The Evolution of THC Vape Cartridges | Hacker News Reader

The Evolution of THC Vape Cartridges

gentlemantoker.com

92 pointsrd171 comments

I respect the attempt to accurately create a report on vape cartridges, however I'd like to note a couple important inaccuracies. My source for this is myself -- I worked in the cannabis industry for about 4 years (worked in California for 2 years, then in Massachussetts for 2 years - up until about a year ago).

The first inaccuracy I noted was the $ amount per gram extract and the 10x markup remark (they REALLY don't make sense, where do you get these numbers?). Also related, in most states, a company would actually lose money if they were to process their flower for vape cartridges. Vape cartridges are often only worth the investment because the byproducts of plant trimming and packaging aren't sellable otherwise.

The second inaccuracy is in regards to cartridge filling; forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you were talking directly to the people marketing the vape-cartridge filling machines? The reason I say this is because it's very difficult to machine-fill extract in carts due to how highly variable the viscosity can be from batch to batch (trim from different strains is enough to create the inconsistent viscosity). This makes it incredibly difficult to fill without the injectors getting clogged; a manual employee process is often needed. Personally, it sounds a lot like someone was trying to get some free advertising from you.

Outside of that, there were some minor issues or discrepencies, but I won't harp on them as the article does seem to make an honest effort at giving an unbiased report.

>"Vape cartridges are often only worth the investment because the byproducts of plant trimming and packaging aren't sellable otherwise."

Interesting. Can you say what those byproducts are exactly? Is it stems, seeds and a bit of resin then?

To add to iaw's response, it's worth noting that a large amount of value flower has is in relation to it's presentation and appearance. Trimming of flower is done to both remove excess plant material as well as create a more favorable product for consumers.

Because this process of trimming is necessary for the sale of flower, any vertically integrated business that both grows and sells their own flower will inevitably create this excess of trim byproduct.

if a non-cannabis analogy helps:

a grocer sells carrots, baby carrots, and carrot juice

the full-size carrots for sale are picked from the most "attractive" looking carrots

the baby carrots are the "ugly" carrots, shaved down to be baby-carrot-sized

and the carrot juice is the result of taking all the trimmings, juicing it, and straining it

Not seeds or stems, trimmings.

There are non-negligible amounts of THC is the trimmings of the flower even though they aren't comparable to the actual flower. These used to be a waste product sold/given away but now it is turned into distillates/oils.

> Even though the intended use for these devices is a 2-5 second draw at no more than 2 draws before the device must be rested so as to not overheat, not every consumer uses the devices in this way or knows this technique.

> users should not be taking more than three draws per hour on average

--------

Even in fully legal store (up in canada) I have never seen either of those warnings.

Three draws per HOUR?!

Pot smokers routinely go way way way over that limit. Is this a limit because THC levels will be supposedly deadly or because of something else (technical etc).

Public health / medicine has just gone off the rails. I believe pot smoking is bad for you, but where do they even come up with these recommendation.

The amount of THC you would have to ingest to overdose is more than you could feasibly consume. In lab rats with zero existing tolerance to THC, the LD50 of THC is 36-40 mg/kg in a single dose [1]. For a 100kg individual with no tolerance, that means a single dose of 3600-4000 mg of pure THC inhaled continuously until consumed would result in death 50% of the time. That is an absurd amount.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004100...

Edit: And that 40mg/kg is the inhalation LD50 dose. For edibles / intragastric, the LD50 is 800-1200 mg/kg. So a 100kg individual who consumes 80000mg of THC-laced edibles. A standard gummy bear dose is 10mg, so a 100kg individual with no tolerance would have to eat 8000 of those to have a 50% chance of death.

Edit 2: FYI, the standard THC vape cartridges that are 1g of ~75-90% pure THC oil, which is good for 200-300 pulls of 3-5 seconds each.

> The amount of THC you would have to ingest to overdose is more than you could feasibly consume. In lab rats with zero existing tolerance to THC, the LD50 of THC is…

Overdose and LD50 aren’t the same thing. There is a wide middle ground between a typical dose and a fatal dose where the effects range from distinctly unpleasant to potentially triggering a number of other health conditions.

The LD50 of THC is indeed very high, but I think the excess focus on LD50 has misled a lot of people into ignoring the other potential problems with excessively high dose, prolonged THC ingestion.

When replying to someone that believes pot smoking to be bad for you, there might be a need to translate that 3600mg is going to 360 of those 10mg gummy bears. If the THC doesn't kill you, the 360 gummy bears in your gut are going to make you wish you were dead. Except I guess you'll be so high that you won't notice.

A quick google says 70 gummi bears in a pound, so 5.15 lbs for those who were also wondering.

That was the inhaled dose. I edited my post to include the edible / intragastric LD50, which is 800-1200 mg/kg.

In no way would an amount so little lead to death. Maybe if you aspirate vomit or trip and fall.

> trip and fall.

Not too impossible I guess, I've fainted from orthostatic hypotension after smoking too much before.

From my understanding the concern about vapes is super heating the chemicals inside the vape (or the vape itself). Also potentially over-heating the filament in the cartridge, or the metal conducting parts of the battery.

My guess is the restriction is based on those things.

That is correct, according to the article.

Not sure if that is an actual concern, or even an actual warning, but that is what the article states.

I think it's one of those liability things like "don't put q-tips in your ear".

"Please drink responsibly."

