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NSAV ~ States turn to tech for tracking marijuana- May 26, 2015
http://gcn.com/articles/2015/05/26/marijuana-tracking-tech.aspx

Colorado: RFID tracking moves from cucumbers to kush

When Colorado put out its request for proposals for a system to regulate marijuana plants, it cited radio frequency identification as the preferred technology. Getting to a functional system took a while -- a 2011 contract was shelved because of budget shortfalls, and both state officials and growers were still scrambling as legalization took effect on Jan. 1, 2014 -- but Colorado's Marijuana Inventory Tracking Solution now requires every plant and every bag to be tracked with an RFID tag. Growers are responsible for tagging their inventory and logging the data into the state's online system.

Franwell, a firm that specializes in RFID, used technology the company had developed for air cargo and fresh food tracking and created a system for tracing Colorado's marijuana plants.

Franwell CEO Jeff Wells explained that tracking marijuana is different from other products because it requires such a high level of regulation. “In all of our experience, and we’ve been working in supply chains for a few decades, I don’t know another system that exists where a regulatory body is assigning a serial number for each and every box of cucumbers, for example. But, then again, it’s not dangerous enough . . . it's not federally illegal [to grow and ship] cucumbers.”

Growers in Colorado have complained about the cost of the tags and the hassles of logging their inventory data with the state, but Wells said RFID speeds up the inspection process and that RFID tags are difficult to counterfeit. “Someone can take a handheld to a facility and do a spot check a lot easier than with a bar code. They can read many, many plants in seconds and quickly verify against what they have reported in the system.”