Safety Vape Cartridge Issues and Safety

[Baron23]

California Company Develops Metal-Free Vape Cartridge

We spoke to the President of Global Meds Outlet for more details.
View attachment 13801


A California company is announcing this week that it has developed a new vape cartridge design that protects the cannabis oil inside from any contact with metal parts. The release of the new product comes as the cause for the rash of serious lung injuries associated with vaping continues to elude authorities.

The new cartridge, dubbed the MF-1000, is produced by Global Meds Outlet, a San Diego-based distributor of CBD products. Gino Ajodani, the president of the firm, tells High Timesthat the cartridge is constructed from high-heat PETG plastic that is proven to be free of arsenic, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Under California state regulations, cannabis products must be lab tested and meet standards for the presence of those four heavy metals before entering the retail market.

Ajodani says that the only metal part in the MF-1000 is its titanium heating coil. To prove that the metal-free cartridges actually contain no heavy metals, Global Meds Outlet took them to a cannabis testing lab to be analyzed. But no test procedure for testing hardware was in place, so Infinite Chemical Analysis Labs in San Diego developed one that used a concentrated nitric acid solution to break down the cartridge.

“They tested the nitric acid for heavy metals first,” Ajodani explains. “Then they dissolved the entire cartridge in the nitric acid, and then they tested the solution again.”

That analysis determined that the MF-1000 had no detectable levels arsenic, cadmium, lead, or mercury. To further validate the results, Ajodani says tests of filled cartridges revealed that cannabis oil was free of heavy metals after seven and 14 days in the cart. Global Meds Outlet plans to continue the testing for cartridges that have been filled for up to 120 days.

MF-1000 Vape Cartridges/ Courtesy of Global Meds OutletLead Found in Cannabis Vape Cartridges
As reported by High Times in January, as the heavy metals testing standards were going into effect it was determined that many vape cartridges on the market were constructed with parts that contain heavy metals. When the cartridges were filled, the metals could leach into the oil through chemical action caused by acidic terpenes.

“And then you end up inhaling either chromium or lead or arsenic,” explains Ajodani.

But instead of ensuring that the cartridges they used were free of heavy metals, Ajodani claims that many cannabis manufacturers began gaming the lab tests, which have no standardized protocols in place. He says that by submitting cartridges to a testing lab on the day they are filled and requesting results in one day, manufacturers are avoiding any chance of heavy metals leaching into the cannabis oil before analysis.

But products often end up in customer’s hands long after that. Ajodani says that label information from a recent purchase of five different vape cartridges at a San Diego dispensary revealed that the products had been manufactured at least six months and up to 10 months previously, plenty of time for leaching to occur.

The MF-1000 carts are now available to manufacturers, with orders being filled within 10 days, according to Ajodani. The cartridges will only be sold in child-resistant packaging that includes several measures to prevent counterfeiting, including a holographic label and stamped serial number that can be verified by consumers online.

With cannabis vaping products under scrutiny for their safety and subject to bans in some jurisdictions, Ajodani says it’s time for the industry to ensure consumers don’t lose what many consider the most convenient way to enjoy cannabis.

“Let’s get the cartridges right,” he says. “Let’s get the tests done correctly.”

If they really want to test carts for metal leaching, they need to test the contents after it’s been heated and used and not just sitting cold for some number of days.

 

[Baron23]

"U.S. health officials on Thursday...(sic)....announced plans to start testing aerosols produced by e-cigarettes and vaping products as they search for the source of the nationwide outbreak that has so far killed at least 33 people in 24 states."

"The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also said it plans to start testing lung tissue and fluids collected from people who became sick in the outbreak."

Now, is it just me or do the two statements above provoke the thought of "WHAT THE FUCK HAVE THEY BEEN DOING SO FAR, THEN!!!" FFS


U.S. ramps up testing in search of vaping illness cause as cases near 1,500

U.S. health officials on Thursday reported another 180 cases of vaping-related lung illnesses and announced plans to start testing aerosols produced by e-cigarettes and vaping products as they search for the source of the nationwide outbreak that has so far killed at least 33 people in 24 states.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also said it plans to start testing lung tissue and fluids collected from people who became sick in the outbreak. The CDC said the new testing may lend insight into chemical exposures contributing to the outbreak.

The CDC now reports 1,479 confirmed and probable U.S. cases of the mysterious respiratory illness tied to vaping, up from 1,299 a week ago, an indication that the public health crisis has shown no sign of slowing.

Last week, the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that while many patients became ill after vaping products containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, some had only used nicotine vape products. They said more than one root cause may be behind the outbreak.

Investigators primarily have been testing the liquids in vape products. Testing the aerosol produced after the liquids are heated might show whether that causes a chemical reaction that produces a toxic substance.

“They might be able to see components that we don’t see in the raw materials,” said an official in the New York Health Department’s Wadsworth laboratory, which has been testing product samples for the state.

A preliminary report seen by Reuters of vaping product samples collected from Wisconsin patients and tested by the FDA showed that more than half contained THC.Of the THC-containing products, two-thirds also tested positive for Vitamin E acetate, a cutting agent believed to be used to stretch the amount of THC oil, and an early suspect in efforts to determine the cause of the injuries.

The results from Wisconsin match up with earlier reports from state and federal officials. FDA officials last week said it found Vitamin E acetate in 47% of the first 225 THC products it had analyzed.

Among the results, 14 products contained THC, nine of which also tested positive for Vitamin E acetate, while another seven contained nicotine.

New York health officials have now tested nearly 200 products.

“We’ve got nicotine pens; we’ve got THC-containing pens; we’ve got Vitamin E acetate associated with a lot of the THC pens, but we are not in a position to say what’s the cause of this dreadful illness,” the official with New York’s testing lab said.

Many of the products have no labels. Health officials in New York and Utah said they suspect many THC products that do carry labels - such as those under the Dank Vapes brand - are counterfeit.

In Utah, state epidemiologist Dr. Angela Dunn said the outbreak hit a peak in July and has not let up.

More than 90% of patients reported having vaped THC, and only a handful of cases denied using THC, Dunn said.

The state has tested 20 nicotine vape products and found nothing unexpected. Of 19 THC-containing products, 89% showed evidence of Vitamin E acetate.

None of the state officials said conclusively that the cutting agent was the cause of the injuries, but it remains a suspect.

Dunn said THC is the common denominator in most of Utah’s cases, and until an exact cause is found, the state is focusing on getting people to stop vaping THC.

“It’s the only thing we have,” she s

 

[Baron23]

And it just get more awful. WTF can you trust these days.


Vaping trailblazer reportedly sold dangerous synthetic marijuana

Some of the people rushing to emergency rooms thought the CBD vape they inhaled would help like a gentle medicine. Others puffed it for fun.
What the vapors delivered instead was a jolt of synthetic marijuana, and with it an intense high of hallucinations and even seizures.
More than 50 people around Salt Lake City had been poisoned by the time the outbreak ended early last year, most by a vape called Yolo! — the acronym for “you only live once.”

In recent months, hundreds of vape users have developed mysterious lung illnesses, and more than 30 have died. Yolo was different. Users knew immediately something was wrong.

Who was responsible for Yolo? Public health officials and criminal investigators couldn’t figure that out. Just as it seemed to appear from nowhere, Yolo faded away with little trace.

As part of an investigation into the illegal spiking of CBD vapes that are not supposed to have any psychoactive effect at all, The Associated Press sought to understand the story behind Yolo.

The trail led to a Southern California beach town and an entrepreneur whose vaping habit prompted a career change that took her from Hollywood parties to federal court in Manhattan.

When Janell Thompson moved from Utah to the San Diego area in 2010, the roommate she found online also vaped. Thompson had a background in financial services and the two decided to turn their shared interest into a business, founding an e-cigarette company called Hookahzz.

There were early successes. Thompson and her partner handed out Hookahzz products at an Emmy Awards pre-party, and their CBD vapes were included in Oscar nominee gift bags in 2014. In a video shot at a trade show, an industry insider described the two women as “the divas of CBD.”

Indeed, Hookahzz was among the first companies to sell vapes that delivered CBD, as the cannabis extract cannabidiol is known. Now a popular ingredient in products from skin creams to gummy bears, cannabidiol was at that time little known and illegal in some states.

