Conflation could be catastrophic for the legal Cannabis industry
Two startling events recently happened. The rise of youth vaping became of national interest, with a Center for Disease Control study showing youth tobacco consumption up 38% between 2017 to 2018, and the primary form of consumption was flavored e-cigarettes. The second is that dangerous additives in black market THC cartridges are causing people across the country to suffer from severe respiratory illnesses—killing 13. These are serious issues, these are separate issues, and the government should not conflate their analysis into one blunt solution applied to both. Doing so could be catastrophic for the legal Cannabis industry and ineffective in addressing the tainted THC issue.
These are separate issues and require different solutions.
The flavored tobacco question is how to address teenagers consuming tobacco at rising and alarming rates. That debate involves recognizing the benefits of America having a historically low percentage of cigarette smokers (14%) as a result largely of people ditching cigarettes for flavored e-cigarettes. It also involves weighing that positive against the millions of young people, at a vulnerable age for forming life-long habits, that are consuming tobacco they would not have except for flavored e-cigarettes. A rational, although extreme, result of that debate could be to remove e-cigarettes from the market entirely.
The THC policy issue is about keeping people safe from illegal cartridges that have life-threatening additives. In the short-term this means addressing the immediate health crisis. More broadly, this means addressing the black market, and why it's alive and well—especially in states with legalized adult use. The federal government must reconsider legalization, which would give it a regulatory voice in what should not be allowed in cartridges. And the state and municipal governments in legalized areas have an urgency to collaborate on policy with cannabis industry experts on how to address the science. So far, it appears the legal Cannabis industry wants its customers to be safe and must put its product through testing, which would explain why none of the tainted cartridges came from legitimate manufacturing or retail sources. And so it would not be a rational result of this debate to ban legally manufactured and sold THC vaporizers.
Political Leadership Conflating
However, some states are banning vaporizers entirely—tobacco and THC. Predictably, in those cases, the governors are conflating the two issues. Banning the legal sale of e-cigarettes is a rational solution to addressing the youth tobacco issue—no e-cigarettes means no ability for teens to get their hands on them. But banning the legal sales of THC vaporizers has no bearing on illicit black market material that has solely been responsible for the health crisis, and could probably contribute to growing the black market’s role. Nor does banning legal sales of THC affect youth consumption of tobacco. The two issues are only linked because vaporizing is a shared delivery system.
Looking at the two governors’ statements that have either completely banned vaporizers or called for a total ban, their reasoning conflates the THC and youth tobacco issues. Here is a clip of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announcing a ban on all vaporizes and at 2:12 he goes from talking about respiratory illness to statistics on rising youth tobacco consumption, and again he conflates the two at 3:20. Washington State Governor Jay Inslee said about his order to ban all vaporizers "We don’t have evidence at the moment that the flavoring chemistry itself is the reason for the disease. But it is the reason for the disease in the first place because it is hooking our kids on the product . . . ”
Even President Trump conflated the issues when he said in this clip calling for a federal crackdown on vaporizing "We can’t allow people to get sick and we can’t let our youth get so effected.
Banning THC Vaporizers is Catastrophic
This is a serious problem for the pro-Cannabis community. Vaporizers make up 30-40% of the market share. That's billions of dollars. Statewide bans would bankrupt companies that have millions of units of worthless product because they also can’t ship them to legal states. Consumers of Cannabis also lose, with so many opting for the cleaner, less smelly, and more mellow high that comes with vaporizing that it displaced flower as the #1 form of consumption.
Next Steps Going Forward
The pro-Cannabis community must engage now with its elected officials and be singularly focused on protecting legal THC vaporizers from broad regulation that should address only youth flavored tobacco vaping. That means the pro-Cannabis community should take no position on what the government should do about the rise of youth tobacco consumption and leave this fight to the pro and anti-tobacco interests.
The pro-Cannabis community must also be vocal that the government needs to develop meaningful policies to address the black Cannabis market. It should help the government answer the questions of what it could do to use economics and the legal industry as a partner to snuff out the black market, instead of relying solely on traditional law enforcement. It should work with regulators to develop a standard testing processes for labs. And finally the pro-Cannabis community should be openly working with the government to develop safeguards for consumers, as the government does with every legal consumable product.
Just because two startling events happened at the same time doesn’t mean they should have the same solution. It is incumbent on leaders in the pro-Cannabis community to be prudent and active in turning this challenge into a new opportunity.
