Trust · independence
Editorial & Affiliate Standards
How we make money
THCA Verdict earns commissions when you buy through some of our links. That is the whole model — no sponsored posts, no paid placements, no vendor inventory of our own — and it funds the research. It does not decide the verdicts.
Straight disclosure —Some links on this page are affiliate links — we may earn a commission when you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. It never changes the price you pay, and it never changes a verdict.
Commissions never buy a verdict
A higher commission cannot move a vendor up a ranking, and no vendor can pay for a review, a placement, or a score. The COA bar is the same for everyone: we only recommend vendors that publish batch-matched COAs from accredited labs — and an affiliate whose paperwork fails that bar gets the same treatment as a stranger's. We also cover vendors who pay us nothing, under nominative use, because reader-useful coverage is the product. When the honest answer is "skip this vendor," the page says that, commission or not.
No invented credentials, no invented testing
Our writers are researchers and editors. They hold no lab credentials, no medical or legal qualifications, and no cultivation background — and we never invent any. Bylines describe what a person actually does here: reads the published COAs, verifies lab accreditation, recomputes the math, tracks prices, cites statutes. Reviews are desk-verified from published sources; we do not claim hands-on product testing we have not done. Read who they are on the team page.
21+, no medical claims, required honesty
Three lines we hold on every page. First: everything here is for adults 21 and over — no content, framing, or product coverage aimed younger, ever. Second: no medical claims — no page will say a product treats, cures, or relieves anything, and dosing language stays at "start low, go slow" general information, never protocols. Third: the required honesty gets said plainly wherever it applies — THCA converts to THC when heated and is intoxicating, it will show on a drug test, and the federal ban on intoxicating hemp takes effect November 12, 2026.
Legality is decision support, not legal advice
Our state legality pages cite the statutes they summarize and carry a last-checked date. States we have not verified say so — we publish "not yet verified" rather than guessing, and unverified states get no vendor links. None of it is legal advice, and every page says that too.
Corrections & freshness
Vendors change labs, menus reprice, statutes amend, and we get things wrong sometimes. When we update a page, the date you see reflects a real change — we do not stamp a fresh year on stale work to game a feed. Spot an error, a dead COA link, or a legality change we have not caught? Tell us and we will fix it.
Claim accuracy
Facts about vendors are verified against the vendor's live site and COA portal at write time; where something is not published, the review says "not published" instead of filling the gap. Prices are representative with a checked date, batch-specific lab numbers are attributed to their reports, and quoted marketing claims we debunk are quoted to be debunked — clearly, so the correction cannot be mistaken for the claim.
How we actually review vendors is documented on our methodology page.