://t.co/X25UaCoQx8 pic.twitter.com/5XcvDIFvnl

— CA Department of Cannabis Control (@CAcannabisdept) August 30, 2024

Other brands sat in the same chemical. The first California cannabis pesticide recall had already been a chlorfenapyr case: Grizzly Peak Farms’ Zoap flower, posted December 7, 2023. Backpack Boyz and Eaze cartridges were later pulled on the same insecticide, including lots made as much as 10 months earlier. Independent screens on some of those vapes had shown as many as nine other pesticides, but the public orders still named one chemical.

Nicole Elliott, then director of the Department of Cannabis Control, said after the 2024 tally that “compliance with California’s safety regulations is non-negotiable. When safety standards are not met, we will hold you accountable.” The year-end release put numbers on that line.

WHAT THE DEPARTMENT COUNTED IN 2024

• Embargoes: 481 holds that kept goods out of stores until staff finished an investigation or ordered destruction.
• Recalls: 63 notices covering 259 products and almost 25,000 retail units.
• Discipline: 366 actions against licensees, including 230 license suspensions.
• Exits: 73 license denials or revocations.

Those 481 embargoes and 63 product recalls arrived in a legal market worth about $3.5 billion in California. They also arrived after the Orange Cookies oil had already moved through 169 shops on a passing ticket. On March 6, 2026, the department published another West Coast Cure recall, this time a multipack pre-roll over Aspergillus niger, a mold, which is a different fail and a sign the brand was still shipping under a state license.

A passing certificate got Orange Cookies onto the shelf. A second lab, a seven-month wait, and a Category I insecticide got it back off. The rules still ask the next brand to trust the next lab the same way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which West Coast Cure Orange Cookies Vape Was Recalled?

The June 25, 2024 order covered the CUREpen Premium THC Oil Orange Cookies cartridge made by Alkhemist DM LLC, batch VPPL234457, UID 1A4060300036B66000008211, sold on or after September 29, 2023. Check the UID printed on the package against that string before you toss or return it.

Is Chlorfenapyr Allowed in California Cannabis?

No. It is a Category I residual pesticide, and a licensed lab must fail a sample if the chemical is found above the limit of detection. Labs also have to set a limit of quantitation of 0.10 μg/g or lower for Category I chemicals, so a trace hit is enough to block a batch from retail.

How Should You Dispose of a Recalled Cannabis Vape?

The department says cannabis vape cartridges and integrated vaporizers must go to a household hazardous waste site or another approved facility, not into ordinary trash. If the UID matches a recall list, you can also return the unit to the retailer for disposal.

Does a Mandatory Pesticide Recall Come With a Refund?

The June and July chlorfenapyr orders told customers to dispose of matching product or return it to the retailer for disposal, and they did not promise money back. West Coast Cure’s October 7 voluntary notice on remaining UIDs did tell customers the company would refund them at the shop of purchase and collect those units for destruction, which is a different set of instructions.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a completed California cannabis recall and related testing rules, and it is for information only. It is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a recommendation to use, stop using, or treat any product or symptom, and it is not legal advice about a recall, a lawsuit, or a license. Readers who used an affected product, who have symptoms, or who need guidance on disposal or medical care should contact a physician or a qualified health professional, and should follow current instructions from the Department of Cannabis Control and the retailer. Batch lists, license status, and health findings reflect the public records cited here and can change as the department or the companies issue new notices.