New Mexico regulators are seeking to suspend the business license of a Santa Fe-based medical marijuana producer after a fire at an extraction facility seriously injured two employees.
Two employees at one of New MexiCann Natural Medicine’s Santa Fe locations were attempting to extract cannabis with ethanol when a worker dropped the solvent onto a heater plate and caused the fire, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
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include_post id=”27967″]The state health department is considering revoking the company’s license for violating Medical Cannabis Program rules and not using a closed-loop extraction system.
The company also allegedly failed to properly instruct workers about how to turn off or cool the heater plate when stirring the extraction material.
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“By lifting an open extraction vessel containing an ethanol-based solution in the immediate vicinity of an active heater plate, New MexiCann engaged in conduct that showed a willful and reckless disregard for health and safety,” Medical Cannabis Program Director Dominick Zurlo wrote in a letter to the company.
In an email to Marijuana Business Daily, New MexiCann declined to comment, citing the ongoing legal review by the state health department.
New MexiCann was fined $13,500 in 2016 by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration for committing a dozen violations uncovered during the agency’s eight-month investigation into a hash-oil explosion that seriously burned two employees.
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