The partners started other brands that offered CBD capsules and edibles, as well as products for pets. Part of Thompson’s pitch was that CBD helped treat her dog’s tumors.

By autumn 2017, Thompson and her partner formed another company, Mathco Health Corporation. Within a few months, Yolo spiked with synthetic marijuana — commonly known as K2 or spice — began appearing on store shelves around Salt Lake City.

Yolo and Synthetic Cannabis
Synthetic marijuana is manmade and can be manufactured for a fraction of the price of CBD, which is typically extracted from industrial hemp that must be farmed.
Samples tested at Utah labs showed Yolo contained a synthetic marijuana blamed for at least 11 deaths in Europe — and no CBD at all.

Authorities believed that some people sought out Yolo because they wanted to get high, while others unwittingly ingested a dangerous drug. What authorities didn’t understand was its source.

Investigators with Utah’s State Bureau of Investigation visited vape stores that sold Yolo, but nobody would talk. The packaging provided no contact information.
By May 2018, the case was cold. But it was not dead.

That summer, a former Mathco bookkeeper who was preparing to file a workplace retaliation complaint began collecting evidence of what she viewed as bad business practices.

During her research, Tatianna Gustafson saw online pictures showing that Yolo was the main culprit in the Utah poisonings, according to the complaint she filed against Mathco with California’s Department of Industrial Relations.

Gustafson wrote that while at Mathco she was concerned about how Yolo was produced, that it was excluded from Mathco’s promotional material and that the “labels had no ingredients or contact listing.”

Justin Davis, another former Mathco employee, told AP that “the profit margins were larger” for Yolo than other products.

Gustafson’s complaint asserted that Mathco or JK Wholesale, another of the companies that Thompson and her partner incorporated, mixed and distributed Yolo. Financial records in the complaint show Thompson’s initials as the main salesperson for Yolo transactions, including with a company in Utah. The records also show Yolo was sold in at least six other states, including to an address in South Carolina where a college student said he vaped a cartridge that sent him into a coma.

The former bookkeeper also tipped the Utah Poison Control Center about who she believed was behind Yolo, according to her complaint.

Barbara Crouch, the poison center’s executive director, recalled getting a tip in late 2018 and passing it along to the State Bureau of Investigation. SBI agent Christopher Elsholz talked to the tipster, who told him she believed the company she had worked for distributed Yolo. Elsholz said the company was in California and therefore out of his jurisdiction, so he passed the tip to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

The DEA offered to help but took no law enforcement action, spokeswoman Mary Brandenberger said. Spiked CBD is a low priority for an agency dealing with bigger problems such as the opioid epidemic, which has killed tens of thousands of people.

In the end, it wasn’t the synthetic marijuana compound in Yolo from Utah that caught up with Thompson. It was another kind of synthetic added to different brands.
By the time of the Utah poisonings, vapes labeled as Black Magic and Black Diamond had sickened more than 40 people in North Carolina, including high school students and military service members. Investigators were able to connect Thompson to that outbreak in part based on a guilty plea from the distributor of the spiked vapes, who said a woman that authorities identified as Thompson supplied the liquid that went into them.

Prosecutors also linked her to dealers charged in New York, where she pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to distribute synthetic marijuana and a money laundering charge. The only brand federal prosecutors cited was Yolo.

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman called Thompson a “drug trafficker” who used JK Wholesale to distribute “massive quantities” of synthetic marijuana as far back as 2014. She faces up to 40 years in prison.

Reached by phone the week before she pleaded guilty, Thompson declined to discuss Yolo and then hung up. In a subsequent text message, Thompson said not to call her and referred questions to her lawyer, who did not respond to requests for comment.

While Yolo was Thompson’s project and she was the exclusive salesperson, her business partner and former roommate was involved in its production, according to the workplace retaliation complaint.

Thompson’s business partner and former roommate, Katarina Maloney, distanced herself from Thompson and Yolo during an August interview at Mathco’s headquarters in Carlsbad, California. Maloney has not been charged in the federal investigation.

“To tell you the truth, that was my business partner,” Maloney said of Yolo. She said Thompson was no longer her partner and she didn’t want to discuss it.
In a follow-up email, Maloney asserted the Yolo in Utah “was not purchased from us,” without elaborating.

“Mathco Health Corporation or any of its subsidiary companies do not engage in the manufacture or sale of illegal products,” she wrote. “When products leave our facility, they are 100% compliant with all laws.”

Maloney also said all products are lab tested. She did not respond to requests for Yolo lab results.

 

[Baron23]

This is what you get from widely incomplete and inaccurate reporting and irresponsible, knee jerk, sound bites from politicians....people lose their jobs.



Cannabis vaporizer company Pax Labs cuts 25% of workers after missing revenue projections

California-based Pax Labs, one of the leading vape pen companies in the cannabis industry, disclosed Monday it laid off 65 workers, or 25% of its workforce, after missing its revenue projections.

The layoffs come amid a health crisis that has shaken the vaporizing industry.

The San Francisco company – which originally had ties to the Juul e-cigarette before that product was spun off as a separate company – declined to directly link the vaping health crisis to the layoffs, saying only that its sales had fallen short of expectations.

In an emailed statement to Marijuana Business Daily, Pax spokeswoman Dianne Gleason said: “In light of evolving business priorities, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with 65 members of our team, or 25% of the organization, effective (Monday).”

In a letter to all employees dated Oct. 8, interim CEO Lisa “LD” Sergi wrote that “in light of our recent revenue miss and commitment to financial responsibility we’re in the process of working through the requisite budget adjustments.”

Pax is the second high-profile California cannabis company to announce layoffs this month.

Last week, California marijuana advertising giant Weedmaps announced it laid off 25% of its workforce, blaming the slow rollout of recreational MJ markets in California and Massachusetts and a dwindling pool of outside funding.

The Pax layoffs come on the heels of a $420 million raise in April, the largest amount ever raised by a U.S.-based marijuana company.

On its website, Pax notes the company ” is backed by leading technology investors including Fidelity Investments, Tiger Global and Tao Invest.” The latter has ties to the wealthy Pritzker family.

In September, Pax ousted CEO Bharat Vasan. This was also at the time that the vaping health crisis was grabbing national attention.

In 2017, Pax Labs was spun out of Juul Labs to form its own separate company.

According to Pax: “The transaction was done to allow Juul to focus on the e-cigarette nicotine market and Pax to continue its focus on vaporization technologies for cannabis and other plant-based materials. The companies operate completely independently under separate management teams focused on their unique markets.”

Gleason, the spokeswoman, noted in an email: “We never were part of the Juul device.”

In her email to employees, Sergi wrote that, because of the revenue miss, “a painful but necessary part of this will be a reduction in force.”

She went on to say the layoffs would help the company to grow in a “more measured, strategic way.”

According to an employee who was laid off and requested anonymity, the layoffs came across all departments.

In April, after the raise, former CEO Vasan told MJBizDaily that Pax would look at opportunities in Europe and Asia as well as Canada.

 

[Baron23]

Update from NCIA’s safe vaping task force


In response to the vaping crisis, NCIA’s Policy Council has formed a Safe Vaping Task Force. The purpose of the task force is to unify the industry by communicating clearly in response to press reports and state/federal governmental actions, and clearly articulating the state-legal cannabis industry’s obligation to act with integrity as responsible actors. The task force will be publishing summaries of recent developments and the cannabis industry’s response, producing and publishing a white paper on safe vaping, unifying the industry’s response, and engaging federal and state/local governments as appropriate. Members of the task force include medical doctors, scientists, cannabis license holders, and relevant ancillary businesses.
Here’s the latest about safe vaping from the news this week:

• The New York Times reported on October 21, 2019 that while the government and researchers have expended significant resources into studying nicotine delivery devices, federal law has not allowed research into the health effects of cannabis because it is classified as a controlled substance with a high potential for abuse. Therefore, we don’t have much scientific knowledge about what THC vaping does to the lungs. The Times report added that even in states where cannabis is legal, counterfeit vape cartridges (vape carts) are cheaper than the regulated, licensed, tested and taxed products.
• The Boston Globe reported on October 21, 2019 that a state court judge ruled that the four month ban on nicotine vapes by Governor Charlie Baker was unconstitutional because it did not allow for input from affected businesses and the public. The Court ruled that nicotine vape sales must resume on Monday unless the Baker Administration submits the nicotine ban for consideration as a formal emergency regulation before then. The decision did not impact THC vapes.

