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From the article it sounds like this is strictly an issue of it not being legal and regulated. The pesticides and contamination are present thanks to the black

by suby 7y ago

From the article it sounds like this is strictly an issue of it not being legal and regulated. The pesticides and contamination are present thanks to the black market. It's absolute insanity in my view. We have people advocating for prohibition over safety concerns which is ironically creating the unsafe conditions in the first place. It's way past time that we legalize it nation wide, provide strict regulations to prevent pesticides / other contaminants from entering the market, and educate people on the dangers of buying from an unregulated black market.

ineedasername 7y ago
In the presence of a black market producing toxic products, prohibition is a reasonable response. Advocating prohibition right now, at the same time that you advocate for legalization & regulation, are not incompatible with each other.
- mullingitover 7y ago
  Prohibition is a failure. It has been for a long time. How much longer do you propose we should keep failing at it before we give up and try a different approach?
  - ptyyy 7y ago
    The 18th Amendment sure did make things more peaceful and everyone totally abided by it, right guys? Right???
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    If you did more than scan for keywords and respond with flame bait, you'd see I'm all for making it legal. But in the meantime, if people are getting sick and dying from using the illegal stuff, it makes sense to avoid it. My point was that the two opinions aren't mutually exclusive.
    - mullingitover 7y ago
      If you were advocating abstaining from black market products your comment would make sense, but saying "keep everything like it is right now" is saying that we should continue to have unregulated product on the market. Best intentions aside, abstinence isn't happening.
      - ineedasername 7y ago
        And where did I say "keep everything as it is" now? Perhaps I should have been clearer: by prohibition in this context, because we already have legal prohibition, i.e., it's against the law, I meant in the vein of abstinence, that we should be telling people "don't do it".
        mullingitover 7y ago
        We don't exactly have prohibition. We have a perverse, contradictory patchwork of state level legalization, federal level prohibition that overrules the state legalization efforts, federal prohibitions on enforcing federal prohibition laws in states that have legalized, and then in some states, outright prohibition (with black market product flowing in every state regardless). It's prohibiting the FDA from providing common-sense regulation to provide safe product. We already tell people "don't do it." That's a failed policy that's producing hundreds of sick people. We need to make harm reduction via regulation the default case.
        ineedasername 7y ago
        "> We need to make harm reduction via regulation the default case." Yes, it seems we basically agree. Which means we're just arguing over my initially poor choice of words. Sorry!
        mullingitover 7y ago
        I had a feeling. No worries, happy Friday :)
- cannaceo 7y ago
  The 'black market' began self-regulating against the use of pesticides back in 2016/2017 before any regulation kicked in. Consumers became aware that pesticides were present in their vape cartridges and retailers started demanding lab results. After being conned a few times the more responsible retailers started randomly testing products on their shelves for pesticides and dropping vendors who tested positive. By mid-2017 it was very difficult to sell products that were testing positive for pesticides in to retailers in northern california. In southern california it was a different story...but the market was beginning to self-regulate. It just took time for cultivators to learn IPM strategies and respond to market demand. Aside from cultivators many manufacturers started to perform large scale chromatography and liquid-liquid extraction to remediate oil contaminated with pesticides...all without government intervention. With legalization they've banned certain pesticides but allowed others. Neem oil and sulfur are very commonly used as part of an integrated pest management strategy in the licensed market. I can tell you I do not feel comfortable inhaling neem oil and personally think the quality of oil in 2017 was better in the black market than what is available today.
