In a 2013 interview with The Huffington Post, country music star and cannabis aficionado Willie Nelson famously quipped that cannabis “won’t kill you unless you let a bale of it fall on you.” That line has been repeated in countless circles since then to wave off safety concerns around cannabis.
But the reality is that cultivating cannabis comes with real risks. For example, what’s believed to be the first workplace-related employee death at a licensed cannabis facility occurred at Trulieve’s Holyoke, Mass., facility in January 2022. Lorna McMurrey, 27, was making prerolls when she experienced difficulties breathing and collapsed. She later died at a local medical facility. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a federal agency tasked with developing and enforcing workplace safety standards, found that McMurrey passed away from occupational asthma after inhaling ground cannabis dust. In June, Trulieve announced it was exiting Massachusetts and shutting down the Holyoke facility and its three dispensaries in the state by year’s end, citing an effort to “bolster business resilience” and a “commitment to cash preservation.”