• The Senate International Narcotics Control Caucus will convene this week Wednesday, October 23 to discuss marijuana and public health, featuring panels that include witnesses from federal agencies and academia. The Caucus is co-chaired by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Senator Cornyn is an outspoken opponent of cannabis legalization, stating recently that he wants to hold this hearing in advance of any vote on SAFE Banking. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who has been an outspoken critic of marijuana reform, is scheduled to testify. Also testifying will be Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Volkow has opined that the Schedule I status of marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act is inhibiting research. This is consistent with NCIA’s position, which is that we need to de-schedule, regulate, and test.
• CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat emphasized last week that the majority of vaping-related injuries associated with THC-containing cartridges are being traced back to the illicit market, rather than state-legal cannabis shops.
• Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said last week that cannabis should be de-scheduled and that the federal government should regulate marijuana.
• California lawmakers are considering an outright ban of all vape products, including nicotine and THC. This potential action comes on the heels of Charlie Baker, Governor of Massachusetts, banning all vaping products for four months.
• Anti-marijuana legalization group Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) hired three new lobbyists to help fight SAFE banking and other cannabis legislation on Capitol Hill and sent a letter this week from the organization’s science advisory board to congressional leadership urging them not to support cannabis legislation.
• As of October 15, 2019, 1,479 lung injury cases associated with the use of vaping products have been reported to CDC from 49 states (all except Alaska), the District of Columbia, and 1 U.S. territory. Thirty-three deaths have been confirmed in 24 states. The CDC is updating this information every Thursday.

 

[Baron23]

I'm putting this here rather than in the MA state thread because I think it highlights the utter lack of understanding of al that falls under the totally ill defined term "vaping", such lack of definition and understanding apparently being no obstacle to our idiot political class taking dramatic and ill advised action.

I mean, exactly WTF does this actually apply to?

"Baker...(sic).... last month announced a statewide ban on the sale of marijuana and tobacco vaping products"​

Massachusetts keeps ban on marijuana vape products but allows use of crushed flower

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker on Friday maintained the statewide retail ban on the sale of all vaping products after securing approval from the Public Health Council for an emergency regulation, but at the same time, a local judge allowed medical cannabis patients to purchase crushed flower for use in vaporizers.

The emergency regulation, to be filed Monday, keeps the vape ban in place while also creating a three-month timeline for rulemaking and setting up public hearings.

Baker, a Republican, last month announced a statewide ban on the sale of marijuana and tobacco vaping products in response to lung illnesses and deaths attributed to the use of e-cigarette products.

The move made Massachusetts the first state to ban the sale of all products of that type, a major financial setback to the state’s marijuana retailers, processors and vaporizer manufacturers.

Meanwhile, the judge in a case challenging Baker’s temporary ban ordered the resumption of the sale of crushed marijuana flower for vaping after hearing testimony from medical marijuana patients and advocates.


Suffolk Superior Court Judge Douglas Wilkins wrote in an order issued Thursday that making ground cannabis flower available to patients would reduce exposure to oils and additives from vape products.


The order allows MMJ patients to legally purchase “crushed flower.”


For more on the governor’s actions, click here.

 

[CarolKing]

Above article ^ Crushed flowers? That was a weird statement. The cartridge safety and cannabis flowers have nothing to do with each other. Sounds like they don’t know what they are talking about.

Anxious for the investigation to find out what’s going on. We’ve been vaporizing flowers a long time.

 

[Baron23]

Well, maybe if they publicaly hang one of these people selling this poison, purely as a warning to others (LOL), perhaps they will cease and desist



Tainted vape pens selling 2-for-1 in illegal California stores

Leafly catches unlicensed Los Angeles shops selling THC vape carts with 5,475 times the allowable level of pesticide, amid 110 sick and three dead statewide.

Tests run on cannabis vaporizer cartridges recently obtained by Leafly at illegal California stores show shocking levels of pesticide contamination and toxic vitamin E oil.

By law, those shops shouldn’t even exist, let alone sell tainted THC vape oil to an unsuspecting public. Under Proposition 64, which took effect Jan. 1, 2018, all medical and adult-use cannabis retailers must have a state-issued license.

A Dank Vapes Sour Apple cartridge tested at 5,475 times the legal limit for chlorfenapyr, a mosquito pesticide.
Leafly, via Anresco Labs

Despite those regulations, thousands of unlicensed cannabis shops still operate throughout the state. Because they’re not following the rules, the products they sell are not subject to stringent potency and purity testing requirements.

Illicit vendors remain especially abundant in Los Angeles. More than 22 months into legalization, officials have shut down only a small portion of LA’s many unlawful cannabis shops.

Meanwhile, an unprecedented, national mass poisoning event has sickened nearly 1,400 and killed at least 33 from vaping-associated pulmonary injury (VAPI). And evidence amassed by the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other sources have identified street THC carts as the key vector in the nationwide VAPI outbreak. So Leafly went shopping in the street markets for so-called ‘fart carts’.

In Los Angeles, we found no shortage of untested and potentially counterfeit cannabis vape supplies for sale in unlicensed cannabis stores operating openly. We obtained 10 disposable cartridges and had their contents tested by a licensed lab.

Result: Some oils had pesticide levels more than 5,000 times the legal limit. Others contained nearly 35 percent tocopheryl-acetate, the vitamin E oil additive that, when heated and inhaled, prevents lungs from absorbing oxygen. Tocopheryl-acetate is one of the leading suspects in the national VAPI crisis.

One unlicensed cannabis store in Los Angeles priced potentially toxic Dank Vapes vape cartridges (“Danks”) two-for-one. Some of the displayed products look like legal brands, but they’re suspected counterfeits. It’s not legal for state-licensed brands to wholesale to unlicensed stores. (Photo by Marissa Wenzke for Leafly)

California’s illicit vape pen problem

At last count, 110 of the nation’s sickened VAPI patients reside in California. Three have died. Leafly has confirmed that the first brand associated with a California patient who died from VAPI is called “West Coast Cure.” The brand is still widely available in-state from unlicensed delivery services.

California remains the #1 domestic source for cannabis in the US. Since the 1980s, the Golden State has led the nation in production and export of raw cannabis. Nowadays, police say the west coast continues to also lead the nation as a source state for illicit vape pen components: THC oil, electronics hardware, and chemical additives.

Recent Leafly investigations found a number of wholesale merchants selling counterfeit vape cartridge packaging and toxic additives in the downtown Los Angeles wholesale district. Officials suspect that at least one licensed vape cartridge producer, Kushy Punch, sold untested products into the street market.

Earlier this year the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 97, which added a new $30,000-per-day fine that state regulators could impose against the landlords of unauthorized cannabis stores. Despite the ever-increasing number of illicit vape pen injuries, officials have so far not used that $30,000-a-day tool to shut down any unlicensed cannabis business.

Related
Vape pen lung injury: Here’s what you need to know
Licensed dispensaries outnumbered by illegal establishments

It’s not hard to find a bootleg cannabis store in LA—mainly because it’s difficult to find a legitimate one.

City officials have so far licensed just 189 outlets for a city of four million people. By comparison, the city of Portland, Oregon, which has only 15% of the population of Los Angeles, has licensed more than 150 adult-use dispensaries.

In LA, we visited places calling themselves medical dispensaries, like “Dankalicious 15 Cap” at 5021 San Vicente Blvd and “Melrose Place 25 Cap” at 5635 Melrose Ave. There we found two-for-one deals on Dank Vapes, the notorious street brand linked to dozens of VAPI victims nationwide.


Half the price of the real thing

Suspected counterfeit versions of licensed vape brands Cookies, STIIZY, and Brass Knuckles sold for $35-$40 for a full-gram cartridge, about half what the real, legal versions cost. (Bootleg vape cartridge factories often use counterfeit packaging that copies legitimate products and fools consumers.) The carts averaged $22 each. Other underground brand names like Exotic Carts and Cereal Carts sold for dirt-cheap prices, $15-$20 for a full gram of THC oil. By contrast, licensed, tested full grams of THC oil typically cost $40-$60.

