4 ms·

I suspect it will be a tough job to get rid of these. You can go on Ali express or similar and you will find thousands of sellers selling packaging for every im

I suspect it will be a tough job to get rid of these. You can go on Ali express or similar and you will find thousands of sellers selling packaging for every imaginable brand. It's a bit of a plague, since the way this works is that black market sellers will buy fake packaging and normal candies that match. They will then spray them with THC distillate, and package them in the fake branded packaging. Each pack is typically marked with a dosage (usually 300mg or higher). Of course, the people making these have absolutely no idea how strong they are. Cursory analysis online showed that typically such a pack would have less than 30mg of THC. This then leads to second order effects such as when consumers become accustomed to "eating 300mg" and then try and eat a correctly dosed edible for the same amount. This can be very unpleasant, a typical dose for a single person is 10mg.

ipsum2 5y ago
I didn't know THC infused foods were so easy to make. Sounds like people should just skip the middle man and spray the distillate on candy themselves, and probably(?) save on huge markup.
- Wirerack 5y ago
  THC infused foods are actually quite simple to make, and no spraying is needed. THC is fat soluble so at the most basic level, infusing butter with cannabis flower will yield cannabutter which can then be used as a substitute for butter in just about any dish eg. The classic pot brownies you hear of. The only complexity is dosing, which can be somewhat estimated if you can guess the potency of the flower. It's all a bit back of the napkin math, but you can get a decent estimate. One of my side projects (learning Vue.js) was a edible calculator for doing just this: http://www.scientificedibles.com http://www.scientificedibles.com
  - whateveracct 5y ago
    That calculator is very nice!
  - mkaic 5y ago
    I actually know the CEO of a startup (called tCheck) that's selling pocket spectrometers for measuring butter (and other cannabis infused ingredients) potency quickly and accurately -- I got to tour their lab once, it's some pretty cool tech!
  - ipsum2 5y ago
    It seems like spraying some Skittles would be easier than spending time baking brownies, but I have no experience in this area.
    - Wirerack 5y ago
      Spraying is easy Yes, but getting the distillate to do it with is more complicated. You need to basically do the same process by either emulating it by infusing alcohol, or buy distillate outright which is much harder to find. My guess is a lot of these fake eibles actually exist in legal states, where distillate can be found easily. These fake products rely on the consumer being unaware of the fakeness, overstating the dosage (300mg) and under dosing the actual edibles by diluting the distillate spray to reduce costs.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    THC is also alcohol soluble, forming the basis of most tinctures and mouth sprays. Also scary names like “green dragon”, which are just higher volume alcohol based solutions that should probably not be consumed by anyone who doesn’t plan to get extraordinarily fucked up.
  - mtreis86 5y ago
    Slight bit of complexity there, THC-A usually needs to be decarboxylated into THC via heating to a certain temperature before infusion or the resulting butter is pretty mild.
    - Wirerack 5y ago
      Yeah I didn't mention that in the interest of brevity. Decarb is definitely necessary.
berndi 5y ago
You would be lucky if any actual THC is involved, nowadays its mostly synthetic semi-legal cannabinoids in the black market, at least in Germany (apparently even in some coffee shops in the Netherlands). The market desperately needs to be regulated.
- ryanlol 5y ago
  This is utter nonsense scaremongering. Synthetic cannabinoid products exist, but they’re not commonly sold as anything but synthetic cannabinoids.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    This isn’t scaremongering where synthetic drugs are commonly sold in shops where they’re competing with non-synthetic drugs sold on the street, and constantly dodging regulation by reformulating every time a formula is classified.
    - ryanlol 5y ago
      It is scaremongering. Synthetic cannabinoids are commonly sold, but they are not commonly sold as cannabis as berndi suggests.
      - nougatbyte 5y ago
        Where I live in Germany it may not be the norm but I also came across it several times. Nasty stuff if you suspect something different
      - detritus 5y ago
        Here in the UK years back, unscrupulous growers sprayed the silicate-based additive used in road paintmarkings for reflectivity, as when applied to the buds it made it look like they were of incredibly high quality. This was not scaremongering, I bought some myself. Twice. I have connections with people in the old synthetic cannabinoid industry and know how cheap that shit is to buy and how easy it is to order from China, so I don't see in any way it being a stretch of the imagination to envisage people growing poor quality weed and adding to it.
londons_explore 5y ago
> You can go on Ali express or similar and you will find thousands of sellers selling packaging for every imaginable brand. Any country could simply tell AliExpress to purge all those listings from their platform. They could threaten to inspect all AliExpress packages at the border till it was done. Inspecting all AliExpress packages (which are pretty identifyable since they all have 'null' printed on the label due to a long-standing bug) would take months for even a single days trade. That would kill AliExpress as a platform, so I'm pretty sure they'd comply.
- Wirerack 5y ago
  1. No-one cares to enforce this. As always, it's usually a gray-area at best. It's not going to win any votes. 2. It would just lead to other work arounds.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    Getting AliExpress to hand over a list of buyers of 1000 packs of edible bags might be a good way to audit that all those people are paying the right taxes on what they sell... Could prove pretty profitable for government!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 5y ago
  I’ll give you three guesses how many shits governments give about pot heads buying crappy pot.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    This makes me wonder, where are the lobbyists/interest groups? Local e-commerce platforms are losing non-negligible amounts of money when people are ordering on AliExpress instead of locally - surely they have every incentive to pressure their respective governments to make AliExpress orders more expensive? On the other hand, maybe they are lobbying for their cause, but all the dropshippers are lobbying even harder in favor of AliExpress?

ipsum2 5y ago

I didn't know THC infused foods were so easy to make. Sounds like people should just skip the middle man and spray the distillate on candy themselves, and probably(?) save on huge markup.