  - ryanmarsh 7y ago
    You seem to know a lot about this industry. Do you work in it? What else can you tell us?
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Your argument of self-regulation and lack of government intervention is pretty well undermined by the current situation of hundreds sick and a dozen deaths in a period of months. Sure, the market may correct, but the damage done before that isn't fixed. As for things like neem oil etc., perhaps the current regulations are insufficient, doesn't mean they should be done away with all together. Also, regulation doesn't automatically stop market competition: If the market has corrected the use of pesticides in the past, there's no reason competitors couldn't do so again through market forces above & beyond what the regulations require. Heck, it happens all of the time. The FDA has minimum guidelines for meat grading, but there's plenty of competition on quality, e.g., Angus beef, that is far above the minimum grades required for human consumption. Regulation sets a baseline minimum, not a maximum, and there's an endless number of items that compete on quality much higher than the baseline.
- _yeah 7y ago
  Using the threat of violence to enforce what adults can and can't put into their own bodies never produces a positive outcome. It only creates violence and allows dangerous products to flourish. With all these stories about people dying from fentanyl and fake carts, when have you ever heard of someone having any issues from a bad batch of beer, or even a bad batch of cigarettes?
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  > In the presence of a black market producing toxic products, prohibition is a reasonable response. How do you figure? Prohibition will drive UP black market usage. Why would you do that?
  - throwaway_law 7y ago
    I think he is making a supply/demand economics argument. If you prohibit X, the demand will still be there so a blackmarket will pop up to supply X to meet the demand. However, if the market comes to find that the black market supply of X includes toxins, then the demand would fall. The problem here is the market is irrational and people will continue knowingly buying toxic X from the black market.
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      I'm not saying the demand will fall (I mean, it should rationally but I wasn't making an economic argument) My point was that our message to users should be, "Don't do it while it's toxic, wait until it's safe" where safe is legal & regulated for safety, like with juul-variety vaping, which isn't killing these people.
      - joveian 7y ago
        I'm fairly certain it is not known for sure that Juul isn't killing people. It actually seems to come up often in terms of nocotine products people who get sick are using. That could be just due being a popular brand, but the company is obviously very shady and I wouldn't be surprised if they turn out to be part of the problem. Current regulations seem to be very minimal and not sufficient to establish safety. At first I thought it was overreaction, but I can see why the CDC is saying maybe don't vape for now, especially if you start to have any lung issues (which seems to be about what you are saying except for the last part about Juul being safe).
        ineedasername 7y ago
        Yes, I'm not so hot on Juul either. I don't think it's safe, but as a legal, regulated product it has a certain minimum baseline that these black market products lack. That's all I meant.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ses1984 7y ago
  Prohibition is already in place, hence the black market. How can something that is already in place (and failing) be a response?
mc32 7y ago
The states that legalized it should have found a way to ensure: 1. Vaping [either as delivery system or the liquid itself, or both] were tested rigorously like any drug that wants to go to market[1] 2. They conform to GMP and other measures to ensure purity of product. [1]Because we don’t know what high heat and resultant atomization do to lung tissue when these things are inhaled.
MisterTea 7y ago