I have a flavour-only vape that I got just to check out what were all the kid going crazy over these days - and never heard that kind of warning either

No disrespect intended, but this sounds more foolish than doing it due to being addicted to something!

It’s no more foolish than trying a mocktail to get a sense of what people like in a comparable cocktail.

Ordering a Shirley Temple at the pool or bar isn't the same as buying a whole device and special non-nicotene juice to use in it, ha.

No real hate, just weird — to me!

I think this is just a mistake or miscalculation on the author's part. I use one of these devices every day and anyone who's familiar with the operation would easily be able to tell when it's overheating; the vapor becomes uncomfortably hot and smells different. This will happen when you heat the element for maybe than 7-10s, the frequency per hour has never made any difference in my experience.

3 draws per hour?

I recently switched to vaping from smoking, and I hope that's not the case for nic vapes, because then I'm seriously overdoing it.

I used to smoke regular weed but in recent years have totally converted over to using vape cartridges. The benefits are too great:

- No odor.

- More consistent dosing.

- More control over the exact CBD:THC ratio.

- Lower cost per dose.

- Less paraphernalia lying around/more discreet.

In fact, it's actually significantly reduced my intake. I now take 1-2 puffs of a 10:1 CBD:THC mixture before bed some nights of the week. I get the calm without paranoia or disorientation. If I want to "feel high", I can take a few extra puffs, or try the 5:1, or even 1:1. I don't even touch the "Max THC" stuff clocking in at 80% THC by weight anymore, whereas in a past life that would have been my go-to. It really changes things when a "bowl" of "sour skunk" is no longer the minimum unit of dosage.

However, I am very thankful I now live in a legal state. When grey market cartridges first started becoming available I did a lot of research into them. Definitely there is a greater risk smoking a black or grey market THC cart than smoking black or grey market marijuana (see all the vitamin E stuff). When they first came out, I smoked them with no ill effects. But I didn't even know the risk I was taking, and today I would not touch the stuff. See r/fakecartridges, r/cleancarts, for other people who actually care about how shady some of this stuff is.

Today I only buy cartridges from reputable brands from licensed dispensaries, that have lab reports FROM THE SAME BATCH included on the packaging, that test for above and beyond what is legally required. Is this confirmed to keep me safe...no. There is always a risk with untested and understudied products like this. However it's a lot different than grey market carts or vaping nicotine, where you might take 300 puffs/day, versus 1-2. I have to imagine if there are heavy metals, the former is resulting in far more concentrated doses of it. It's a risk I'm willing to take for something I enjoy and that I feel improves my life.

I honestly hope for even stricter regulation. The price per dose is still incredibly cheap even with the taxes and overhead from compliance. I would gladly pay $100/1G for something that lasts months and has a heavily scrutinized chain of custody, that's cheaper than a single nice dinner or a weekend or two of drinks.

The major problem with cartridges is, beyond the very real risk of effectively having a pipe bomb in your hand pointed at your face, is that those in charge of formulas are assholes. They're desperately trying to duplicate the experience of smoking weed, including intentionally adding propylene glycol and other irritants for the effect of throat irritation to make you cough. They're failing and ruining the experience. This is asinine. The tastes are horrible and lean towards chemically, synthetic tastes.

The other problem is the massive, absurdly huge, selection. Choices are great, but they went absolutely nuts (and the same is true of flower selections), and I would assume it is a stoner in charge of all this crap. Bad idea.

The high from cartridges is very one dimensional, just not as potent as decent flower.

Also, you're out of your mind if you think cartridges are cheaper than flower. It isn't even close, cost is on the order of 300% more expensive for cartridges.

If all this could be fixed, if the makers would stop assuming what consumers want and just produce an honest product without the bullshit, carts might become superior.

Totally agree about the nonsense marketing of effectively identical cartridges (and everything else weed related). I pretty much ignore everything said by dispensaries directly and just go with whatever manufacturer has the most transparent info about their production processes. I find there is a real lack of professionalism in the industry, I would honestly prefer to buy my shit from the dispensary equivalent of an accounting firm if I could.

I was curious about your 300% figure and checked out my local dispensary. Looking at the cheapest ounces, it's like $120. Let's say .1g is a dose for me, and so I get 280 doses from that. That's around 40c a dose. Comparing to an "expensive" cart at $70, let's make the conservative estimate I only get 100 doses from that. That's 70c a dose. That's 175% different, with the most favorable possible comparison to flower.

More realistically I would say that smoking < .2g at a time is almost impractical. That limits the amount of doses you get from flower. And realistically, I would get closer to 150 doses from a high THC 1G cart. So now carts are actually more favorable!

There's allegedly 1g in a cart for $25-$100. There's 3.5g in an eighth for about the same price as a cart, 7g in a quarter, and 28g in an ounce. So please refigure. And not all weed is sold at dispensaries.

I don't understand your point. I'm aware of the various weights to gram conversions, that's how I went from a .1g dose to (28*10=) 280 doses for an oz. You realize that dry flower is not at all equivalent to that weight in oil right? Doing a weight to weight comparison makes no sense. Do you actually smoke weed or have experience with any of this stuff yourself?

There are some poor assumptions here. The oil they're selling you is not actually cannabis oil in the sense that the oil did not come from the cannabis. That would be nice but also insane. It is olive oil or coconut oil or some other oil, known as a "carrier oil," that was heat-soaked with weed most usually in a 1:1 ratio of cannabis to oil. So, yes, as a rule of thumb, the 1g of vape juice has the equivalent THC as the 1g of weed from which it was concocted. Also, not for nothing, dry stems and leaf don't weigh anything, only the bud has heft, and that's where most of the THC, other cannabinoids and terpenes are, so the THC ratio by weight is far higher in the bud.

