GreenLeaf Nov 2021

material or made into vaporizer cartridges. In the case
of spice, the plant material itself could be dangerous
to smoke but thankfully, Delta-8 is sprayed onto hemp
flowers which are relatively more safe. flowers which
are relatively more safe.
It all gets shady and potentially unsafe due to the
complete lack of any kind of oversight to the market.
This comes at more of a cost than just the potential of
harming your customers - but that alone should be
reason enough to drop delta-8 like a bad habit. If it’s
not, consider that you may be risking the entire legalization
effort by marketing and selling dangerous,
unregulated products within the context of the overall
cannabis industry. We all know there are special interest
groups that would love to reverse the course of the
recent wave of new legal cannabis laws. The last thing
we should be doing is giving them any fodder at all to
use in their empty anti-cannabis rhetoric. Especially
for a few bucks...
They only see $$$
While there are certainly people making delta-8
products as safely as possible, it is sadly impossible to
guarantee consistency and quality in a completely unregulated
space. There are a number of companies that
lie about testing or use lab results from other people’s
products to pass off as their own. There are questionable
health claims made by some and outright false
ones made by others. It can all be very confusing to
the naive consumer who is looking for a way into the
cannabis world that has been slowly opening up over
the past two decades and extremely profitable to those
who take advantage of them. So many of these companies
could care less about the safety of their products
so long as:
A) It’s legal, even technically
- and -
B) It’s extremely profitable.
Too many of these “bad apples” have saturated the
market and make a bad name for the few that are
trying to do things right and safely. It’s impossible to
name them all since they will just continue to pop up
so long as there is money to be made riding the wave.
That being said, here’s a list of brands that should be
avoided at all costs because of their very clear lack of
testing:
1. Catskill Hemp Co
2. Cloud 8
3. Cosmo
4. Delta XL
5. Earthbound Hempz
6. Miracle Leaf
7. Palm Trees
8. Puff Delta 8
9. Saliv-8
10. Straight 8
11. Turnt
12. Your Cure CBD
13. Z.E.N.
The Welcomed Crackdown
Several states have now banned the sale of delta-8
products. The most surprising thing to me early on was
that the states that were taking action first were New
York, Colorado and Nevada - all states that had voted
to legalize cannabis for medicinal and recreational use.
This was another sign that something wasn’t quite right
with delta-8. Then came the giant sting and consequent
shut-down of Champs in Las Vegas back in July
of this year. Undercover police, FBI and DEA agents
were present at the event. They were looking for people
selling (or even sampling) delta-8 products. When they
found them, they shut the entire event down early and
kept it closed until the next day after all vendors with
delta-8 had been charged and/or removed.
As of this writing, 16 states total have either restricted
or outright banned delta-8 products. Even in light of
all that, the battle to suppress the manufacture and
sale of synthetic cannabinoids like delta-8 and spice
has been largely ineffective. It is cheap to produce,
extremely easy to purchase almost anywhere in the US
and Europe, and virtually impossible to prevent people
from buying and selling online. But there is one way
that regulators could deter people from buying synthetic
ganja knock offs for good - simply legalize the
real thing.
A Side Effect of Ongoing Prohibition
The solution to all of this, of course, is federal cannabis
legalization. If the naturally grown cannabis, with
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