The five-question rule
Every record page must let a reader answer these within a few seconds:
- What is this record about?
- What is its current status?
- Where did the information come from?
- When was it last checked or updated?
- What is unknown, missing, disputed, or outside The Green List's scope?
A page that cannot answer all five is not finished. Empty fields are shown as “not disclosed”, “not available”, or “cannot verify” — never hidden.
Status vocabulary
The same words, colours, and definitions are used on every record. Colour supports the label; it never replaces it.
| Official source confirmed | A government or regulator source directly supports the stated fact. |
|---|---|
| Primary document verified | A source document was reviewed and linked to the listed record. |
| Business-reported | The business submitted the information; it is not independently confirmed. |
| Partially documented | Some relevant evidence exists, but meaningful documentation is missing. |
| Requires update | The record or its source is older than the platform’s freshness threshold. |
| Under review | The information is being assessed; no public conclusion is implied. |
| Official alert active | A source-linked regulator alert, recall, hold, or warning applies. |
| Not publicly available | The information may exist but could not be located in reviewed public sources. |
| Cannot verify | The platform cannot substantiate the claim using available evidence. |
The platform never uses “approved”, “safe”, “clean”, “certified”, “best”, or “trusted”, and never shows a green mark without a scope statement saying exactly what was checked.
Verification without endorsement
A verification label describes a specific check against a specific source on a specific date — for example, “official licence record located and matched to the listed legal entity”. It is not a judgement of product quality, safety, or business conduct, and it is not a recommendation to purchase.
Report review
Reports move through a fixed set of states, visible to the person who filed them. The list below is rendered from the same definition the reports pages use, so the words here are the words on the record.
| Received | The report exists in the private intake. (submitted) |
|---|---|
| Needs information | Reviewers have asked for documentation or clarification. (needs_more_info) |
| Under review | The report is being assessed against available evidence. (under_review) |
| Published finding | A source-backed finding has been published. Only this state and “Corrected” produce public content. (published) |
| Corrected | A published finding was amended; the change is logged. (corrected) |
| Closed | Review is complete and no further action will be taken. (resolved) |
| Closed | The report could not be substantiated or falls outside scope. (rejected) |
Two stored states — resolved and rejected — both publish as “Closed”. The distinction is kept in the private record and the reporter's notification, not in the public label.
Incoming reports are private by default. An allegation is never published as a finding. When a finding concerns an identifiable business, that business is offered a right of reply before or at publication.
Jurisdiction
Cannabis rules are set state by state. Every record states the jurisdiction whose rules apply, and testing information distinguishes between “state requires this test”, “state does not require this test”, “tested voluntarily”, and “information unavailable”. Results tested under different methods or thresholds are not presented as comparable.
Freshness
Records carry the date they were last checked against their source. Licence status, in particular, is only as current as that date. Records older than the freshness threshold are labelled “requires update”.
Human review
Automated tools may suggest labels, surface inconsistencies, or flag content for attention. They do not publish findings, change verification status, remove records, or suspend accounts. Those actions require a named human reviewer and are written to an audit log.
What this methodology does not establish
The Green List has not independently evaluated the safety of any product. It does not hold laboratory accreditation. It cannot confirm that a certificate of analysis represents an entire batch rather than the submitted sample. These limits are stated on every record they affect.
To dispute anything published under this methodology, see Corrections.