Just to be clear, we are both talking about vaporizer cartridges designed to use batteries with 510 connections right? The kind you vaporize and inhale, not something designed as a food additive? They look like this [1]?

The oil you see in that THC cart is NOT a "carrier oil" and is not created using the process you describe (that's how you make DIY THC infused butter or cooking oil, for use in creating edibles). It would be INSANE to vaporize and inhale olive or coconut oil. The oil in the cartridge pictured in [1] IS literally almost pure THC. Take a look at the lab report for one of those cartridges [2]. The top compound is literally THC Delta 9 (THC "Classic"), and it represents 887 mg/g (88.7% of a 1g cart) of the compound by weight.

Oil for cartridges is literally cannabis oil and is produced using CO2, butane/hexane, ethanol, or even pressure extraction. You need the mixture to be liquid enough to be wicked onto the heating element, and I'm not sure how that is achieved today, but in the past they would use Vegetable Glycerin (VG) or Propylene Glycol (PG) to slightly liquify it (the same additives used for e-cigs). If you don't include these additives, the pure oil is a solid/buttery/sticky mess, and you get things like sauce/resin/shatter.

[1] https://bestkushstore.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/df6844f...

[2] https://rawgarden.farm/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/220000693-...

Edit: From some search I see that coconut oil is in fact still sometimes used as a thinner, so I stand corrected there. But I think the overall point stands that it is a small (< 10%) part of the mixture, and is used as a thinner, not the primary carrier. The primary oil in the cartridge is literally THC oil.

Wow. News to me. I thought handling the pure chemical would be akin to handling nicotine or safrole, not that it'd be easily lethal, but that it would not be useful in those concentrations. Also, I honestly believed that the process would turn off the typical consumers:

Dried cannabis flowers are soaked in alcohol and then shaken gently. Isopropyl strips the trichomes from the plant. The mixture is strained into a dish and then the solvent is removed using a vacuum oven that keeps temperatures under 181 degrees. When the solvent evaporates, the remaining substance is a THC rich oil.

Ah! Well then sorry to come on so strong, glad it was just a misunderstanding. Cheers!

You can buy good 1g THC carts for $20-25 in legal states.

Oh yeah, I saw some for that price as well. I just wanted to make a maximally unfair (to carts) comparison to make a point.

The article specifically mentions that THC cartridges - at least the ones they reviewed - don't use propylene glycol. Your second problem is, as you say, not unique to cartridges. I kind of agree with your third point. Not sure what the solve is there. Yes they're more expensive. The only way to have the most competitive market with the best product is federal legalization.

> They're desperately trying to duplicate the experience of smoking weed, including intentionally adding propylene glycol and other irritants for the effect of throat irritation to make you cough.

Is THAT what it is? I've only taken to vapes recently and inhaling too hard has me coughing so hard I start sweating. Nothing else I've ever smoked kicked the hell out of me like that.

> The other problem is the massive, absurdly huge, selection. Choices are great, but they went absolutely nuts (and the same is true of flower selections), and I would assume it is a stoner in charge of all this crap. Bad idea.

Is the craft brew industry also a mistake? For medicinal marijuana I can see users wanting a well regulated, simple commodity. For most recreational marijuana users though, they treat the smoking as an experience. The pot heads I know are always sharing new strains they found or developed and seem really excited when another pothead brings by something novel.

As someone who has tried a million varieties of both craft beer and weed, and honestly prefers the latter, there is so much more variability with beer it's not even a contest.

I used to have a joke I would make with dealers back when weed was illegal and that was the only way to buy it. I would ask what kind of weed they were selling me and they would always come up with a crazy name for it, "Mind Crusher Ultra Sour Diesel" or whatever, take your pick. I'd wait for them to finish and then ask "Will it get me high?" and they would laugh and say of course. The joke being, we all know that being high off any given strain is pretty damn similar. It's not like I was going to say "Oh, never mind" if he said the wrong name.

It's as if craft beer manufactures were advertising their beer got you a different kind of drunk. Sounds ridiculous right?

Investing in a quality dry herb vaporizer is even more cost effective. I don’t even smoke very often but have the coveted Volcano and it is incredible.

100% on dry herb. I'm more of a whip guy, so I have a Magic Flight Orbiter that I just use with a handheld DaVinci and it is really amazing.

Arizer for me. My first one lasted more than a decade of daily use. Got a discount on the second. It worries me that the flexible tubing might be Extremely Bad news. A shitton of leachate must come out of the heated plasticizers.

I’ve also heard the occasional bad news about the heated ceramic and wiring in the heaters. OTOH, I don’t seem to be harmed yet, and it’s not like city air isn’t filled with other toxins.

Remember when everything shut down globally, and how clear the air became? And then we went right on back to choking on our own waste.

Haha, these names! A whip guy uses a Magic Flight Orbiter with their handheld DaVinci!

(I have FlowerMate Slick)

I am amazed at the level of R&D & economies of scale with vaporizers.

The tech in these - high-power electronics, computer controlled heating profiles etc is quite sophisticated.

Societal evils aside, this could be a very precise drug-delivery system that can be cheaply mass-produced.

> Societal evils aside, this could be a very precise drug-delivery system that can be cheaply mass-produced.

