It's not if, it's when!
They're coming, tighter regulations on vaping safety measures are just around the corner. The tainted vape oil crisis, sadly resulting in deaths and injuries, without question also wreaked havoc on the vape industry. The understandable response to want to “shut it down”, was simply a precursor to what can and does happen when the ill-informed have a knee-jerk reaction to a real health scare. In Washington State, they banned ALL flavorings from both cannabis and e-cig vapes with zero evidence that the flavorings had anything to do with the reactions some consumers had experienced. Now we know, the issue revolved around tainted vitamin E oils that were added to some black market vape cartridges. Unfortunately, many licensed and legitimate producer/processors and retailers suffered, and some didn’t survive the ban.
SPOILER ALERT! Bi-partisan legislation was recently introduced that addresses the need for tamper proofing of vaping devices. This means the 510 thread “screw on” mouthpieces found on most of the cannabis vape cartridges will no longer be legal if/when this legislation passes. This is a GOOD thing, consider the Tylenol tainting incidents of 1982, when unauthorized foreign substances were added to an otherwise safe product. The makers of Tylenol had to recall over 130 million bottles to ensure they were safe. The upshot is, we now have tamper-evident seals on all over-the-counter medicines. I ask all legitimate and licensed producer/processors or retailers, what would a total recall do to your business? My guess is many would not survive.
Additionally, several years ago Harvard did a study on e-cig vaping devices and found that 23% contained bacteria, fungi or both. While they didn’t have enough data to definitively prove the level of health risk those present, most reasonable people would agree that taking bacteria and/or fungi into our lungs is not a good or desirable thing.
In 2016, Revessel Inc. Founder and CEO, Mary Bumatai, began working on solutions to vape filling and cartridge performance issues that her clients were experiencing at that time and some of these issues she foresaw have yet to be recognized or addressed . She knew that regulators, producer/processors and consumers would eventually demand better safety standards and security when it came to vape cartridge handling. When asked Mary said, "We know that the vape industry has been plagued by issues regarding poor quality carts and safety concerns regarding tainted oils. When I started Revessel more than 3 years ago and began developing the RAFT, my biggest concerns at the time were the costly, sloppy, hand fill procedures in unsanitary environments. The vision was to develop a robotic filling machine for high speed performance and efficiency in the filling and capping of cartridges. As we moved along in development, we included prefill UV sanitation, because it makes sense. At the same time we secured our own line of carts. I felt it was imperative that we offer the very best materials, including stainless steel to ensure the carts are free of heavy metals. Stainless steel posts while available, are not commonly selected due to the cost. Additionally, tamper-proof mouthpieces are also available, but not always selected. This was also a nonnegotiable feature I knew we must have for brand security, consumer confidence and the inevitable regulatory requirement. For us to create the ideal Ecosystem for sanitizing, filling and capping carts, we selected these specific features and materials in our custom carts a long time ago. Not only that, we made sure we have an assortment of options for oil performance, most branding included, great price and more products coming!”
Now more than ever the vape segment of the cannabis industry needs to step up their game and start executing operations at a higher standard. The benefits of vaping over smoking are proven and we know that the consumer wants these products. It is our responsibility as an industry to provide clean and tested oils, in a high-quality device, that has been sanitized, filled and capped for consumer safety and brand security. Revessel Inc. will do our part to eliminate the most difficult challenges facing licensed producers and offer the very best products and operational system for their production.
The RAFT system is available for purchase now, along with exclusive custom, tamper-proof cartridges that we have designed to work with the RAFT. If you’re interested in learning more about our system or in scheduling a demonstration, please reach out to me directly.