The Cannabis Industry needs a wake up call, and the “vape crisis” might just be it.
With great power comes great responsibility. These simple words never cease to astound me with their relevance and ubiquity to so many aspects of life.
Recently, the cannabis industry has suffered major turbulence as a result of medical emergencies and even deaths attributed to consumption of vaporized “cannabis”. Without an easily identified lone gunman cause of these medical dysfunctions, The popular media has publicly espoused the detriments and dangers associated with vaporized cannabis consumption. Being pointed at scary and ill-defined “x-factors”, the public is left without qualified direction or education about a product that is utilized on a daily basis by millions of people.
My intent in writing this blurb at this time is not to elucidate the particular harmful ingredients, for that list would be numerous and diverse (some unscrupulous manufacturers would sell you epoxy in a cartridge if they could). My intent, rather, is to shed some light onto a concept that desperately needs repeating. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility.
The Great Power, in this context, is the extremely diverse, ultra-convenient, and decently priced access to cannabis and its constituents in an easy-to-consume fashion. But what needs desperately to be realized with our desire for consumption, is that these products can easily be contaminated with outright dangerous ingredients and bootlegged consumption hardware. Anyone with a credit card can buy knock off name brand vape cartridge packaging by the thousands, mix up any number of “hopefully cannabinoids and essential oil molecules” with “hopefully safe viscosity aid,” and throw it into a “hopefully well-made vape cartridge”.
The vaporizer is, in its true form, an incredibly misunderstood medical device, responsible for safely administering compounds using very elevated temperatures, over and over again, without burning the product of itself. That’s not as simple as pushing a dose of powder out of an aerosol inhaler, or the steady fog of a nebulizer. Yet its regarded by many of its consumers to be a disposable afterthought.
Frankly, the majority of vape cartridges in the legal/boutique markets are made with mostly adequate hardware. It’s the random packages of easily recognizable and often bootlegged Dank, Fruit Loops, and SUPREME, or California brand Cookies or Brass Knuckles. If this is what you have access too, than more than likely you’re not getting the heathiest product. At this point, you’d be lucky to have weak, diluted product. The unluckiest of consumers will be subject to irritating viscosity agents, burning hardware, and even synthetic potentially neurotoxic cannabinoids, bought from Chinese factories just miles from where the vaporizers were made.
But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Our great responsibility is to ensure that the methods of consumption we use are not hurting us at the same time. As I’ve found reflects in most things in life, you get what you pay for. By picking from the low hanging fruit, you’re gambling with the rotten. If you’re buying premium vape pens from a trusted source who should happily provide proof of analysis, then you’re probably good. If you’re buying a 10$ unit on the street, beware. Cannabis is not that difficult to grow in a closet, and it can easily be mixed with food oils or alcohols to create discrete consumables. We certainly don’t need to jeopardize our health chasing it.