It’s not really that precise at all because it’s up to the user to control how long to inhale.

The only reason vape users can dose somewhat precisely is that the drug had a short and obvious feedback loop (how they feel) and they dose many times over the life of a cartridge, allowing them to learn how to dose properly. THC is also very forgiving in overdose, which isn’t a feature shared by most drugs.

I have a little pen called a dosist that stops atomizing the thc once you receive a "dose". It also vibrates to make it more obvious. I love it. I'm able to regulate the amount I use and know the effects I feel from x amount of doses.

edit: https://dosist.com/faq

I don’t mean this to be rude but you fell for the marketing. I was part of the team at a high level for a few years and it’s not precision dose control. Internally it’s like any other disposable vaporizer at an unwarranted markup. It’s just a timer.

You can confirm this by thinking through the fact that each need state and each live resin strain has a different composition and viscosity and therefore different vaporization characteristics…yet the buzzer goes off based on a clock.

It's still producing a metered dose that's probably comparable to other doses from the same cart. I don't think anybody expects doses between carts/strains/batches to be consistent, because the pen would have to know the chemical makeup of each cartridge's contents to adjust itself in this way.

>It's still producing a metered dose that's probably comparable to other doses from the same cart.

not really, dosing is dictated not only by time but by coil temperature, drag pressure, drag volume, coil wicking, etc.

if you have a 3 second timer vape, like the dosit, these variables add enough error that the actual medical dosages vary wildly.

An easy example : hit a vape with a timer over and over again. the last hits will almost always have a much strong mouth and denser vapor than the hits prior -- this is because the coil and vaporization 'areas' are now pre-heated from the previous hits and require less energy overall for the same dosage, but this rate varies so wildly that it's an extremely difficult task for a vaporizer to be as dynamic as the dosing rate errors.

this was supposed to get fixed with temperature controlled coils, but it only helps things a bit. What someone needs to do is make a vape profile that'll create a dynamic drag time based off of those error variables, but I have yet to encounter such a device.

I see what you mean but honestly when I'm high I lose track of time so 2 seconds of vaping still gets me closer than my brain. Lol

So they need to make vapes work more like inhalers to be precise, but then it would be an inhaler and not a vape I guess.

That doesn't solve the problem at all. It's just a timer, but the user's inhalation force still dictates how much of the drug is consumed during that time.

Vape cartridges are nowhere near precise enough for normal drug delivery, even with a timer attached. It's just not a precision dosing method. Remember that pharmaceutical users wouldn't have any baseline to work with, whereas vape pen users have calibrated themselves over many doses across many sessions.

Inhalation force or speed are not relevant factors. The amount of vapor produced is entirely based on heat transfer and the properties of the oil. You don't even need to be inhaling for the device to produce vapor, but when you finally do, it's the same amount as if you were inhaling the whole time -- though the vapor will taste "scorched" after letting it sit in the chamber over multiple seconds of heating.

That sounds perfect for me, I have no problem regulating with normal smoking but for some reason it's harder for me with vapes and I tend to make myself sick.

Let me know if you have any questions

Hypothesis: Bluetooth authenticated dosage controlled vapes will be big. Many drugs can be vaped in that manner safely.

enter your current weight..potency verified via blockchain..DNA and prescription record cross referenced for interactions and sensitivities..a set of smiley faces similar to the pain chart they have at hospitals shows on display portraying various level of stonedness.. pick one and 3, 2, 1 inhale, exhale, and blast offffff

If you had could go back a few years you might be able to raise funding with that blockchain comment

Or forward.

or NOW!! i present to you Potentately.io . it's a very lucrative investment and if you act now you can get in on the bottom floor of a tower to the moon built upon the expanded minds of stoners worldwide.

You stop heating once you hit the requisite dosage.

To be fair most thc vapes are just a battery putting out fixed voltage and a button. The fancy ones are nice ofc but nothing more than a samsung 18650 battery and a variable voltage controller, maybe microusb charging instead of screw on too.

It blows my mind the market is so slow because of legal issues.

It’s billions of dollars a year

Well the customer base isn't too picky, by and large.

It's not much tech, just a regulated battery and a wire/coil with cotton soaked in juice.

I wonder if some drugs would only work in vapes, rather than inhalers or nebulizers.

DMT vape liquid is already enjoying quite some popularity.

That's a great and positive way to look at vaping. Every time I hear about "medical marijuana" I think about the probable link to schizophrenia, which will likely dwarf the pot economy in both direct and indirect costs.

-- edited to add citations --

Spent about 10 seconds finding these using Brave search. For folks who can't resist snarky comments, you have to admit it's strange that this is not at least acknowledged amidst a state-by-state push for legalization.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2424288/

>> "There is now reasonable evidence from longitudinal studies that regular cannabis use predicts an increased risk of schizophrenia and of reporting psychotic symptoms. These relationships have persisted after controlling for confounding variables such as personal characteristics and other drug use. The relationships did not seem to be explained by cannabis being used to self-medicate symptoms of psychosis."

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abst...

>> "The results from these longitudinal analyses show the proportion of cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use disorder has increased 3- to 4-fold during the past 2 decades, which is expected given previously described increases in the use and potency of cannabis."

So where's the schizophrenia epidemic among pot-smoking hippies? It's had like 50 years to surface, man.

In all seriousness, there are a number of cohorts where this should be showing up with some regularity. Can you point me towards any of them?