> From the article it sounds like this is strictly an issue of it not being legal and regulated. This has nothing to do with regulation or prohibition. Remember fake pentium chips, capacitors, transistors and tons of other electronic components? The simple fact is popular things will be counterfeited and vape cartridges are easy to counterfeit. Counterfeiting is also a problem in legal states too. Unless you are going to a legit shop and spending real money you are most likely getting fake garbage. When cannabis carts came around they were $75 here in NYC for a 1 gram and were tough to get. My first was a nice brass knuckles brand that hit like a mother fucker. Then there was a sudden flood and prices were dropping as low as $35 for a 1 gram and people were suspicious. Then it was even reported back then that counterfeiting was a big problem. When CA legalized a second wave of cartridges came in and we got more brands and again, higher prices around 50-60 for 1 gram. but again, rumors of fakes followed and so called trusted brands like kingpen were vulnerable. Me? I just smoke flower. Can't fake that. Though you can be sold low yield crap or laced stuff but honestly, I haven't heard of that crap in over two decades. Basically that's the kind of shit they pull on unsuspecting high school kids. The worst flower you get nowadays is generic mexican brick weed that smells like plastic wrap.
- mtnGoat 7y ago
  The same pesticides that end up in cartridges came from the flower/material that was used. Flower can also have molds, bugs and other things that a good test would show and people who just "trust" flower would then smoke. Sticking to flower wont keep you safe from anything but vitamin-e in the lungs. More than half the flower I see in NYC is in counterfeit CA/CO/OR/WA packaging, I do not trust its safety. Testing is the solution... all intake methods have their inherent risks.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    >More than half the flower I see in NYC is in counterfeit CA/CO/OR/WA packaging, I do not trust its safety That's fine, your choice and all... But tens (hundreds?) of millions of people have been smoking weed in this country for decades. How many cases of illness due to pesticides have there been? I can recall a few, but it's a tiny, tiny number.
dqpb 7y ago
What's insane is that you want to educate people on the dangers of buying from an unregulated black market, but somehow think there is a safe way to inhale chemicals into your lungs by applying regulation.
- OGWhales 7y ago
  So because it still has some downsides, we should just let it be unregulated and notably more dangerous? I don’t get your point, especially when all the information is pointing to unsafe and non-standard solvents being the cause of these cases.
tomjen3 7y ago
Of course it should be legalized, but until people start voting based on logic and not emotion, that is going to continue being an uphill battle.
cypherpunks01 7y ago
Absolutely. The problem is only going to become much worse now, due to banning sales of legal/regulated products. Relatedly, Massachusetts governor just announced a 4 month total ban on ALL vaporizer products (THC, Nicotine, flavored, unflavored) despite zero Massachusetts vape deaths, so consumers will now be turning either to cigarettes (which kill 1,300 people per DAY nationwide) or black market THC/Nicotine vaporizers which are the very likely causes of the current unknown illnesses and deaths as you mention.
- bsagdiyev 7y ago
  Smoking kills 40k people, per day, in the US? That number seems off. I don't think there are that many births in a day so we'd be losing a lot of people.
  - cypherpunks01 7y ago
    Whoops, misread a stat! Corrected, it's 1,300
    - WhompingWindows 7y ago
      You're performing numerator analysis there. You're comparing deaths irrespective of number of users, never mind their duration/frequency of use. For smokers, this would be pack-years, which is the number of daily packs times the number of years. There's the sheer volume of smokers, probably 10x the number of vapers? Hard to say, I'm not well read on the literature. In any case, comparing numerators here is not good epidemiology, as smokers are far more numerous and have used for far longer/heavier use.
- rbranson 7y ago
  40,000 people per day? Seems a little high.
  - cypherpunks01 7y ago
    Whoops, corrected! it's 1,300, as per CDC https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...
cwkoss 7y ago
The families of those who died from this should file a class action lawsuit against the FDA and/or federal government. The market their regulations created caused these deaths, and could have easily been prevented by ending prohibition.

