Along with my other geeky pursuits, I’ve waddled along in this whole legalized cannabis industry thing. Mind you – you can take it or leave it, God sees my heart – all this time I’ve been blogging cannabis without so much as smoking a single puff of the stuff. I’ve tried a couple CBD vapes and experimented with kratom, that’s it.
Yes, I have partaken of the ganja plant in the past. Yes, I enjoy it, it is very nice. But weed to me is like ketchup; I don’t need ketchup every week to remember what it tastes like. My attitude towards drugs, like my attitudes towards everything else, is different from most and of course, pisses off both prohibitionists and righteous stoners alike.
Anyway, the cannabis news beat has been fraught with peril and wonder. I even mean the “peril” part literally; there is still an unsolved mass shooting at an Aguanga, Riverside County, California, cannabis farm which has yet to produce a lead. Seven people died and nobody cares because they were all undocumented pot farmers at a bootleg facility. The police just shrug.
I found out about corrupt cannabis testing labs and now I’m even sicker
I don’t mean to downplay the current COVID-19 pandemic. It is devastating. But it also kicked every other health story off the front page. The vaping-related lung illness epidemic WAS the top health news story right before COVID hit, and I’ve still been carrying on the crusade against black market cannabis products all this time. This is still ongoing: People are still dying from it, not a week goes by that we don’t hear somebody reporting symptoms from vaping a boof cartridge or watching their kid almost die.
The only line of defense in this industry is marijuana testing laboratories. Here’s a news story covering how labs are supposed to work:
Through all this, we keep repeating to people: “Don’t buy black market! Get your THC vape cartridges from a dispensary! They’re all lab-tested and certified safe!” We tell people this constantly. It’s our mantra.
So then I come to find out that THE CANNABIS TESTING LABS ARE PHONY TOO! I started out following up a couple stories about unethical labs getting busted, and ended up digging deeper. I found about ten separate cases (some with multiple violations) of “pay for play” labs passing tainted samples and reporting inflated THC numbers – in seven different states!
All of these were cases where either (a) the cannabis or derivative product tested dirty for pesticides, heavy metals, molds, and other contaminants, but the testing facility accepted a bribe to overlook it, or (b) the sample owner paid the lab to report a jacked-up THC percentage or otherwise fudge the numbers. We’re not just talking recreational; these were also medical dispensary samples. And the only way we know about it was because the respective state regulatory agencies stepped in and shut down the labs.
All of these were from the most recent six months or so. How many more don’t we know about? At this point, I’m about to conclude that we’re better off getting a baggie of weed from Hector the street corner vendor. We legalize and this is what happens?
I am so pissed about this I can barely see straight, because I know stories like this are never going to come to the public at this rate. This is the fallout from pandemics nobody considers: It blots out all other health news and resources. We could have Kira with a Death Note running around out there right now and we’d never notice.
I also covered cannabis cartridge discolorations and what they can mean
Whether you’re getting the cartridges from Hector the corner plug, or buying vape carts from a dispensary like a good person, you also have to watch out for cartridges that turn funky colors or exhibit other weird behavior. It turns out that cannabis oil has a shelf life, about a year. And leaving a cartridge in someplace like the dashboard of a hot car in the summer will cause these organic compounds to break down. So I instruct people in safe cartridge handling: Keep ’em cool, out of direct sunlight, and generally treat them like you would coffee.
While we’re talking about vape cartridge health, I wade into the debate over Vegetable Glycerin and Propylene Glycol
This is a subject that comes up a lot regarding marijuana distillate and extract vapes. These two mediums are standards to use in e-Cigarette vapes already, but they’re not always necessary when it comes to cannabis vapes. But what are Vegetable Glycerin and Propylene Glycol exactly doing to us? It’s hard to say at this point. They’re both used extensively in the food industry as well as many other uses, but we haven’t been vaping long enough to point to conclusive studies about long-term effects. Good luck!
Advice for weed newbies
Finally I got around to documenting some basic information for beginner-level marijuana enthusiasts in newly legalized states. Here I break down all the common weights and measures for marijuana, along with tips on determining things like the potency of a pre-roll or how much THC in an edible will get you the goodies.
And here I cover all the different varieties of dabbable marijuana extracts. There was a time when we just had things like “hash oil” or “wax” for dabbing, but modern extraction methods have introduced us to a menagerie of substances offered at dispensaries with names like “diamonds,” “sugar,” and “budder.” So that’s a whole who’s who and what’s what of dabbing concentrate consistencies.
Oh yeah, in my ever-expanding glossary section I also added “decriminalization” to the list of cannabis legalization terms that are good to know. Because that’s not quite the same thing as weed legalization, but simply means “the cops are tired of busting people for one stinking joint.” Or in the case of Oregon, which has decriminalized ALL DRUGS, the cops are going to hide in the basement under donut shops and see what the hell goes down there.
We live in some damn interesting times…
I never knew that I’d be staking a third of my career about being the pot-blogging drug expert. But OK, I’ll be happy to claim the Dr. feelgood niche. I idolize Hunter S. Thompson, so I might as well work the beat he would have killed to get, had he been alive to see it.