All the hippies I know are still out there hippie-ing and living their lives, going to Dead shows, and so on. And, from my experience, they seem to be an unusually vigorous group for being so old.

I feel like there's some selection bias. Your friends who you know years ago but fell off the grids are the ones who are most likely to be experiencing mental health issues.

FWIW, the homeless encampments and chop shops by me have plenty of people in the ~50 y/o pot smoking hippie demographic. The local paper even did a profile on a dude named Coconut who is 56 years old and has been following the Grateful Dead/Dead & Co. on all their tours since 1992. He was just killing time until their tour came around later this month.

“Nobody knows you when you’re down and out”

Of course, survivorship bias and all that. But when I look at most communities of old folks, everyone else seems a lot more... decrepit

They committed suicide. The suicide rate has been steadily rising in the 44-64 bracket. Or they are reclusive conspiracy theorists. That's my experience at least. I know a (shrinking) number of people I would definitely say are gripped by cannabis psychosis. There's no way it's not a real thing.

> Every time I hear about "medical marijuana" I think about the probable link to schizophrenia

Have you considered that perhaps schizophrenics seek out drugs? Something like 70-90% of schizophrenics smoke cigarettes. Do cigarettes cause schizophrenia, or do schizophrenics seek out cigarettes?

> Do cigarettes cause schizophrenia, or do schizophrenics seek out cigarettes?

Or literally anything, besides their sometimes awful default state consciousness?

Every time my wife smokes the devil’s lettuce she craves a black man. Citation needed, btw.

I’ve always felt like research into drugs has always had polarising bias in both directions.

It is very immature research when you compare it with the designer drugs that go through the federal FDA process, where there are multiple phases of clinical trials all for a single use case. And then all the side effects that are found in a controlled study are listed on the side of the packaging.

The state process is completely absent of any research, and the community is relying on anecdotes for an infinite set of use cases. Side effects listed, if any, are based on the same anecdotes. I’ll give that an F for Failure. I’m not for putting dealers or users in prison, I can acknowledge that the consumer protection is absent.

How would the fda go about testing the convergent effects of all the different chemicals when the ratios shift significantly and the means of consuming them change what actual chemicals reach which parts of the body? Distill/synthesize each one, mix them in every permutation, and dose representative patients in every possible way?

By applying the boot to your neck, overdoses are reduced by 50%. Getting an accredited healthcare professional to tell you the boot is good for you reduces it a further 25%.

They would study a single consumption method as a solution for a specific ailment. All side effects would be documented and told to researchers or consumers.

Doesn’t that invalidate any existing research also?

Any links about that probability?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7442038/

>We have evidence suggesting that cannabis use, primarily THC in cannabis, in genetically predisposed or at-risk populations, leads to earlier diagnosis of psychosis/schizophrenia. This tells us that THC in cannabis has a small causative effect on schizophrenia.

A small effect on people who were already at risk. The sky is hardly falling with legalization.

>earlier diagnosis of psychosis/schizophrenia

Emphasis mine. This seems interesting to me. Earlier diagnosis is not more diagnosis. It could just mean that due to illegality, these people got into contact with mental health professionals earlier than they would have otherwise. Also getting the diagnosis earlier. But not being more schizophrenic.

I'm generally pro-legalization, but if marijuana is shown to make people schizophrenic who would otherwise not become schizophrenic, it's a big deal. It has severely affected their lives and those around them. Tobacco doesn't give everyone lung cancer after all, some are more at-risk than others. Quantitatively determining that risk, doing cost-benefit, etc, is important, but I don't think this should be dismissed out of hand as immaterial.

Yes that would be a big deal but that's not what the evidence is saying.

OP:

> probable

Citation:

> The relation between cannabis and schizophrenia needs further investigation. We need more case-control studies and clinical trials with a larger population to get conclusive data.

From the current data, we can conclude that the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) component of cannabis can be the main culprit causing psychosis and schizophrenia in the at-risk population. THC can also be the one exacerbating symptoms and causing an adverse prognosis in already diagnosed patients.

It is a well-known fact that many of the abuse substances cause psychosis, which is a part of the schizophrenia spectrum; cannabis is one [9]

Nevertheless, the fact remains that schizophrenia and psychosis walk hand in hand alongside with cannabis use. Cannabis has many strains with different ratios of components. The ratio of THC and CBD is the most important psychotomimetic property of any cannabis strain [14]. When a healthy person uses cannabis, he experiences relaxation, euphoria, and a decrease in anxiety and boredom. However, they might also have some undesirable effects like paranoia, grandiosity, agitation, hallucination, cognitive impairment, disorganized thinking and behavior, and depersonalization [17]. People predisposed to the development of psychotic illness are more vulnerable to the psychotomimetic effects of cannabis, more specifically, THC [16,17].

Per se cannabis does not cause schizophrenia or psychosis. However, we have longitudinal data supporting the causal link between cannabis and psychosis [18].

I have found that the industry for the production of extracts that go in these cartridges is very widespread, sometimes operating in plain site.

For example, I bought a very large (15 gallon) vacuum chamber system directly from a US-based vendor. My use-case was to off-gas various slurries and compounds I use for my hobbies, such as casting molten aluminum. Although it was not directly mentioned on their e-commerce site, after a few follow-up marketing emails, I quickly realized they were geared towards solutions for businesses performing high-yield CBD extraction processes.

Ignoring all the politics of the related industries, I thought it was pretty interesting to find such a business by accident and that anyone with the right circumstances could potentially perform these processes with equipment available to general consumers - though I imagine there may be some chemicals that require a permit at the necessary concentrations.

