Cannabis Advisory Board approves laboratory testing standards in unanimous vote

As of May 16, 2026. The Virgin Islands Cannabis Advisory Board met Thursday, May 14, and voted unanimously to approve laboratory testing standards for the territory’s cannabis program. Board Chair Catherine Kean led the vote. The Office of Cannabis Regulation will publish the approved standards at ocr.vi.gov, according to OCR Executive Director Joanne Moorehead.

The May 14 session was the first publicly noticed Cannabis Advisory Board meeting since the February 12 votes on Metrc QR labeling, the event permit fee schedule, and the 250-foot buffer rule.

What the standards cover

Per reporting in the Virgin Islands Daily News, the St. Thomas Source, and the VI Consortium, the approved standards set requirements for contaminants, heavy metals, microbial controls, and product-specific testing for inhalable cannabis products, edibles, tinctures, and topicals. Inhalables also carry an outright ban on Vitamin E acetate, the additive linked to the 2019 EVALI vaping-illness outbreak. “In the inhalable products, one of the things that is absolutely prohibited is Vitamin E acetate,” Moorehead said.

The rules are written to be more restrictive than typical mainland standards. “I do think that ours might be a little more stringent, but that is really because we’re looking at environmental factors that affect our plant product grown here versus in other parts of the country,” Moorehead said. She told the Daily News that preparing the standards was “quite a heavy slog,” but the framework had to be in place before any retail sale.

Board members raised the question of heavy-metal contamination in soil and cistern water, particularly on St. Croix, where the south-shore oil refinery and the adjacent alumina plant are the most-cited sources of heavy-metal concern on the island. Dr. Gary Jett, a Board member, asked whether soil testing is routinely done in the territory. It is not. There is no in-territory soil-testing lab, but cultivators can mail samples to mainland labs without running into the federal interstate-commerce restrictions that block the same approach for cannabis itself. That asymmetry is the reason the St. Croix cannabis testing lab now in construction is the more load-bearing build-out.

Board Chair Catherine Kean said it was “in the best interest of all cultivators” to invest in soil and water testing before planting anything.

Where the program stands

The Daily News reported figures the Office gave the Board on Thursday:

• 45 active medical cannabis patients on the registry. The St. Thomas Source reported 44 patients and nine participating practitioners, five on St. Thomas and four on St. Croix.
• Four commercial cultivators awaiting final OCR inspection before operating.
• Micro-cultivation applicants in the compliance phase.
• Dispensaries described as “a couple of months” out from opening.
• Manufacturing and research-and-development applicants under committee evaluation.
• Third-party vendor licenses pending.

The Board also took up a separate item on dispensary applicant remediation. OCR has published a resolution giving previously unsuccessful conditional dispensary applicants a one-time opportunity to cure deficiencies identified in scoring. Applicants have 30 days from formal notification to submit revised materials, at a $5,000 cost, on top of the original $10,000 non-refundable application fee.

Schedule III rescheduling came up

The Board also took up the DOJ’s April 22 order moving state-licensed medical cannabis to Schedule III, the first federal acknowledgment of cannabis as medicine in the Controlled Substances Act’s 55-year history. Moorehead was direct on the limits, per the St. Thomas Source: “It is not a wholesale rescheduling. It does not make adult use or recreational marijuana or cannabis legal,” she said. Medical operators that pursue federal DEA registration under the new order will pick up new compliance and tracking obligations on top of the OCR’s, she told the Board.

What this changes

Lab testing is one of the gating items between conditional licensure and a Certificate to Operate. With the standards approved by the Board and slated for publication on the OCR website, the document the St. Croix testing lab now in construction is being built to meet has a public reference. The standards also give the fourteen conditional commercial cultivators awarded licenses in October 2025 a fixed compliance target for the harvests now coming.

Director Moorehead’s autumn-2026 target for first regulated sales still depends on at least one Certificate to Operate this summer. The Daily News quote that dispensaries are “a couple of months” out is the Office’s first public estimate to put a specific window on the gap.

What to watch

• Publication of the approved testing standards on ocr.vi.gov. The Office had not yet posted the document as of the morning of May 16.
• A first Certificate to Operate, the step that converts a conditional license into a legal sale.
• The next Cannabis Advisory Board meeting, set for June 25, 2026.
• Any update on the May 4 self-sufficiency milestone under § 777(f) of the Virgin Islands Cannabis Use Act and the Approved Rules and Regulations promulgated May 4, 2024, which the Office has not addressed publicly.
• Whether any dispensary applicant takes the $5,000 remediation track and clears the second-round scoring.