Wirerack 5y ago
THC infused foods are actually quite simple to make, and no spraying is needed. THC is fat soluble so at the most basic level, infusing butter with cannabis flower will yield cannabutter which can then be used as a substitute for butter in just about any dish eg. The classic pot brownies you hear of. The only complexity is dosing, which can be somewhat estimated if you can guess the potency of the flower. It's all a bit back of the napkin math, but you can get a decent estimate. One of my side projects (learning Vue.js) was a edible calculator for doing just this: http://www.scientificedibles.com http://www.scientificedibles.com
- whateveracct 5y ago
  That calculator is very nice!
- mkaic 5y ago
  I actually know the CEO of a startup (called tCheck) that's selling pocket spectrometers for measuring butter (and other cannabis infused ingredients) potency quickly and accurately -- I got to tour their lab once, it's some pretty cool tech!
- ipsum2 5y ago
  It seems like spraying some Skittles would be easier than spending time baking brownies, but I have no experience in this area.
  - Wirerack 5y ago
    Spraying is easy Yes, but getting the distillate to do it with is more complicated. You need to basically do the same process by either emulating it by infusing alcohol, or buy distillate outright which is much harder to find. My guess is a lot of these fake eibles actually exist in legal states, where distillate can be found easily. These fake products rely on the consumer being unaware of the fakeness, overstating the dosage (300mg) and under dosing the actual edibles by diluting the distillate spray to reduce costs.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  THC is also alcohol soluble, forming the basis of most tinctures and mouth sprays. Also scary names like “green dragon”, which are just higher volume alcohol based solutions that should probably not be consumed by anyone who doesn’t plan to get extraordinarily fucked up.
- mtreis86 5y ago
  Slight bit of complexity there, THC-A usually needs to be decarboxylated into THC via heating to a certain temperature before infusion or the resulting butter is pretty mild.
  - Wirerack 5y ago
    Yeah I didn't mention that in the interest of brevity. Decarb is definitely necessary.

berndi 5y ago

You would be lucky if any actual THC is involved, nowadays its mostly synthetic semi-legal cannabinoids in the black market, at least in Germany (apparently even in some coffee shops in the Netherlands). The market desperately needs to be regulated.

ryanlol 5y ago
This is utter nonsense scaremongering. Synthetic cannabinoid products exist, but they’re not commonly sold as anything but synthetic cannabinoids.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  This isn’t scaremongering where synthetic drugs are commonly sold in shops where they’re competing with non-synthetic drugs sold on the street, and constantly dodging regulation by reformulating every time a formula is classified.
  - ryanlol 5y ago
    It is scaremongering. Synthetic cannabinoids are commonly sold, but they are not commonly sold as cannabis as berndi suggests.
    - nougatbyte 5y ago
      Where I live in Germany it may not be the norm but I also came across it several times. Nasty stuff if you suspect something different
    - detritus 5y ago
      Here in the UK years back, unscrupulous growers sprayed the silicate-based additive used in road paintmarkings for reflectivity, as when applied to the buds it made it look like they were of incredibly high quality. This was not scaremongering, I bought some myself. Twice. I have connections with people in the old synthetic cannabinoid industry and know how cheap that shit is to buy and how easy it is to order from China, so I don't see in any way it being a stretch of the imagination to envisage people growing poor quality weed and adding to it.

londons_explore 5y ago

> You can go on Ali express or similar and you will find thousands of sellers selling packaging for every imaginable brand. Any country could simply tell AliExpress to purge all those listings from their platform. They could threaten to inspect all AliExpress packages at the border till it was done. Inspecting all AliExpress packages (which are pretty identifyable since they all have 'null' printed on the label due to a long-standing bug) would take months for even a single days trade. That would kill AliExpress as a platform, so I'm pretty sure they'd comply.

Wirerack 5y ago
1. No-one cares to enforce this. As always, it's usually a gray-area at best. It's not going to win any votes. 2. It would just lead to other work arounds.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Getting AliExpress to hand over a list of buyers of 1000 packs of edible bags might be a good way to audit that all those people are paying the right taxes on what they sell... Could prove pretty profitable for government!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
simonh 5y ago
I’ll give you three guesses how many shits governments give about pot heads buying crappy pot.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  This makes me wonder, where are the lobbyists/interest groups? Local e-commerce platforms are losing non-negligible amounts of money when people are ordering on AliExpress instead of locally - surely they have every incentive to pressure their respective governments to make AliExpress orders more expensive? On the other hand, maybe they are lobbying for their cause, but all the dropshippers are lobbying even harder in favor of AliExpress?