It’s pretty similar buying indoor gardening equipment.

It was the same deal with buying any sort of hydroponics or aquaponics systems. I was a hobby gardener in a city apartment so had to do sealed systems for growing plants and I always got the oddest looks when the employees at various stores realized that when I was discussing growing my "peas" and "tomatoes" that I actually meant peas and tomatoes.

Its a plant with no novel mechanical or chemical properties as far as I am aware when it comes to processing, so there's no real way for the government to block the marketing of the tools without hitting many other industries

I'm not following what surprises you about this. You are aware 2/5ths of the USA have legalized marijuana?

Blowing up your apartment doing this seems to be a common occurence in Finland.

https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/5038092f-c43b-4051-9c24-3...

Butane isn't generally a preferred solvent, i suspect people use it because it's easily available in relatively pure form. I'm far from an expert but brands typically advertise something more like a supercritical CO2 based extraction process.

Which i guess is to say, I think they blew up their apartment because their goverenment doesn't allow commercial chemistry to be applied at relevant scales to marijuana, users are then jumping into suboptimal home-made solutions.

One of the more interesting innovations that I've seen in this kind of technology is atomizing it using a piezoelectric ultrasound emitter which vibrates it into a vapour instead of using any combustion at all.

Combustion is required to decarboxylate the THC (which is why eating raw bud will not get you high). Obviously the workaround would have the juice decarbed but I think that it would be difficult to find that in the wild.

Some concentrates (distillate for example) are decarb’d in the process of extracting it.

Interesting, I've only ever seen it for nicotine vapes so far but that would make sense

You're repeating a persistent myth.

Eating raw cannabis will absolutely get you high, and heating it doesn't noticeably affect the potency.

"Decarboxylation" or the removal of a carboxyl group, where it's usually released as CO2, is a common reaction in chemistry, and it doesn't tend to require a lot of activation energy. Every amino acid is decarboxylated after you consume it. Carbonic acid in soda decarboxylates itself at standard atmospheric temperature.

And in the case of your stomach, the HCl will decarboxylate the weed you eat just fine.

LOL, this is easily demonstrated as nonsense. People generally have a poor understanding of what is required to effectively decarboxylize, but it absolutely is required to fully activate the THC content, even if eating raw weed may give you a bit of a buzz from already decarb'd THC in the raw flower.

> Eating raw cannabis will absolutely get you high, and heating it doesn't noticeably affect the potency.

Instead of spreading stuff like this, just go and try it. It's really kind of exasperating to read outright fabrications, but when they are this easy to disprove I can't even see a charitable interpretation of why you would do so.

You need significantly more to obtain the same effects.

Do you have a source for this? Every resource I look at online says that decarboxylation is required for making edibles and this matches my personal experience.

This is not true.

But that technology has been around for decades?

Yeah it's basically what you find in those novelty gnome and mushroom fog fountains at the shopping mall

Considering how disastrous ultrasound humidifiers are for human health I would be very concerned about its application here.

I don't consider that to be a comparable technology based pretty much on what goes in it to be vaporized. These are a lot closer to things like ultrasonic nebulizers for athsma/COPD medication.

What gets me is the carrier substance. I think I heard propelyne glycol and vegetable glycerin in the lungs may have metabolic effects. Wonder what alternatives exist or are already being used in medicine now.

Sorry, can you clarify?

"disastrous" is a bit of an exaggeration, but ultrasonic humidifiers literally fling water into the air. whatever is dissolved in the water goes along for the ride, so you can potentially get a lot of particulate matter in the output. exactly how bad this is depends on the quality of your tap water.

IOW, pneumoconiosis. Miners’ Lung.

https://www.drugs.com/health-guide/pneumoconiosis.html

The solids in water are soluble, doesn't seem like inhaling them will be a huge issue in small quantities.

Having seen the startlingly thick coating of mineral deposits around my house when I used an ultrasonic humidifier (and our hard water), I disagree. The NIH indicates that these particles do have a measurable effect.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21199854/

> We report here the case of a young infant with significant accidental inhalational lung injury related to dispersal of mineral dust from an ultrasonic home-use humidifier. The clinical consequences included prolonged hypoxemia, tachypnea, and failure to thrive. Radiography revealed pneumonitis, and pulmonary-function testing showed a nonreversible mild obstructive ventilatory defect.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922954/

> These results indicate that aerosol particles released from ultrasonic humidifiers operated with tap water initiated a cellular response but did not cause severe acute inflammation in pulmonary tissue. Additionally, high mineral content tap water is not recommended and de-mineralized water should be recommended in order to exclude any adverse effects.

So use distilled water.

These cartridges are sketchy as fuck; I don't trust any of them and I don't think anybody else should either. Do yourself a favor and buy a vape you can pack ground herb into.

All of the cartridges I buy have a breakdown of THC, THCa, CBD, CBDa, and eight different turpenes. I trust their analysis and quality control more than most consumable products.

The concerning element is not the marijuana extracts but the additives they are suspended in, which are generally unregulated and undisclosed (the cannibinoid analysis is there because it is legally mandated, and is the basis for tax assessment). Unfortunately, this recent Chicago Sun Times investigation[1] also demonstrated that even our very strict testing protocols in Illinois are apparently ineffective, with almost none of the tested products matching the lab results printed on the package.

1. https://chicago.suntimes.com/cannabis/2021/12/10/22828340/le...