Tocopheryl-acetate cuts of 35%

We had Anresco Laboratories, a licensed San Francisco-based lab, test the first five carts for the dangerous vape additive tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E oil), and test the remaining five units for a wide range of pesticides. We didn’t test all 10 products for every possible contaminant because each lab test requires a substantial amount of oil to sample. Due to the limited supplies of samples, Leafly and Anresco prioritized testing for the most harmful popular contaminants.

Related
Amid vape pen lung disease deaths: What exactly is vitamin E oil?

As expected, tocopheryl-acetate turned up in most samples of oil from the street. Commonly dubbed vitamin E oil, chemists and toxicologists tell Leafly that when smoked and inhaled, the otherwise benign food supplement and cosmetics ingredient blocks the lungs’ ability to absorb oxygen, triggering chemical pneumonitis, hypoxia, and, if untreated, death.

Tocopheryl-acetate use exploded in street-market vape cartridges in 2019. Without any state-mandated test results to verify a vape cartridge’s quality, consumers in the nation’s illicit markets often use oil thickness as a proxy for purity. (Fact check: It’s not.) Street vape cartridge makers capitalized on that false assumption by adding tocopheryl-acetate, which dilutes the THC oil without thinning its viscosity.

Anresco Labs found tocopheryl-acetate levels as high as 34.9% in an Exotic Carts variety called Mars OG, meaning that more than one-third of the entire cartridge consisted of a suspected lung toxin. The suspected counterfeit Brass Knuckles cartridge tested at 33% tocopheryl-acetate.

(Leafly illustration; data via Anresco Labs)
5,475 times over the legal limit for mosquito pesticide

Also troubling: All five illicit vape cartridges we tested exceeded California’s maximum allowable level of pesticide residue, which go straight into a users’ lungs when vaped and can also cause lung injury.

'It’s kind of scary how many pesticides we found in these samples.'
Josh Richard, Anresco Labs

A Dank Vapes Sour Apple cartridge tested at 5,475 times the legal limit for chlorfenapyr, a mosquito pesticide. The same cartridge had 547 times the allowable limit of bifenazate (a chemical used to kill mites), and 362 times the limit for myclobutanil, a fungicide that can transform into hydrogen cyanide when heated.

Neurotoxins and cancerous chemicals

Josh Richard, director of cannabis services at Anresco Labs, explained the potential harm.

“Myclobutinal and other pesticides have been known to be considered neurotoxins as they’re combusted,” he said. “When you combust the pesticide, it converts it to other cancerous chemicals.”

A Cereal Carts vape cartridge advertised as the flavor Blueberry Pancake Crunch tested 1,780 times over the state limit for myclobutanil.

“There were a lot more pesticides, both in the amount of pesticide we found, and the number of pesticides in each sample,” Richard said. “It’s kind of scary how many pesticides we found in these samples.”

The tests match a similar October assay performed by the lab Cannasafe, which found that legal, state-licensed vape cartridges tested clean, while street THC oil failed for both tocopheryl-acetate and pesticides.

(Leafly illustration; data via Anresco Labs)

The illicit market still thriving

Californians buy tainted illicit vape cartridges from friends and acquaintances, pop-up markets, bootleg delivery services, and scofflaw storefronts like the ones we visited. The state’s decades-old underground industry is three to five times bigger than the newly legal one, according to recent estimates.

Rumors continue to swirl in the industry about a number of old-school medical operators who continue to produce untested products for illegal shops.

Earlier this month Leafly broke the news that Kushy Punch, a licensed California cannabis brand, is under investigation by officials on suspicion of moving clean, tested vape carts out the front door while simultaneously shipping dirty oil and gummies out the back. Kushy Punch’s lawyer admitted to possession of an unpermitted warehouse and $21 million in unlicensed KushyVapes and gummies, but denied recently manufacturing or distributing the contraband.

Related
California vape maker Kushy Punch caught making illegal products
Tulare County victim used West Coast Cure

California’s VAPI victims first drew the attention of public health officials months ago in rural Kings County, where tested cannabis is banned. All victims in the state are thought to have used THC vape cartridges purchased from street markets or unlicensed storefronts, according to the California Department of Public Health.

One victim in California’s rural Tulare County died in mid-September. Adult-use cannabis stores are banned in Tulare County, which leaves many residents reliant on the unregulated, untested street market.

Using Facebook, Leafly contacted an associate of the Tulare County victim who confirmed the victim used a cartridge from a black-and-gold package branded “West Coast Cure” and labeled with the strain name “Lucky Charms.” Previous media reports had not identified the brand name. (Leafly is not publishing the source’s name, because they are not authorized by the victim’s family to speak to the media.) West Coast Cure did not return calls from Leafly.

Online promo image of West Coast Cure Lucky Charms, the THC vape cartridge brand associated with the death of one Tulare County VAPI patient.


West Coast Cure is a Sacramento-based medical marijuana-era brand in the process of trying to transition to the adult-use market. During that process, they seem to have made THC vape pens without a license and sold them to unlicensed delivery services which serve Tulare County. West Coast Cure advertised products for sale this past summer on Weedmaps, according to online caches of their site. West Coast Cure announced the discontinuation of street sales, according to text messages to unlicensed stores this year. “We will no longer be able to provide product to any collective. … we plan on working with you guys until we are sold out.”

West Coast Cure product listings have since disappeared from Weedmaps.

In 2019, West Coast Cure did obtain a distribution license, which allows them to legally transport cannabis from a farm or a lab to a store. But distributors are not allowed to perform chemical extractions or fill vaping devices, which requires a manufacturing license.

California crackdown slow in coming

Since late August, when the VAPI outbreak became widely known, multiple tests have found potentially life-threatening ingredients in California’s street supply of illicit THC vape cartridges. The location of bootleg retailers is available at the tap of a smartphone app. Even so, civil and criminal prosecutions have proven slow in coming.

Civil abatement programs have already eradicated acres of unpermitted cultivation in Humboldt and Sonoma County. Despite the ongoing public health crisis, state officials have not fined a single landlord $30,000 for renting to an illegal store.

It's easy to find illegal stores on some high-profile cannabis apps. Operating without a license calls for a fine of $30,000 per day. Yet the City of Los Angeles has yet to dock a single illegal store that $30,000.

“We have not issued fines yet,” said California Bureau of Cannabis Control spokesperson Alex Traverso.

In Los Angeles, Jerred Kiloh described a frustratingly “slow rollout” of civil fine enforcement by the state. Kiloh is the president of the United Cannabis Business Association, a leading legal cannabis retailer’s trade group.

“Right now, it seems like a calm or quiet time for enforcement,” said Kiloh. “They’re waiting to make sure all of the mechanisms are in place so that when they do collect a fine, there’s a clear pathway to prove there has been illegal behavior and to get a court to give them a judgment to recover these fines.”

City of LA: ‘We’re taking action’

We contacted members of the Los Angeles City Council who represent districts with a lot of illegal cannabis vendors. They referred us to an ad hoc enforcement task force announced in May.

A spokesperson for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti confirmed that a coalition of city agencies are working with the LA Police Department to root out bad actors in the cannabis space, and claim to have reduced the estimated number of illegal outlets by 44% in the past five months. “Unlicensed cannabis businesses operate outside of the safe, legal, and equitable rules that have been established to regulate the industry,” the Garcetti spokesperson told Leafly by email. “We’re taking action to protect Angelenos’ health and safety.”

City authorities have, in fact, taken some actions. In August, the task force cut power to 194 unpermitted marijuana retailers and promised to send threatening letters to their landlords. In response, some shops shut down but others reportedly brought in gasoline or diesel generators.

VAPI suspect ‘Dank Vapes’ is still listed

Meanwhile, the controversy over the listing of illegal vape cartridges and the stores that sell them continues.

A leading online cannabis advertising site for illicit THC vapes, Weedmaps, listed now-notorious street brand Dank Vapes for sale as of Oct. 22.
Health officials have made Dank Vapes the most notorious health hazard in the national street market. Yet it's still listed for sale.

Weedmaps officials have said the company will require all listings to include a state license number by the end of 2019. That policy allows illegal, unlicensed stores to remain listed for two more months.

Kiloh has seen those listings drop dramatically in recent weeks, “which shows that they’re trying to comply,” he said.

Earlier this week Weedmaps announced a layoff of one-quarter of the company’s staff. A Leafly source said the cuts trim costs in anticipation of a dramatic revenue downturn once unlicensed brand and store listings disappear from the site. Weedmaps officials dispute that characterization.

