If you ‘vape’ this report from a recent news article should alarm you: “HNN then had the cartridges blind tested at a state-certified lab to find out what chemicals the cannabis oil contained.” And guess what? The tests showed that deadly toxins state officials labeled as “safe” that were found by independent researchers.
Following several mysterious deaths linked to vaping, the federal government is now warning Americans not to use e-cigarettes.
If you want to understand why vape-pen cartridges are dangerous, even though they’ve been approved by state officials, it’s worth thinking about what government is actually for.
Here’s a crazy idea – maybe the government we pay for should do stuff like making sure it’s illegal to sell poisonous products commercially. Or would that be ‘big government?’ and ‘anti-business?’
The smaller question is whether state governments are protecting taxpayers from shady operators who use cheap and dangerous ingredients that can make their customers very sick (and maybe even kill them) or if they’re cashing in on the chaos that is US drug policy by allowing the sale of harmful products.
Here’s the thing. Very few people would believe you if you told them the DEA and the rest of the federal government believes that cannabis is a deadly ‘gateway’ drug that is more addictive than heroin, oxycontin and fentanyl. “Marijuana” is a schedule one drug according to the feds. They say cocaine and meth are less deadly and addictive. You can look it up if this sounds insane.
Some would be even more shocked to learn that it’s still mostly illegal even to study cannabis under federal law. Read more about this on the Politico website.
As a result, the FDA is basically a toothless relic of a different time (they’re not even inspecting meat anymore if you can believe it) and states are left to work out the regulatory mechanisms on their own.
Small government enthusiasts would likely say this is great. “Get big government out of the way and let the entrepreneurs handle health and safety regulations.”
But like a lot of ideas, that sounds pretty sweet until your wife or boyfriend or you yourself winds up in the doctor’s office complaining about things like severe headaches, vision problems and a strong chemical taste on the tongue that just won’t go away.
Anyway – here’s what small government looks like in a single sentence:
“They (Hawaii’s Department of Health) have no clue how to regulate this industry. And the sad fact is they don’t want to learn,” Oshiro said, adding that one of his biggest concerns is that the state’s cannabis program isn’t using properly trained people.”
This of course makes some of us appreciate the fact that we know our providers and how seriously they take the health and safety of their clients.
Maybe people will grow tired of the whole ‘government bad!” view towards things like state departments of public health and we can pass some laws that indicate it might be illegal to sell people poisonous vape pen cartridges.
But until that glorious day – you can consider any state-label on any cannabis product sold legally to be entirely suspect. If you don’t want to take a chance on getting super sick – find a small provider that isn’t cashing on Wall Street’s Cannabis gold rush.
You know how big outfits make all that money right? They use cheap additives, pay their workers like crap and buy off anyone that has the temerity to speak up.
In the corporate press, which is mostly PR, you can read about how dangerous the vape pen cartridges on the ‘black market’ are.
But people should know that even when state regulatory bodies hire people to make sure these things aren’t toxic, most of the products are still loaded with ethanol, acetate and 1,500 times the legal limit of killer-pesticides, and God only knows what else.
But if you do a Google search for “are marijuana vape pen cartridges dangerous?” most of the stuff will about the ‘black market.’
With an absentee FDA at the national level and a “small or preferably no-government” attitude among far too many Americans, it’s almost like living on the frontier when the snake oil guy would ride into town.
You know, like the wild west – which is cool if you’re a killer with a gun, but sucks if you want to make sure the stuff you are buying and ingesting isn’t actually going to kill you.