It's like everyone forgot the popcorn lung outbreak a few years ago.

I don’t hear about it anymore, and if anything usage has likely increased.

I think vape cart manufacturers removed Vitamin E from their suspension medium because of the negative publicity. I'm not aware of any regulation that resulted because of it, which would specifically prevent Vitamin E being added back into the mix at some point.

Or, we were paying close attention and saw the rise of fake-branded carts absolutely exploding on social media right before popcorn lung cases hit the news. And for 3-4 weeks there were all these god damn stories and all these theories even here on HN.

But many of us, watching the sidelines in /r/fakecarts or whatever the various subs are that I used to check in on, were reading countless stories of "friend drives these from Cali bro, but my friend had to go to the hospital". Over and over, right before they started hitting the national news. Oh, and by this time the cannabis forums were already abuzz trying to figure out what the "new" suspension liquid was. And worried that it was Mineral Oil or Vit E oil. Which, it was.

And then there were 2-3 big fake cart producers busted in the Midwest, the new product was removed (never followed up to see if he was held liable) .... And just like that "popcorn lung" stories fell out of the news. Damn near immediately (I remember this hyper distinctively as I'd done months of research about everything concentrate/cart related before a large travel trip. Before I left I was watching fake carts explode. While traveling I was laughing as people were indicting pot, all carts, vapes in general. And then sure enough, a few arrests were made in the Midwest and I've literally never seen a noteworthy article about "vape popcorn lung".)

I am absolutely aghast at some ignorant, half-truths repeated up and down this thread. People that fell for FUD and assume their historical memories are correct. People acting like a well-regulated mod is a, I quote, "pipe bomb".

I swear, some folks act like because it's "drugs", there can't be objective information. Or are just so willing to be swept away with boogey man bullshit if it touches up against some societal "rule" built into them. And then the smugness of "well, duh, of course" based on an incomplete understanding of the situation.

---

Bah humbug -- the real only answer that matters is -- buy an e-rig, have discipline, take baby dabs. Your money will literally go twice as far, zero risk of heavy metals, no bullshit additives if you're buying wax/live-resin, at least in Washington.

So your answer to unregulated and potentially dangerous carts is don't use them and dab instead? Like I don't disagree, I'm just not sure what you're getting at.

I wouldn't touch those carts for love or money, because of their unregulated nature. I am very fortunate in that I can grow my own and I use a flower/dry herb vape. Can't beat that IMO.

At least in the UK, where there is a small, highly regulated, legal medical market, the few carts that are available contain no additives at all - only cannabinoids and terpenes. You can look up Theraceed and Columbia, both of which IIRC are sold in the US TOO.

They also cost around a whopping £85 in the UK, for just ~350mg of THC, which is some serious price gouging :(

What is your basis for this trust? If it's a general faith in the good nature of other people, then I respect and envy that. But lacking that faith, I see a system where federal oversight is nonexistent and state oversight is probably some combination of incompetent or corrupt. If I had to guess, I think most companies in this industry are probably on the level. But a commercial incentive for doctoring lab reports clearly exists (even for independent labs) and at least a few companies have been busted for it.

Federal legalization and FDA/USDA oversight can't come soon enough.

You seem to put a lot of trust in the federal and state governments.

I trust their product because it is a highly competitive market and it is a premium product. If one cartridge says it's 77% and the next says it's 67%, you can tell when you vape it. People would just buy other products if they were inconsistent.

This is downright silly -> there are numerous markets where consumers were getting duped for years before anyone found out. The market for cosmetics is highly competitive and yet it's full of counterfeit goods containing horse urine.

This in particukar is very similar to original snake oil sales men. The consumers do not know the health effect or product purity untill many years down the line.

> If one cartridge says it's 77% and the next says it's 67%, you can tell when you vape it.

Oh, please.

Competition indicates nothing about trustworthiness when 100% of consumers are incapable of validating that trust.

I know some black market producers and they just fake the breakdowns. Local dispensaries have no qualms about buying these black market counterfeit carts. I have seen the backroom deals. Your trust is unfounded.

Legal dispensaries are not buying black market carts.

And grocery stores certainly aren’t buying fake olive oil, or selling garbagefish as fine fish, or buying cartel avocados, or fake honey, or…

Never would a bar sell you a counterfeit whisky!

And surely no one would sell fraudulent cancer medications!

And your legal storefront couldn’t sell fake vape carts! The drug cartels would never participate in such schemes!

They 100% are at least in California more specifically LA and Orange counties. I have personally witnessed it.

LA is full of illegal dispensaries. I have no doubt that they sell illegal carts.

But actual regulated dispensaries are not, it would be too easy for them to get caught.

During the last scandal around tainted vape carts, they did not trace a single one back to an actual dispensary, but did trace a number to illicit dispensaries in LA.

It is worth noting though that LA has a staggering number of unlicensed/illegal dispensaries. This article puts 4 in 5 as illegal in LA area [0]. This is not true of NorCal.

[0]: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/09/los-angele...

I applaud your faith in rules and humanity.

The article is about how the cart itself is the potential issue, and none of the tests results take in to account real life - or potential (mis) use of the cart.

The article is about the cartridges themselves. They heat things with a metal heating element that can be damaged and release metal ions at operational temperatures.

You can buy tested cartriges or even make your own distillate from flower too.

The marijuana testing lab industry is rife with fraud, it doesn't give me much confidence. (Flower could be compromised too, but I think the less processing done before purchase, the less chance there is for something to go wrong.)

