Cannabis and Vaping: Rooted in Technology

Los Angeles, California

Written by: Jessi Cox

A technology initially promoted to help cigarette smokers kick the habit has transformed the way we use cannabis, too.

For years, a divisive debate has raged in the United States over the health consequences of nicotine e-cigarettes. During the same time, vaping cannabis has been swiftly growing, causing federal regulators to buckle down on the legacy market cannabis vape supply chain.

Millions of people now inhale cannabis not from joints or pipes filled with burning leaves but through sleek devices and cartridges filled with flavored cannabis oils. 

People in the legalized cannabis industry say vaping products now account for 40 percent or more of their business. People of legal consumption age alike have been drawn to the technology — no ash, a faint smell, easy to hide — and the potential healthy alternative are only now becoming more evident.

Until more information is known, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned people not to vape cannabis products. Which has no basis for a warning and has greatly frustrated cannabis vaping companies who have maintained compliance and regulatory measures to provide a safer consumption method for medicinal and recreational patients at a state level.

To some scientists, and even industry leaders, warning signs have been lingering for years as vaping unsanctioned e-liquids not only cannabis liquids grew in the shadows, propelled by a patchwork of regulations, a wave of state-by-state legalization and a soaring supply of low-cost non metric cannabis supply.

While the governments of the world, big pharma advocates, big nicotine lobby and their "paid researchers" poured resources into studying e-cigarettes, federal rules sharply limiting research into the health effects of cannabis, and loosely applying all of the data to cannabis — because it is classified as a controlled substance with a high potential for abuse — have left a void in scientific knowledge about what THC vaping does to the lungs which is yet to be understood and studied at a level to warrant public health and safety warning.

“There’s a glaring gap in trying to understand this product,” said Jessi Cox president of the board of the Loving The Plant, which represents 3000 cannabis dispensaries in California, Oregon and Washington where cannabis is legal.

Mrs. Cox, who is majority shareholder of LTP, said you can trust cannabis vape pens sold in CA regulated cannabis stores and in other licensed and regulated stores are safe because the ingredients were measured and tested by the state. 

The Bureau of Cannabis Control did not return calls asking for comment.

Vaping cannabis oils typically include other additives, solvents and flavor enhancers, and health investigators believe some such ingredients, including vitamin E acetate, have been implicitly implicated for some of the lung illness cases. 

The problem of unknown and potentially dangerous additives, Mrs. Cox and others said, is only found in the soaring black market which flourishes in the nearly 40 states where recreational cannabis is still illegal.

Even in states where the plant is legal, counterfeit cartridges are cheaper than the licensed, tested and taxed products. It is hard for legal players who pay taxes to compete. A regulated vape pen with half a gram of THC costs $55, compared with $25 or less on the street for an untested product.

“When you buy illicit vape cartridges from unlicensed dispensaries we don’t know what the chemical composition is,” Mrs. Cox said, “and we especially don’t know what the chemical composition is once it’s been combined, heated and inhaled.”

No Ash, No Rolling Papers, No Smell, No Mess

In the earliest days of cannabis vaping, a small group of innovators saw the technology as a safer way to help medicinal cannabis patients. They hoped that vaping cannabis — which entails heating THC so that it turns to an aerosol — would be less harmful to the lungs than inhaling combusted cannabis.

Soon there was a new reason to try cannabis vaping: the pure convenience of vaping, which allowed users to avoid rolling joints, spilling ash, giving off a telltale smell — or getting caught. Vape pens brought the sheen of high technology to a drug associated with hippies and grunge, along with a level of discretion and professionalism.

“You could vape in an airliner and no one would even know, not that you’d want to do that,” said a 40-year-old man outside Sherbinskis, a cannabis dispensary in Los Angeles.

Most customers at Sherbinskis, have few doubts about vaping. Industry officials say legal and licensed products like those sold here are rigorously tested under rules set by the state of California, where cannabis is legal.

Other Sherbinskis customers said they once were fearful of vaping due to EVALI, but now they realize that EVALI was caused by illicit cannabis vapes and have continued to purchase cannabis vape devices in state regulated cannabis dispensaries “It’s convenient, neat, easy." said Allen, who, with his wife, Jennifer, both in their 50's, are eager to share their new found wellness centered lifestyle with their friends and family.