When reached by Leafly, a Weedmaps official responded to our question about the listing of West Coast Cure products earlier this year by saying anyone can list a store stocked with whatever products they like, due to Weedmaps’ self-publishing business model. Similar to Twitter, Weedmaps now includes a blue check mark on “verified” listings.

Weedmaps CEO: ‘Deeply concerned’

In an email, Weedmaps CEO Chris Beals described his company as “a self-publishing platform where thousands of brands and retailers publish information on their brands. We are deeply concerned about the health issues surrounding vaping, and counterfeit products are a serious problem in the cannabis industry.”

“We identified this issue early, and in 2017 we launched our Weedmaps Brand & Verified Retailer program, which allows brands to verify stores and products to help consumers identify genuine products,” Beals wrote. “Stores can flag their individual products for verification approval by the applicable brand. This makes us a critically important tool for defending against counterfeit cannabis products.”

Many industry leaders remain furious that Weedmaps continues to facilitate street sales, long after the California Bureau of Cannabis Control sent the company a cease-and-desist letter in February 2018.

“We thought the transition period was a little longer than necessary for a technology company to remove 2,000 postings from their website,” Kiloh said. “They were told a year and a half ago that they should comply.”

“Maybe an extra three months wouldn’t kill anyone,” Kiloh added. “The problem is, it might.”

How to make sure your cannabis store is licensed

Nearly all tainted vape cartridges have originated outside of California’s licensed cannabis system. Consumers who want to make sure they’re purchasing from a legal store have a number of options.

Los Angeles residents can check to see if their favorite store is licensed on the city’s Department of Cannabis Regulation website, which contains both a map of authorized businesses and an alphabetical list. The city accepts reports about illegal shops—as well as complaints about legal ones—at a complaint portal on the web. Check licensees statewide at the Bureau of Cannabis Control.

At the state level, the BCC does carry out enforcement actions on activity they get complaints about. They acted earlier this month, for instance, after receiving a complaint about an alleged unlicensed factory making Kushy Punch vapes and gummies, a Fresno vape shop caught selling Dank Vapes, and two bootleg LA stores.

The state Bureau of Cannabis Control asks citizens to report unauthorized activity in an online form. Those citizen reports really matter.

“As we receive complaints, we follow up on them as expeditiously as we can,” Traverso explained. “In light of these vaping illnesses, if we receive tips that indicate illegal manufacturing of products, or retail locations selling illegal vape cartridges, those complaints become our priority as there is a major public health and safety concern.”

 

[Baron23]

"She said that the dip in cases might be due to the measures that authorities have taken to regulate the products. There has also been a wave of high profile arrests made of illegal vaporizing product manufacturers, and busts of brands found to be making dangerous vape products."​

Ah....you tink?


CDC Announces Vape-Related Illnesses Appear To Be Declining

Also, the mysterious health condition now has a name.


It appears that the mysterious vaping-related illness sweeping the United States has started to slow down. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the casualty rate for the as-yet-unexplained health condition is “leveling off or even declining.”
The most recent victim count — calculated last Tuesday — stands at 1,604 individuals who have shown signs of the condition. 125 cases were diagnosed over the last week, and 34 people have died from the illness.

“It’s serious and potentially fatal, but it is preventable,” said CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat to reporters. “There could be more than one cause.”
She said that the dip in cases might be due to the measures that authorities have taken to regulate the products. There has also been a wave of high profile arrests made of illegal vaporizing product manufacturers, and busts of brands found to be making dangerous vape products.

Schuchat also presented a hypothesis that e-cigarette use led teenagers to use “risky products” that cause the lung condition. Some authorities have blamed the spate of lung injuries on additives in vaping products, like the vitamin E acetate that is sometimes used as a thickening agent. The official also raised her concern over how winter-time flus and other respiratory illnesses could affect the people who have been stricken with the vape-related sickness.

Earlier this month, a Mayo Clinic surgical pathologist released a report based on findings from examining 17 victims. The investigation found that the lung condition showed similarities with chemical burns, as when individuals inhale mustard gas.

Vape-Related Illness Now Has a Name
Officials have started calling the lung condition EVALI, which stands for “e-cigarette or vaping product use associated lung injury.” Concern over the illness has led many states and city governments to put temporary bans on e-cigarette and vaping products. In Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker’s ban on all vapes has faced legal challenges, but was recently ruled as acceptable by a state judge.

In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has vowed to fight the state’s Supreme Court decision to block her ban of flavored e-cigs. The prohibition had been in effect for two weeks, after a month-long delay in implementation. Whitmer likened the urgency of the ban to the concern over her state’s water quality. “After seeing how the Flint water crisis was mishandled, it’s more important than ever that we listen to our public health officials when they make recommendations to protect our citizens,” she said.
Those are far from the only challenges to new vaping restrictions. In Utah, retailers sued the state’s Department of Health over creating the ban without public comment, claiming that the prohibition would severely harm their businesses.

Earlier this month, a group of governors from Northeastern states came together to discuss tactics for standardizing the regulation of vaping. One potential measure for the region was banning flavored e-cigarette products across the board, in hopes of slowing down the popularity of vaping among teenagers.

 

[momofthegoons]

Vitamin E Acetate Confirmed Culprit In Vaping Illnesses

The CDC has confirmed the cause of e-cigarette or vaping product use–associated lung injury (EVALI).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Friday that the additive vitamin E acetate is the likely cause of the nation’s rash of lung injuries caused by vaping. Dr. Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the CDC, told reporters that the additive, which received early attention as a potential cause of e-cigarette or vaping product use–associated lung injury (EVALI), was found in the lung tissue of patients by investigators.

“For the first time, we have detected a potential toxin of concern: vitamin E acetate,” Schuchat said. The CDC referred to the discovery as a “breakthrough.”

The investigators had tested fluid samples in a study of 29 EVALI patients from 10 states and had found vitamin E acetate in all 29 cases. No other oils, including plant oils or mineral oil, were found in the samples.

“These findings provide direct evidence of vitamin E acetate at the primary site of injury within the lung,” Schuchat added.


Vitamin E acetate is a synthetic form of the nutrient that is commonly used in nutritional supplements, foods, and personal care products. When taken orally or applied topically, it is generally considered safe. When inhaled, however, vitamin E acetate can coat the lungs, causing difficulty breathing and other serious health effects.

Unlicensed THC Products Under Scrutiny
In September, the New York Department of Health announced that it had discovered vitamin E acetate in nearly all of the cannabis vape cartridges associated with the vaping illnesses. On Friday, the Cannabis Trade Federation urged legal cannabis businesses to avoid the additive.

“While it still appears these health incidents are primarily associated with the use of illicit THC vape products, we urge members of the regulated cannabis industry to be vigilant and review all of their vaping products to ensure they are free of vitamin E acetate,” the statement reads.


The industry group also urged officials in states that have regulated cannabis for medical or recreational use to ensure that vitamin E acetate is clearly prohibited by state regulationsfrom being used in any cannabis products meant to be inhaled.

“This health crisis and the recent breakthrough in the investigation underscore the importance of existing state cannabis regulations, as well as the need for strict cannabis regulation at both the state and federal levels,” added the CTF.

Also on Friday, the CDC revealed in a separate report that the Illinois Department of Health had found that a majority of the EVALI patients in that state had said that they had used THC cartridges that had been purchased on the street or from friends rather than from licensed dispensaries.


Health officials also compared patient data with the responses of 4,000 individuals who said they vaped but had not become ill. Among them, 94% said that they had only vaped nicotine products.

Dr. Jennifer Layden, the chief medical officer for Illinois said that those who were sick were “roughly nine times more likely to obtain the THC-containing products from informal sources, such as a dealer, off the street or from a friend, compared to survey respondents.”

Patients treated for EVALI were also eight times more likely than healthy respondents to report using the THC cartridges sold under the counterfeit brand Dank Vapes.

Although the CDC says it has confirmed that vitamin E acetate is causing at least some cases of the mysterious lung illnesses, they can not rule out the possibility of other causes. As of Thursday, the federal agency says that there have been 2,051 cases of EVALI. Of those, 39 patients have died.

