I’ve mentioned before my current pet gig, writing within the burgeoning cannabis market. To my surprise, it became 1% writing about how much fun it is to smoke pot and 99% screaming and swearing at the black market. Remember two decades ago when I started to blog about the joys of Linux and ended up fighting street gang wars against tech industry thugs? Kind of like that.

The “thug” part is coming literal now. Recently we have started to run across black market vape brands that fake their lab results.

Wait, Explain This THC Vape Crisis:

For those of you out of this loop, let me start at the beginning:

• Some American states legalize recreational cannabis
• Extracting THC from cannabis and vaporizing the juice from a cartridge becomes the most popular way to consume it
• Black market brands of these vape cartridges proliferate
• Along comes a major health crisis with people dying of lung injury and other sickness after vaping
• We learn that contaminated, tainted, and cut black market vape cartridges are the culprit
• States crack down on cannabis products, requiring extensive laboratory testing for safety
• Black market companies turn to faking these lab results, while still selling deadly toxic cartridges

There is a miniature Cold War going on between fake cartridge brands (most of them still imported empty from China) and regulatory agencies, testing laboratories, us media hacks, and most users.

Our troubles begin when users insist on doing business with the black market. Every one of these will claim, “Well maybe your cart’s dirty but my California plug is my homie, he’d never steer me wrong!”

YES, your homie is steering you wrong!

After the news of the health crisis broke way back last fall, after all the media hype, you’d think if street vendors are going to home-brew their own THC carts in their garage, they would know to steer clear of harmful ingredients by now. Instead in December of 2019, a little over a month ago, police in L.A. raided illicit vape shops and confiscated a stock of the same fake brands we’ve been seeing since day one.

Laboratories tested the confiscated cartridges and discovered 75% of the cartridges tested dirty for various contaminants which have been implicated in lung injury deaths. You’ll hear “vitamin E acetate” a lot in these stories.

In the same month, San Diego cannabis testing lab Infinite Chemical offered an innovative buy-back program to obtain contraband THC vape cartridges from the streets. They did this to test the carts as a case study. The results are horrifying:

• 79% were deemed unfit for consumption
• 50% tested at less than 50% THC, despite percentages claimed on the packaging
• Almost all of the samples tested had trace levels of Vitamin E Acetate
• 5 cartridges contained levels exceeding 20% vitamin E acetate
• One sample contained 87 times the legal limit of lead

All this is the tip of the proverbial iceberg! As huge as the legal cannabis market is, the illegal trade is bigger. And we bloggers over at Dab Connection are starting to get some blowback from them.

So it’s occurring to me that we’re dealing with modern cartels. Ironically, they would never have been in my jurisdiction had cannabis not been legalized.

Make up your mind! Do you want legal or illegal weed?

I could have sworn that the entire POINT of legalizing weed was to say we would rather see it taxed, regulated, and safe? To make it available for people with medical conditions for whom THC, CBD, and various terpenes are a much-needed cure? Don’t I remember the stoner community assuring us all for decades that if we legalized weed, there would be no problems with public health or safety?

Well, congratulations, stoners! Weed is now more unsafe and more of a legal headache than it ever was before it was being legalized.