Connected Sues DCC Over “Rigged” Aspergillus Recall

OG article By Alex Halperin Watch Today's LIVE Episode on YouTube, X, and Rumble

Published July 03 2025

A distributor affiliated with brand Connected sued the California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) last month alleging the agency used a “rigged” recall process to deprive it of its rights and unfairly impose significant costs on the company.

The Sacramento Co. lawsuit also seeks to eliminate the DCC’s current “zero-tolerance” policy for weed contaminated with the mold aspergillus. Connected argues the approach is “arbitrary and capricious” and not backed by the scientific evidence.

Aspergillus is a common mold which, according to the DCC, poses little threat to healthy people. For those who are immunocompromised, it can cause a potentially serious sinus and lung infection called aspergillosis.

Of the mold’s 180 or so species, only four are known to cause the infection: A.fumigatus, A.niger, A.flavus and A.terreus. They are the only ones for which the DCC requires testing.

In 2023, Oregon implemented a similar zero-tolerance approach for those four strains. In response the Cannabis Industry Alliance of Oregon (CIAO) successfully sued the state to block the policy. The trade group argued the health risk — no one in Oregon was known to have contracted aspergillosis from smoking weed — didn’t justify the enormous costs it would impose on the struggling industry.

• Present in the air we breath, zero-tolerance aspergillus testing is especially untenable for outdoor growers.

  
  

More aspergillus recalls

Since a June 2024 LA Times/WeedWeekinvestigation found vapes that had cleared their lab tests, despite containing alarming levels of pesticides banned or limited by the DCC, the agency has been under pressure to more rigorously police the supply chain. One way it has done so is by increasing the number of aspergillus recalls.

Of the dozens of pesticides the LA Timesstory found in products, the DCC has only named three in recalls, and unanswered questions remain about its capacity to test for pesticides.

Year to date, by my count, the DCC hasn’t issued any pesticide related recalls. But after issuing its first aspergillus recalls in 2024, it has stepped up the pace with more than 20 so far this year.

• Connected’s lawsuit alleges that labs, including the DCC’s lab, “are unable to achieve consistent testing results” for the relevant strains of aspergillus “due to a lack of validation, performance criteria and transparency.”

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• The lawsuit further alleges DCC uses aspergillus testing procedures “that do not allow for standardized results with the very labs they have accredited.” 

• Aside from whether the tests are consistently accurate, the mold could plausibly appear on product samples between a lab’s COA analysis and an enforcement or compliance action months later.

  
  

The DCC’s new vigor in aspergillus testing doesn’t just have consequences for brands. Last week, WeedWeek reported on the DCC shuttering BelCosta lab after finding Aspergillus in a handful of samples, which BelCosta had cleared months earlier. The judge said she was “troubled” over whether DCC had afforded BelCosta due process and compared it to a “Star chamber.”

The judge’s concerns focused on the timeline of the lab’s suspension and license renewal, not the level of health risk or technical questions about mold biology and analytical chemistry. They only make the issue more complex. 

“The DCC has evidence”

On April 2, Connected distributor 2JC received several noreply emails from track and trace software provider Metrc identifying hundreds of thousands of dollars in product that had been put on an administrative hold. It could no longer be sold or moved.

The recall applied to SKUs from Connected and sister brand Alien Labs, known for their premium flower, and Smoken Promises, a new, more budget-friendly option launched in collaboration with a streetwear company.

• Together the three brands make Connected the fourth bestselling company in the state, behind Stiiizy, Raw Gardenand Jeeter, according to data shop CannMenus. (Here’s WeedWeek‘s 2021 profile of Connected.)

• Connected and Alien Labs are available in Arizona and exclusively with MSO Trulievein Florida.

  
  

The same day, according to Connected’s lawsuit, a letter from a DCC senior environmental scientist told Connected owner Caleb Counts that the agency has evidence that 13 batches of flower and infused pre-rolls “are adulterated with the microbial contaminants Aspergillus spp.”

• (While some of the other Aspergillus recalls name one or more of the four relevant strains (i.e. A.flavus), all of the Connected recalls refer only to Aspergillus Spp. which the DCC says means one or more of the unnamed strains.)

  
  

The notice told Counts to initiate a voluntary recall that day, which required posting a public notice and quarantining the product, among other actions. The product would then have to be destroyed or go through remediation, which renders its $45+ eighths into bulk flower.

In recent months, the company had been through several voluntary aspergillus recalls. Voluntary recalls, which are initiated by operators, are a way to show proactive compliance and perhaps mitigate the cost and reputational damage associated with a mandatory recall.

• The DCC can initiate a mandatory recall when a product poses “an immediate and serious threat to human life or health.”  

Before moving forward with the recall process, Counts requested the evidence of contamination, and information about any product testing the DCC may have done. The product had passed its state-mandated testing, he added.

The DCC scientist responded two days later. The COAs and other evidence Connected requested are “part of an active investigation,” and therefore exempt from disclosure. The company had until end of day to initiate the voluntary recall, the letter said.

Connected’s outside counsel OC-based Jeff Augustini wrote back with another request for the evidence. As he later claimed in the complaint, the company had to “voluntarily recall the product solely because [DCC] said so,” with no right to review relevant information. He also took issue with DCC’s claim that the withheld evidence was part of an active investigation. It would be premature to demand a recall if the investigation was still underway, he argued. “DCC CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS.”

Citing the California Business and Professions Code (paragraph c), Augustini requested an “informal proceeding” to discuss the issue once they had the evidence.

In his next letter, the DCC scientist cited the same section of code to deny the company a meeting. Regarding the requests for evidence, he cited the state’s Public Records Act (PRA) which exempts many investigatory documents from disclosure.

The letter then told Connected, in effect, to initiate a voluntary recall that day or prepare for a mandatory one.

Augustini responded that the Public Records Act did not apply since Connected’s request for evidence involved a response to a recall, not a public records request. The DCC, he wrote, is “acting with manufactured urgency” since the product was on hold and off shelves and mandatory recalls were supposed to be for imminent public health threats. 

“The DCC cannot justify its violation of [Connected]’s due process rights by claiming it is still investigating batches for which it has now issued a formal mandatory recall,” Augustini wrote.

The meeting and after

The mandatory recall notice arrived on April 11. The same day Connected received embargo notices warning of fines up to $10,000 for any “item” not accounted for by the embargo.

DCC also clarified that the company was entitled to an informal proceeding to discuss the issue.

Ahead of the half-hour meeting, Connected again asked for the evidence of aspergillus contamination and submitted detailed questions. Augustini also asked who from DCC would attend. Of the DCC attendees, the scientist only identified himself. He again declined to provide the requested evidence.

DCC posted the mandatory recall on April 15 and the meeting took place two days later. A week later a notice from the DCC “affirmed” the recall, again citing the Public Records Act as the basis for not disclosing the evidence Connected had requested.

In the complaint, Connected alleges a theory about the DCC’s push for a voluntary recall, and why connected recalls have all been for Aspergillus Spp. rather than a specific strain. “The lab at which the [DCC] testing purportedly was performed” — the DCC lab in Richmond (Contra Costa Co.) — “may have involved a testing protocol that involved ‘plating” a method for which it was not accredited at the time.

As of now the recalled product has been removed from the supply chain and the DCC has said it will await the courts decision.

Then last week it issued another mandatory Aspergillus Spp. recall for Alien Labs flower.