 

[felvapes]

Good to have a more definitive answer to the issue

 

[Baron23]

From ‘Veronica Mars’ to toxic vapes: The rise and fall of Honey Cut
By Marissa Wenzke, with David DownsNovember 8, 2019

More than 2,051 Americans are sick and 39 have died from vaping-associated pulmonary injury (VAPI) this year.

Honey Cut became a vape industry phenomenon. But nobody knew who founded or ran the company—until now.

There are many suspects, but the US Centers for Disease Control’s “very strong culprit of concern” is a new cutting agent found in illicit THC vaporizer cartridges across the nation. Tocopheryl-acetate, also known as vitamin E oil, surged in popularity on the street market ahead of the lung injury outbreak last summer.


Industrial chemical manufacturers have sold vitamin E oil for years, but only as an ingredient in hand lotions or gummy vitamins. So who turned tocopheryl-acetate into a wildly popular and potentially deadly vape cartridge additive?


Multiple industry experts point to a mysterious, low-profile Los Angeles company called Honey Cut. By creating a new category of “thickening” vape cartridge additives, Honey Cut became a nationwide phenomenon. Its formula—and copycat products just like it—suddenly turned up last year in illicit THC vape cartridges nationwide.


The company itself appeared to be a kind of corporate ghost ship. Its name was attached only to a website and a P.O. box. Nobody knew who founded Honey Cut, who ran it, or who profited from it.


Until now.

A bottle of Honey Cut obtained on Craigslist for testing by California-based SC Labs in Sept. 2019. The vape juice cutting agent consisted of 95% tocopheryl-acetate. Industrial chemical manufacturers warn against inhaling the substance. (Courtesy of SC Labs)
Honey Cut founder revealed

Leafly’s investigative team followed a trail of corporate filings and online business activity that points to one man, a former television actor and casting associate named Joshua Mathias Temple, as Honey Cut’s founder and CEO.

Josh Temple didn't find fame as a Hollywood actor, but as Honey Cut's inventor he achieved a kind of infamy in LA's cannabis culture.

Temple never found fame on stage or screen. During the mid-2000s, he nabbed a few bit parts in TV shows. He did a 48-second scene with Kristen Bell on season one of the UPN series Veronica Mars, and in later years mostly worked as a casting assistant. (Temple is not to be confused with another, better-known actor and TV host with the same name, Josh Temple of House Crashers fame.)


Josh Temple the actor/casting assistant didn’t hit it big in Hollywood, but as the inventor of Honey Cut, he achieved a kind of infamy within the cannabis culture of Los Angeles. He created one of the fastest-selling non-cannabis products the illicit drug market has ever seen. And he may have dealt a crippling blow to the entire vaping industry in the process.


Related
Vape pen lung injury: Here’s what you need to know

Temple, his lawyer, and Honey Cut company officers refused to comment to Leafly, or, to our knowledge, speak publicly anywhere about the company.


Exploiting lax federal enforcement and regulatory loopholes in California, Temple and his company used little more than a shipping address and a logo to divert drums of vitamin E acetate into millions of illicit THC vape cartridges nationwide.


When injuries mounted and signs pointed to the potentially toxic nature of inhaled tocopheryl-acetate, Temple shut down the Honey Cut website and deleted what appears to be his Instagram account. No explanation has ever been given to the public.


This is the story of the rise and fall of Honey Cut.

A newcomer arrives in Hollywood

Like many young aspiring actors, Josh Temple came to Los Angeles to build a career in movies and television. His former acting agent, Carol Shamon-Freitas, told Leafly that Temple grew up out of state. Joshua M. Temple’s IMDB page shows that he worked as an actor and casting associate from 2005 to 2010.


As an actor, he landed minor roles in TV shows like Veronica Mars from 2005 to 2007. He saw steadier work as a casting associate, working on 39 episodes of Veronica Mars as well as pilots and basic cable series including The Ex-List, Terriers, American Heiress, Saints & Sinners, Wicked Wicked Games, and Fashion House.


Shamon-Freitas described him as “truly one of the nicest, kindest, and most sincere people I’ve known.”


Housing records from Zillow and various corporate filings indicate Temple lived in Woodland Hills, California, from 2014 to August 2019. Shamon-Freitas confirmed that he transitioned from the entertainment business to cannabis sometime after 2010.

Moving into the vape industry

Between 2011 and 2018, Temple worked in the unregulated vaping space, according to archived statements on the now-defunct company website, Honeycutvapes.com. During that period, Temple likely became fluent with the properties of different cutting agents for nicotine and THC vaporizers, known as diluting agents.



According to an archived “about the company” statement on Honeycutvapes.com:


“The Honey Cut’ brand was officially founded in 2011 but we just recently started taking off in [2018-2019]. For the past 10 years we’ve been dedicated to creating the best diluting agent for our clients and in this past year our hard work is all paying off.”

In 2012, THC vape products were a mere curiosity. Six years later, they accounted for a quarter of all legal cannabis sales.

Los Angeles has always nurtured cannabis. It’s been a fixture in the Hollywood scene since the early days of film. But in the 2010s, hundreds of cannabis dispensaries popped up around the city, driven by vague laws, nonexistent regulation, and the sheer size of the city and its massive cannabis market.


As the city’s cannabis industry grew, so did the market for vaping and vape products. The early e-cigarettes (think: Stephen Dorff hitting the Blu) were a novelty at first, but the convenience offered by the products created a new industry. Nicotine vape devices went from disposable to reusable and refillable. Cannabis entrepreneurs began filling vape setups with THC oil, and they quickly became the hip accessory to have.


Most vaping devices pair a rechargeable battery with a screw-on reservoir (known as a cartridge) filled with either liquid nicotine or THC oil. Vapes dispensed low doses of THC without the telltale odor of burning cannabis, and the small size of the devices offered discretion amid the social stigma—and criminal penalties—attached to the use of cannabis.


In 2012, THC vape products barely registered as a market category. Six years later, they accounted for half of all THC extract sales and a quarter of all product sales, according to BDS Analytics.

The first vitamin E oil study

In 2013, researchers at Northwestern University published a study that may have indirectly inspired a host of unintended consequences.


“Two Faces of Vitamin E in the Lung,” printed in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care, described alpha tocopherol—one of eight closely-related chemicals in the vitamin E family—as potentially helpful for some pulmonary conditions. The study found that the substance, available in sunflower oil and olive oil, could protect humans from adult-onset asthma and might have a “beneficial effect on lung function.”


One of the study’s critical details, though, was that the researchers were studying the effects of eating vitamin E, not inhaling it.


Related
Everything you need to know about pre-filled oil vape cartridges
Heating and inhaling it

Two years later, in 2015, Constance Finley applied for a patent on a vape pen containing CBD and vitamin E. Finley is the founder of the San Francisco medical cannabis company Constance Therapeutics,


Finley ran her idea by an organic chemist, a molecular biologist, and a clinical herbalist before analyzing what happened when they heated alpha tocopherol to 750°F. Large-scale clinical research simply didn’t exist.


“We did what we could,” Finley told Leafly. “We analyzed what came out of the vapor in a balloon study.”


According to Finley, more than 4,000 customers over seven years used her company’s product without incident. She contends that one form of the chemical—alpha tocopherol—is safe in low amounts, while other forms, like tocopheryl-acetate, may not be. No peer-reviewed studies exist to confirm or disprove this thesis.


Finley’s patent application for the use of vitamin E in vape pens may have inspired Honey Cut. Patent applications are public documents, available to anyone online.


“What we’re told is all these people that started using vitamin E acetate did so by copying our patent,” Finley said. But the copy either proved to be imperfect, or the knockoff artists deliberately altered the formula to avoid infringing on Finley’s pending patent. “I was shocked and kind of horrified to have this influence,” she said. “Because it’s really stupidity.”

Temple forms a Honey Cut precursor

In early 2018, Josh Temple formalized his role in the vape supply industry by registering a company called See/Be.


Temple is listed as the CEO on the state incorporation document for See/Be Health, LLC, registered on Jan. 9, 2018. The company’s listed address was identical to a future address of Honey Cut. Temple described See/Be in California’s business registry as a provider of “health supplements.”


If you want to import large amounts of vitamin E oil into the United States for resale into the vape supply market, designating your company as a health supplement provider is a smart way to do it. Vitamin E is a common dietary supplement subject to little regulatory control. Anyone can buy pails of it online.


