In response to an order requiring his business to shut down, the owner of a shuttered marijuana testing facility in Tyngsboro is arguing that he will take the Commonwealth to court for allegedly failing to provide due process.
Dr. Dimitrios Pelekoudas, the CEO and founder of Assured Testing Laboratory, informed the Herald that his company has appealed the suspension order that the Cannabis Control Commission imposed on his company due to claims that they neglected to notify the state of failing marijuana test findings.
Pelekoudas claims that his company has upheld the highest standards and complied with all directives from the marijuana authorities, including the recent decision to permanently close its doors, in contrast to the CCC’s accusations.
The essential tenet of our state and nation is that you have the right to defend yourself in a forum before the government takes everything away from you. According to him, Assured Testing Laboratory, a locally operated company with 33 workers, did nothing wrong, posed no risk to the public, and made sure that no tainted goods made it to market.
Pelekoudas claims that the problem is not so much with the test findings from his lab as it is with the commission’s erratic regulatory structure, which leaves the rules of the road up for interpretation.
This is a straightforward dispute regarding the reporting of statistics. The CCC actually revised regulations that went into effect on April 1st of this year because their previous regulations were so ambiguous on this particular testing issue. According to him, Assured Testing Laboratory always complied with all current laws and directives.
The suspension order, which was signed by CCC Executive Director Travis Ahern, states that the lab’s conduct constituted an immediate and significant risk to the Commonwealth’s public health, safety, or welfare since they were so out of compliance with reporting requirements.
The order granted the facility 21 days to obtain a hearing against the commission’s action and directed them to stop operations by July 4.
According to commission data, the suspended lab was in charge of testing around 25% of the state’s certified safe marijuana.
According to the commission, only 10 (0.05%) of the 17,565 marijuana samples examined by the lab between April 2024 and April 2025 had mold or yeast levels beyond the state’s legal limits. The suspension order states that an average contamination rate of 4.5% was observed in the remaining 11 testing facilities in the state.
According to the commission, lab samples examined by [Assured] had a 90-fold lower failure rate for the presence of total yeast and mold than the industry average.
Pelekoudas claims that no little bit of tainted product has been permitted to leave his laboratory.
Was a tainted product released onto the market? That is the true question at the center of this. “The answer is absolutely no,” he stated.
The owner of the lab claims that because of the commission’s actions, the majority of his 33 staff are on furlough while the appeals procedure is ongoing. Meanwhile, he claimed, he has petitioned the courts for relief and will urge a judge to force the CCC to let him go back to work and reimburse his company for lost profits. At this point, he added, it’s the least the state could do. According to Pelekoudas, the suspension ought to have been a last resort rather than the initial step in the procedure.
Due process was not followed. According to him, this is actually an abuse of their authority if you read the regulations.
We consider this to be a setback. “We anticipate resuming operations shortly,” he continued.
“The CCC’s decision to single out my lab must have other licensees wondering if they are next,” the lab owner stated, despite his efforts to remain optimistic about the situation’s eventual result.
Because, once more, they are only making the assertion that our organization is a public health risk without sufficient proof and solely on the basis of speculation, he added. Why did they give instructions to finish testing the samples we had previously received in their order if we were such a risk?
Although Pelekoudas has asked the CCC to accelerate his case review, he stated that he is unsure of the date of the hearing.