by suby 7y ago

ineedasername 7y ago

In the presence of a black market producing toxic products, prohibition is a reasonable response. Advocating prohibition right now, at the same time that you advocate for legalization & regulation, are not incompatible with each other.

mullingitover 7y ago
Prohibition is a failure. It has been for a long time. How much longer do you propose we should keep failing at it before we give up and try a different approach?
- ptyyy 7y ago
  The 18th Amendment sure did make things more peaceful and everyone totally abided by it, right guys? Right???
- ineedasername 7y ago
  If you did more than scan for keywords and respond with flame bait, you'd see I'm all for making it legal. But in the meantime, if people are getting sick and dying from using the illegal stuff, it makes sense to avoid it. My point was that the two opinions aren't mutually exclusive.
  - mullingitover 7y ago
    If you were advocating abstaining from black market products your comment would make sense, but saying "keep everything like it is right now" is saying that we should continue to have unregulated product on the market. Best intentions aside, abstinence isn't happening.
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      And where did I say "keep everything as it is" now? Perhaps I should have been clearer: by prohibition in this context, because we already have legal prohibition, i.e., it's against the law, I meant in the vein of abstinence, that we should be telling people "don't do it".
      - mullingitover 7y ago
        We don't exactly have prohibition. We have a perverse, contradictory patchwork of state level legalization, federal level prohibition that overrules the state legalization efforts, federal prohibitions on enforcing federal prohibition laws in states that have legalized, and then in some states, outright prohibition (with black market product flowing in every state regardless). It's prohibiting the FDA from providing common-sense regulation to provide safe product. We already tell people "don't do it." That's a failed policy that's producing hundreds of sick people. We need to make harm reduction via regulation the default case.
        ineedasername 7y ago
        "> We need to make harm reduction via regulation the default case." Yes, it seems we basically agree. Which means we're just arguing over my initially poor choice of words. Sorry!
        mullingitover 7y ago
        I had a feeling. No worries, happy Friday :)
cannaceo 7y ago
The 'black market' began self-regulating against the use of pesticides back in 2016/2017 before any regulation kicked in. Consumers became aware that pesticides were present in their vape cartridges and retailers started demanding lab results. After being conned a few times the more responsible retailers started randomly testing products on their shelves for pesticides and dropping vendors who tested positive. By mid-2017 it was very difficult to sell products that were testing positive for pesticides in to retailers in northern california. In southern california it was a different story...but the market was beginning to self-regulate. It just took time for cultivators to learn IPM strategies and respond to market demand. Aside from cultivators many manufacturers started to perform large scale chromatography and liquid-liquid extraction to remediate oil contaminated with pesticides...all without government intervention. With legalization they've banned certain pesticides but allowed others. Neem oil and sulfur are very commonly used as part of an integrated pest management strategy in the licensed market. I can tell you I do not feel comfortable inhaling neem oil and personally think the quality of oil in 2017 was better in the black market than what is available today.
- ryanmarsh 7y ago
  You seem to know a lot about this industry. Do you work in it? What else can you tell us?
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Your argument of self-regulation and lack of government intervention is pretty well undermined by the current situation of hundreds sick and a dozen deaths in a period of months. Sure, the market may correct, but the damage done before that isn't fixed. As for things like neem oil etc., perhaps the current regulations are insufficient, doesn't mean they should be done away with all together. Also, regulation doesn't automatically stop market competition: If the market has corrected the use of pesticides in the past, there's no reason competitors couldn't do so again through market forces above & beyond what the regulations require. Heck, it happens all of the time. The FDA has minimum guidelines for meat grading, but there's plenty of competition on quality, e.g., Angus beef, that is far above the minimum grades required for human consumption. Regulation sets a baseline minimum, not a maximum, and there's an endless number of items that compete on quality much higher than the baseline.
_yeah 7y ago
Using the threat of violence to enforce what adults can and can't put into their own bodies never produces a positive outcome. It only creates violence and allows dangerous products to flourish. With all these stories about people dying from fentanyl and fake carts, when have you ever heard of someone having any issues from a bad batch of beer, or even a bad batch of cigarettes?
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
> In the presence of a black market producing toxic products, prohibition is a reasonable response. How do you figure? Prohibition will drive UP black market usage. Why would you do that?
- throwaway_law 7y ago
  I think he is making a supply/demand economics argument. If you prohibit X, the demand will still be there so a blackmarket will pop up to supply X to meet the demand. However, if the market comes to find that the black market supply of X includes toxins, then the demand would fall. The problem here is the market is irrational and people will continue knowingly buying toxic X from the black market.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    I'm not saying the demand will fall (I mean, it should rationally but I wasn't making an economic argument) My point was that our message to users should be, "Don't do it while it's toxic, wait until it's safe" where safe is legal & regulated for safety, like with juul-variety vaping, which isn't killing these people.
    - joveian 7y ago
      I'm fairly certain it is not known for sure that Juul isn't killing people. It actually seems to come up often in terms of nocotine products people who get sick are using. That could be just due being a popular brand, but the company is obviously very shady and I wouldn't be surprised if they turn out to be part of the problem. Current regulations seem to be very minimal and not sufficient to establish safety. At first I thought it was overreaction, but I can see why the CDC is saying maybe don't vape for now, especially if you start to have any lung issues (which seems to be about what you are saying except for the last part about Juul being safe).
      - ineedasername 7y ago
        Yes, I'm not so hot on Juul either. I don't think it's safe, but as a legal, regulated product it has a certain minimum baseline that these black market products lack. That's all I meant.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ses1984 7y ago
Prohibition is already in place, hence the black market. How can something that is already in place (and failing) be a response?

mc32 7y ago

The states that legalized it should have found a way to ensure: 1. Vaping [either as delivery system or the liquid itself, or both] were tested rigorously like any drug that wants to go to market[1] 2. They conform to GMP and other measures to ensure purity of product. [1]Because we don’t know what high heat and resultant atomization do to lung tissue when these things are inhaled.