Upon further inspection, that Santa Monica address turns out to be an office space with a mailbox drop. An employee there told Leafly that Temple only used the address to pick up mail, and the account had been closed down by late September 2019.

An accidental invention?

Arnaud Dumas de Rauly is CEO of The Blinc Group, a consulting firm that works with legal vape hardware makers to optimize manufacturing processes. He’s also helped set international manufacturing standards for vape products. De Rauly has a theory about how Temple and See/Be invented Honey Cut: accident, not malice.

Honey Cut debuted in early 2018. The bottles promised a 'Pharmaceutical Grade' product 'safe to use in any desired ratio.'

In trying to copy Finley’s research and patent-pending product, de Rauly speculates, Temple made an error in his formulation. “I’m pretty sure these guys had the best of intentions,” he said.


Vape industry insiders indicate that Honey Cut began appearing in the spring of 2018, about two to three months after the See/Be Health, LLC registration. The bottles promised a “Pharmaceutical Grade” product “safe to use in any desired ratio.”


Honey Cut itself contained no THC oil. It was a legal additive that the makers of illicit THC vape cartridges used to dilute the THC oil in their carts.


Peter Hackett—owner of Air Vapor, a Concord, California-based vape hardware wholesaler that operates within the legal sector—said that around that same time, some of his Southern California customers started asking for a product called Honey Cut.

A secret formula: 90% vitamin E oil

Although Honey Cut never disclosed its secret formula, testing by SC Laboratories in Santa Cruz showed that a 32 oz. bottle of Honey Cut bought off Craigslist in September 2019 contained 90% to 95% pure vitamin E acetate. The remaining portion contained other forms of vitamin E. Tests by New York health officials corroborated the finding.

Honey Cut's 'complex compound' turned out to be very simple—and potentially toxic.

Honey Cut moved untold gallons of 90% pure vitamin E acetate into the nation’s illicit vape market. This wasn’t a case of vape makers using Honey Cut for an off-label purpose without the manufacturer’s knowledge. Honey Cut’s own website described the product as “A complex compound used primarily in the vape cartridge industry as a thickener to eliminate bubble movement and leakage.”


Meanwhile, chemical companies making actual vitamin E acetate posted easily accessible manufacturer’s safety data sheets that warned against inhaling the compound. If inhaled, one data sheet advised, “remove from area of exposure. If breathing is difficult, give oxygen. Seek medical attention if symptoms persist.”

Buzz in the market

Over the summer of 2018, the new cutting agent quickly gained momentum. Seemingly every illicit vape cart maker wanted liters of the magical diluent. “If you didn’t carry Honey Cut, you were [seen as] a sore loser,” Hackett recalled.


Despite the demand, Hackett refused to carry Honey Cut or similar thickeners, due to their unknown formulations and untested status as a vape additives. Although it cost him a lot of business at the time, Hackett now believes the decision may have saved people’s lives.


What made Honey Cut so popular?

Honey Cut took off because it made illicit vape cartridge makers a lot of money. The product fooled consumers into thinking they bought something pure. Honey Cut’s color and thickness closely resemble that of pure THC oil. It’s available online and does not affect the appearance or flavor of THC oil. As such, it fooled consumers performing what’s known as the “bubble test.”


Pure THC extract is a thick amber oil, and traditional THC oil cutting agents thin the oil. In response, customers learned to detect cut oil by flipping over vape cartridges to see how the air bubble moves inside the tank—much like the bubble in a carpenter’s level. A fast-moving bubble means the oil had been thinned with a cutting agent and wouldn’t deliver the high THC potency a consumer desires.


Related
Journey of a tainted vape cartridge: from China’s labs to your lungs

Tocopheryl-acetate defeats the bubble test by cutting THC oil without thinning it. For years, THC oil had been mixed with the common additives propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin, used to allow the oil to flow and contact the vape pen’s heating device. Instead of 10% or 15% propylene glycol cuts, vape cartridge makers could cut THC oil by up to 80%, Honey Cut promised, and consumers would never know.


The chemical created huge profit margins for Honey Cut. Temple could import raw vitamin E acetate for $8.50 to $42.60 a liter (converted from gallons), re-package it, and mark it up to between $1,100 and $1,350 a liter. That’s about a 1,300% markup on every liter.


Even with the import markup, illicit THC vape cartridge fillers who spent $1,000 on a liter of Honey Cut could fool consumers by stretching their supplies of THC oil and pocket an extra $5,000 in profit.


Vitamin E acetate also remains perfectly legal to sell in any form. Illegal THC vape cartridge makers shoulder all the legal risk.

Online chatter, booming sales

By late 2018, Honey Cut sales boomed as word spread on Instagram and online forums like Future4200. Pictures of Honey Cut inside downtown Los Angeles storefronts circulated on Reddit.


The company’s success did not go unnoticed. Competing products like Floraplex’s Uber Thick, Mr Extractor’s Clear Cut, and Peak Terpenes’ Thicc Stretch soon battled for market share.


Insiders describe 440-pound drums of the stuff moving out the front and back doors of wholesale vape suppliers in downtown Los Angeles in early 2019. Honey Cut could be found on many major ecommerce sites, as well as through the Honey Cut website.

With an office just blocks away, Honey Cut became an overnight staple in the storefront market for wholesale vape supplies in downtown Los Angeles. (David Downs/Leafly)
Trademark, incorporate, sell sell sell

By the spring of 2019, Honey Cut’s success apparently made the company’s founder think about protecting his assets. “Just in the first four months of 2019, we had more sales than all of 2018,” Honey Cut’s website stated. So Temple filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on March 8 to trademark the Honey Cut logo. On the application, the Honey Cut founder listed the same email as he did on his old IMDB Pro account back in his acting/casting days.


Three days later, Temple registered Honey Cut Labs as a limited liability corporation with the State of California.


Temple described Honey Cut in the USPTO application as an “electronic cigarette liquid (e-liquid) comprised of flavorings in liquid form.” He stated it contained propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin, compounds widely used in vaping products. Nowhere on the application were the words “vitamin E acetate” mentioned.


On June 19, Honey Cut posted to Instagram a video of boxes and boxes of amber glass jugs filled with the thickener prepped for shipping. The operation was pumping.

Honey Cut succeeded at branding more than anything. This photo, taken from the company’s trademark filing documents, illustrates the brand’s clean design and variety of purchase volumes. (Courtesy of USPTO)
First reports of lung injuries

The first troubling medical reports came in mid-July 2019. Public health officials in Illinois and Wisconsin announced the identification of an unprecedented cluster of lung injuries among teen vapers. Public health leaders in Kings County, California, said they too located a similar injury cluster.


Those initial clusters triggered nationwide surveillance by the federal Centers for Disease Control. Public health officials began connecting dots. The victims weren’t infected with a virus or bacteria. Instead, they shared a history of vaping—specifically, for most of them, vaping THC from illegal cartridges purchased on the unregulated street market.


Looks like pneumonia, but it’s not

Early on, doctors read the onset of VAPI symptoms as odd cases of pneumonia. Patients were sent home with antibiotics, only to return much sicker days or weeks later.


Inside the lungs, the injury worsened. Vitamin E acetate disrupts the function of the lungs’ fluid lining, impeding oxygen transfer, and triggering a progressive and severe immune reaction. Some reports indicate a person’s lungs can begin to lose function as quickly as a week after exposure to THC oil heavily cut with vitamin E acetate.


“When you inhale this fatty substance, it sort of acts like a soap,” said Josh Wurzer, president of SC Laboratories, a state-licensed cannabis testing lab based in Santa Cruz, California. “When it gets in your lungs, it breaks up all the surface chemistry that’s happening with your lungs and really interferes with the exchange of oxygen into your bloodstream.”

Testing one victim’s vapes: tainted and toxic

One VAPI victim, Utah resident Kyle DeGraw, told Leafly he had never heard of Honey Cut. Vape-related lung distress sent DeGraw, to the hospital for five days in July. Over the past year, he often shopped for illegal THC carts by flipping a cartridge over to see how the oil moved. If the bubble moved too fast, Kyle refused to buy it. But that trick didn’t work with Honey Cut.


“You can’t tell even if [the bubble moves] slow?” DeGraw asked Leafly. A dark realization came over him. “I don’t know, actually, what’s inside.”