DIY extracts seems like a good alternative. But vaping ground flower is very straight forward and low effort, so it seems like the obvious choice to me.

Vaping ground flower is fine, but IMHO it takes a considerable amount more vaping of ground flower (handheld style vape, not volcano) than it does just smoking it to have the same effects. And it takes a considerable amount more of smoking flower to have the same effect, than it does taking a hit off a THC vape cart.

Neither of those options fix this issue. Cartridge metals can seep into the vape material over time or after elements have been heated up a few times; testing won't catch that. Making your own distillate, similarly, won't protect you against heavy metals in the cartridge.

You can buy ceramic cartriges now too.

I use them, purely as the are very convienant and have low annoyance for people around me (smell on myself, smell in the air, smoke, ect).

I have tried but nothing else comes close for consuming extracts When outside my house.

The irony is not lost on my that at the same time on HN Homepage JUUL is being banned and benefits of THC Carts is being discussed. Exciting, and rather confusing times.

The devices themselves are closely related, but the marketing and sales are worlds apart. Most THC carts are marketed to adults as cannabis delivery systems. JUUL were targeted at children as harmless tasty fun and JUUL was deceptive about the amount of nicotine in the product. What took JUUL down was the reaction they generated to protect children from a habit forming product with documented harmful characteristics.

The irony here is that the Juul was spun out of Pax Labs, and THC came first.

As a fan of industrial hemp I am bitter that recreational drug use has given hemp a bad reputation in so many countries. Legalization is a very recent development. 2018 was a turning point in the US.

Industrial hemp is a jack of all trades, master of none. Anything it can do, other materials can do better. Can you make a tshirt out of hemp? Of course. Is it better than cotton, let alone synthetic fibers? No. Hemp ice cream? Possible, but not better than regular ice cream. Hemp rope? Has been commercially available the whole time but fell out of favor in nearly all applications (sailing is an exception.)

> Can you make a tshirt out of hemp? Of course. Is it better than cotton

Hemp yields 2-3x more usable material per hectare of land than cotton does, in cotton only a tiny portion of the plant can be used.

Do you live in Portland or Seattle?

i don't - is the climate good good for hemp or something?

PNW is a good climate for hemp growth. I was thinking about consumer products, though. It is like an alternate reality where it looks like America, but hemp production/consumer goods we’re never nerfed by the Feds.

I bought a hemp t-shirt in the early 1980s. I wore it up to the early noughties. Hemp clothing outlasts cotton and most synthetics in my experience. So is it better? Depends.

> let alone synthetic fibers

Then there is the rayon process and even using the oil to create synthetic fibers

Sorry, but as an owner of a couple hemp T-shirts, it is much better than cotton and infinitely better than synthetics. It wears like iron, it breathes well, it drapes nicely, it has body. The shirts have outlasted generations of ordinary good t-shirts and semisynthetic dress shirts.

Is it sustainable? Yes.

Has recreational drug use given hemp a bad name? Seems like weed users weren't the force behind demonizing it.

As Howard Stern asked 30 years ago - don’t we have enough rope?

Much of the rope market is synthetic fiber. I wouldn't be surprised if many modern ropes spew a cloud of microplastic particles whenever they are bent.

Now think about your fiber-fill pillow.

It was a stupid question then, it is a stupid question now.

But if Howard wants to share his 5 year plans for various industries, I'm sure we'd all love to see how he'd allocate our goods and labor. I'd love to learn which materials car companies use are "cheap enough" now, and don't need to get better, for instance.

Anti drug zealots foster that reputation -- address your ire at them.

As a daily THC/CBD user, these days I switched to an electronic dab rig to minimize unknowns involved in what I'm putting in my lungs. I currently use a Puffco peak pro as well as CO2 extracts. Highly recommend the move for anyone who doesn't trust what's in generic carts.

I know this isn’t Reddit. However, if absurdist or incredibly dry humor is your thing, Tim Heidecker (playing himself) hosts a movie review show that ends up using TCH (for Tom Cruise Heidecker, his late son) that gets 20/19 kids killed. There’s a 4.5 hour straight forward Trial special where Tim is on trial for their deaths (2nd degree).

The entire 4+ hour trial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsn4UxSqr_M It is so boring at times, like a real trial. Amazing.

Day 1 clipped highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWotb3gci0A

—

For the actual topic. Since being legalized in my state. I have only used the vape cartridges too.

I've tried many times to get my friends to sit through this "masterpiece" with me, only a select few have ever made it. It's great to put on in the background though, Tim Heidecker is really good at keeping the rest of his faux jury on their toes.

It's a real luxury to have friends that will sit down for 4.5 hours to watch Tim Heidecker with you. Best I can do is share Tim's Cooking Tips and hope haha.

Yeah for sure. I put it on to sleep when I’m stressed often. Same with an On Cinema without the intros that are too loud.

Gotta love HN hand-wringing about THC. I've done stupid amounts of research on this. I own multiple dab rigs, multiple Volcanos, multiple DTv4, went through .... lots of carts during 2020, etc.

If you are looking to consume concentrate, the solution is quite easy - get an electronic dab rig, take baby dabs. It's the same thing as "vaping" from a cart, but there's no heavy metals, and at least in WA, the quality of raw concentrates is very high. Not as portable as a pen, but also I'm not really trying to be stoned all the time or in public anyway.

What would be something close to a pen in convenience and guaranteed no heavy metals?

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