MisterTea 7y ago

> From the article it sounds like this is strictly an issue of it not being legal and regulated. This has nothing to do with regulation or prohibition. Remember fake pentium chips, capacitors, transistors and tons of other electronic components? The simple fact is popular things will be counterfeited and vape cartridges are easy to counterfeit. Counterfeiting is also a problem in legal states too. Unless you are going to a legit shop and spending real money you are most likely getting fake garbage. When cannabis carts came around they were $75 here in NYC for a 1 gram and were tough to get. My first was a nice brass knuckles brand that hit like a mother fucker. Then there was a sudden flood and prices were dropping as low as $35 for a 1 gram and people were suspicious. Then it was even reported back then that counterfeiting was a big problem. When CA legalized a second wave of cartridges came in and we got more brands and again, higher prices around 50-60 for 1 gram. but again, rumors of fakes followed and so called trusted brands like kingpen were vulnerable. Me? I just smoke flower. Can't fake that. Though you can be sold low yield crap or laced stuff but honestly, I haven't heard of that crap in over two decades. Basically that's the kind of shit they pull on unsuspecting high school kids. The worst flower you get nowadays is generic mexican brick weed that smells like plastic wrap.

mtnGoat 7y ago
The same pesticides that end up in cartridges came from the flower/material that was used. Flower can also have molds, bugs and other things that a good test would show and people who just "trust" flower would then smoke. Sticking to flower wont keep you safe from anything but vitamin-e in the lungs. More than half the flower I see in NYC is in counterfeit CA/CO/OR/WA packaging, I do not trust its safety. Testing is the solution... all intake methods have their inherent risks.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  >More than half the flower I see in NYC is in counterfeit CA/CO/OR/WA packaging, I do not trust its safety That's fine, your choice and all... But tens (hundreds?) of millions of people have been smoking weed in this country for decades. How many cases of illness due to pesticides have there been? I can recall a few, but it's a tiny, tiny number.

dqpb 7y ago

What's insane is that you want to educate people on the dangers of buying from an unregulated black market, but somehow think there is a safe way to inhale chemicals into your lungs by applying regulation.

OGWhales 7y ago
So because it still has some downsides, we should just let it be unregulated and notably more dangerous? I don’t get your point, especially when all the information is pointing to unsafe and non-standard solvents being the cause of these cases.

tomjen3 7y ago

Of course it should be legalized, but until people start voting based on logic and not emotion, that is going to continue being an uphill battle.

cypherpunks01 7y ago

Absolutely. The problem is only going to become much worse now, due to banning sales of legal/regulated products. Relatedly, Massachusetts governor just announced a 4 month total ban on ALL vaporizer products (THC, Nicotine, flavored, unflavored) despite zero Massachusetts vape deaths, so consumers will now be turning either to cigarettes (which kill 1,300 people per DAY nationwide) or black market THC/Nicotine vaporizers which are the very likely causes of the current unknown illnesses and deaths as you mention.

bsagdiyev 7y ago
Smoking kills 40k people, per day, in the US? That number seems off. I don't think there are that many births in a day so we'd be losing a lot of people.
- cypherpunks01 7y ago
  Whoops, misread a stat! Corrected, it's 1,300
  - WhompingWindows 7y ago
    You're performing numerator analysis there. You're comparing deaths irrespective of number of users, never mind their duration/frequency of use. For smokers, this would be pack-years, which is the number of daily packs times the number of years. There's the sheer volume of smokers, probably 10x the number of vapers? Hard to say, I'm not well read on the literature. In any case, comparing numerators here is not good epidemiology, as smokers are far more numerous and have used for far longer/heavier use.
rbranson 7y ago
40,000 people per day? Seems a little high.
- cypherpunks01 7y ago
  Whoops, corrected! it's 1,300, as per CDC https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...

cwkoss 7y ago

The families of those who died from this should file a class action lawsuit against the FDA and/or federal government. The market their regulations created caused these deaths, and could have easily been prevented by ending prohibition.