Utah VAPI victim Kyle DeGraw experienced a progressively worsening condition this year after using Dank Vapes and counterfeit Rove cartridges obtained from illicit markets. SC Labs initially found significant amounts of vitamin E oil in them. Subsequent testing also strongly implicated pesticides and heavy metals. (Courtesy Kyle DeGraw)

All summer, DeGraw had inhaled cart after cart from boxes labeled Dank Vapes and Rove. Leafly had the remaining oil in DeGraw’s spent cartridges tested by SC Labs.


Those tests turned up disturbing results. SC Labs President Josh Wurzer said DeGraw had inhaled “significant amounts of alpha-tocopherol” as well as troubling amounts of lead from his illicit THC carts.


Subsequent testing came back negative for tocopherols, but extremely high for pesticides and lead. Wurzer found sky-high levels of “literally dozens” of pesticides in “insane concentrations.” SC Labs’ machines, he said, aren’t set up to detect such high amounts. “This might take the prize for [the] most pesticide-contaminated sample we have ever tested,” said Wurzer.


On Nov. 8, the CDC announced it had found tocopherols in 29 lung victim biopsies. “No other potential toxins were detected,” said CDC Dr. Anne Schucat.

Reports of VAPI skyrocketed in the US this summer. (Courtesy NEJM)
Honey Cut starts closing down

As news of the outbreak spread, the Honey Cut team appears to have cut and run.


The company Instagrammed a picture of one of its distributors’ booths at an event Aug. 16, but later deleted it.


Public health officials reported the first vaping-related death on Aug. 23. On that same day, Honey Cut changed its registered corporate address to a postal box at Ace One Stop Mail Plus, near the wholesale storefronts that sold much of the company’s product. “Do not list a PO Box” the official LLC form states. Temple did it anyway.

The address for the Honey Cut Labs LLC is a PO box at this Ace One Stop Mail Plus storefront in downtown L.A. (Marissa Wenzke for Leafly)

On Aug. 27, Temple changed the official ownership of See/Be Health to add a person named Ashley Angstadt. According to now-deleted (but still cached) Instagram activity, it appears that Angstadt and Temple were dating at the time and lived together. After Aug. 27, Angstadt appeared in state business records as owner and manager of the company.


On Aug. 30, Leafly published its investigation into illegal vape cartridge additives—the first to name Honey Cut and highlight the company’s suspected role in the outbreak. In response, Honey Cut called its downtown Los Angeles wholesalers and ordered a recall of its products. Company officials demanded that storefront wholesalers remove Honey Cut from store shelves.


By Sept. 6, Honey Cut’s website had gone offline.

Honey Cut officials subpoenaed

On Sept. 9, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a subpoena for Honey Cut and two other makers of thickening agents after health officials discovered the products contained “nearly pure vitamin E acetate oil.”



New York State public health officials want details on Honey Cut’s safety testing, ingredients, sales data, and “the quality of the raw materials and the final product,” according to department spokeswoman Jill Montag.

Panicky record changes at See/Be

On Oct. 9, Leafly’s investigative team contacted See/Be Health CEO Ashley Angstadt by email. She did not respond, but two days later Angstadt’s name disappeared from state records connected to See/Be. She never responded to Leafly’s requests for information and comment.


See/Be Health has also changed its purpose of business in state records—often. In late August, the business purpose switched from “health and beauty supplements” to “distribution.” On Oct. 11, it became “health supplement manufacturing.” On Oct. 14, the company’s stated purpose changed to “health and wellness services”—removing the term supplement entirely.


Since Oct. 14, neither See/Be Health, nor Honey Cut or any of the company’s officials, have offered a statement. Officials at the New York State Health Department told Leafly they are in contact with Honey Cut, but declined to provide details due to their ongoing investigation. Josh Temple appears to have moved out of his Woodland Hills home in mid-August. It’s unclear whether he remains in the Los Angeles area.

Nobody paid attention

Industry insiders who spoke with Leafly were at a loss to explain how vaping products, illegal or not, ended up tainted with vitamin E acetate—something so obviously not meant to be inhaled.

'It’s unconscionable to sell anything to people where you can’t be sure you’re not going to injure them.'
J.D. Ellis, cannabis industry engineer

“It’s unconscionable to sell anything to people where you can’t be sure you’re not going to injure them,” said J.D. Ellis, a well-known cannabis industry engineer who moderates the influential online cannabis forum IC Mag.


The lack of clinical trials on tocopherols for inhalation should have given Honey Cut officials pause, said Blinc Group CEO de Rauly. “When you’re working with people’s health,” he said, “you have to go in there and figure it out and learn. If you don’t do that, you’re not being responsible.”

Don’t assume it’s safe

When Honey Cut came on the market, illicit vape cart makers assumed it was a harmless variation on propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin.


SC Labs co-founder Josh Wurzer understands how consumers were taken in. “You just assume, ‘Well this wouldn’t have even been allowed in the market if someone hadn’t looked at it and found it to be at least relatively safe.’ That’s just not the case.”


Honey Cut didn’t fall under the regulatory authority of California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control (BCC), according to BCC spokesman Alex Traverso. The agency oversees the regulation of cannabis licenses and products, but Honey Cut didn’t contain cannabis—it just happened to end up in products that did.


California cannabis regulators maintain a lengthy list of prohibited contaminants and pesticides. Vitamin E acetate was not on that list. Wurzer and other chemists have described the list as ever-evolving. They say it simply doesn’t include everything it should—mostly because it can’t.


Vape cartridge makers are continuously developing more novel additives, just as the makers of performance-enhancing drugs keep innovating to stay one step ahead of anti-doping agencies. Antonio Frazier, vice president of operations at the licensed Los Angeles-area cannabis lab Cannasafe, described the challenge as “going after a moving target.”

Laws broken? It’s not clear

Authorities have not announced any criminal charges or civil penalties against Temple or his two companies. Honey Cut and See/Be remain a legally registered corporations in the state of California, and Honey Cut the product remains legal to buy and sell.


But with more than 1,800 VAPI victims, it could be only a matter of time. FDA Commissioner Ned Sharpless told members of Congress on Sept. 26: “To be clear, if we determine that someone is manufacturing or distributing illicit, adulterated vaping products that caused illness and death for personal profit, we would consider that to be a criminal act.” Sharpless spoke generally, not specifically in reference to Honey Cut or vitamin E acetate.


In an email to Leafly, FDA spokesman Michael Felderbaum said the agency, working with federal prosecutors, could pursue legal action in response to the VAPI outbreak under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. He indicated the agency is prepared to use its authority “to the fullest extent.”

End of innocence for vaping

As the nation’s VAPI illnesses remain under investigation, the relatively young vape industry faces a reckoning of sorts.


After sleeping through the rise of e-cigarettes and vaping, the FDA plans to regulate e-cigarette makers and their ingredients by 2020. It’s not clear if the FDA’s pending CBD regulations will deal with vaping, but the lung disease outbreak has certainly raised that possibility.


The state regulation of legal cannabis products seems to have given the legal market more immunity to contamination than the unregulated street market. As concern about vitamin E acetate became widespread in September, leading cannabis labs began testing state-licensed vape cartridges for the additive.

Honey Cut the company has vanished, but Honey Cut the product remains just a Google search away.

In Washington, Confidence Analytics has cleared hundreds of products without a single cartridge testing positive. Anresco Labs in California has done the same. Oregon’s supplies are less pristine; at least one THC vape maker who added vitamin E oil got his product into licensed cannabis stores in the state. In Colorado, the Medicine Man chain announced the discovery of one product with vitamin E acetate—and its recall—after initiating testing of its inventory. Meanwhile, Colorado state officials are looking at banning some additives in THC vapes by January 2020.


In Los Angeles’ downtown wholesale district, where Honey Cut once flowed out the door in untold gallons, the product is now nowhere to be found. All that’s left are remnant signs and stickers that once advertised its availability.


Still, Honey Cut has found an afterlife of sorts online.


Company founder Josh Temple has apparently ghosted the media and state authorities. But with a few clicks, anyone can find images of the company’s logo online, print it out on stickers, and start selling re-labeled jars of vitamin E oil on Ebay. Chinese authorities have promised to start clamping down on supplies, but the product remains just a Google search away.

Did you work with Honey Cut? Have information about the brand? Email California editor David Downs david.downs@leafly.com