Posted on 04/18/2014 12:30:52 PM PDT by Drango
It's a sunny afternoon at Kelly's Collective, a medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, and Nikki Esquibel is getting stoned. But you wouldn't know it. Nikki Esquibel, 19, has a medical prescription for marijuana. She uses a vaporizer pen around her neighborhood in Los Angeles.
The 19-year-old, who has a medical prescription for marijuana, is "smoking" pot with a handheld vaporizer, or a vape pen. It's sleek, black, and virtually indistinguishable from a high-end e-cigarette.
That's the point, says Esquibel. "I use it mostly around my neighborhood. It's easy to hide." The vapor coming from the device doesn't even have an odor.
Discretion, it turns out, makes for good money. While have been grabbing the headlines, the vape pen industry has been quietly ballooning. And it's reshaping the business and culture of marijuana.
The latest versions of e-cigarettes contain a battery-powered heating element that vaporizes a liquid containing nicotine. Vape pens for pot use the same mechanism, but the devices are optimized to vaporize the active molecules in concentrated marijuana oils, not nicotine. And just as with e-cigs, there's no fire or smoke.
Pot users are flocking to the pens: One out 3 reviews on , the Yelp of the pot world, are about vaping marijuana. Vaporizer pens use marijuana concentrates or "hash oil" — a viscous, yellow resin chemically extracted from the plant.
Vaporizer pens use marijuana concentrates or "hash oil" — a viscous, yellow resin chemically extracted from the plant.
The pen doesn't carry the stigma or notoriety of a bong or joint, says Todd Mitchem, an executive at O.pen Vape, which sells its products on the West Coast and in Colorado.
"We are getting people buying vape pens who wouldn't normally come into a [marijuana] dispensary," he tells Shots. "Now, all of a sudden, they have an alternative [to smoking pot]," he adds.
Two years ago, Chris Folkerts was selling vape pens out of the trunk of his car. Today his company has 6,000 square feet of prime real estate in central Los Angeles.
"You could never get your mom to hit a bong," he says. "But your mom would potentially hit a G Pen. My mom did. My grandmother did too! And I have god-fearing Christian grandparents from the Midwest. When they tried it, I knew I was onto something."
Most vape pens don't actually vaporize the marijuana plant. They're loaded with marijuana concentrates or "hash oil:" a viscous, yellow resin chemically extracted from the plant. In many places, that extraction often occurs in somebody's kitchen — which can be .
And the concentrates can be strong. Really, really strong. Marijuana leaves usually contain about 25 percent THC, the psychoactive chemical that makes you feel high. But the concentrates can contain up to 90 percent THC. Esquibel says she almost fainted when she tried her first hit.
Those high THC levels worry , executive director of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws, a nonprofit lobbying group working to broadly legalize marijuana use.
The teenage years are the last golden opportunity to build a healthy brain, researchers say. So smoking pot might not be so smart.
"Between the fact that you can potentially pass out with a single inhalation, or you can have such property damage and potential bodily harm just producing it ... these [issues of the vape pen] definitely need to be addressed," he says. "This is a screaming call for regulation if there ever was one."
Most states, such as California, that allow the sale and use of medical marijuana don't have rules on the books about marijuana concentrates or about vaping the substance. California is considering a on concentrates, while Colorado and Washington allow them. The sale and use of vape pens is legal in every state.
And what about the health effects of vaping pot compared to smoking it?
"The problem is that, right now, it's hard to tell how much [THC] you are actually getting when you take a puff of one of these things," says , who studies marijuana laws and policies at the University of California, Los Angeles. "The risk of getting wrecked is a lot higher."
And given that the output of vape pens is odorless, Kleiman is also concerned about what the rising popularity of the devices means for parents and teachers.
"For them this will be a nightmare," he tells Shots. "If I am running a school or a house and I have a nose, I can tell if my kids are smoking pot. But if they're using a vape pen, forget about it.
Perfect.
I have to watch *everything* and *everyone*.
I don’t even trust green lights.
I check both ways before going through.
We have a fairly low incident of drunk drivers here, now that the smoking ban has shut down most of the bars.
Drug use is up, though.
But it's not 'Vape" vape.
People who would not tool around smoking a real joint could be emboldened by the security of not looking like they’re smoking a real joint.
You *know* there are people eager to abuse whatever loophole they find.
I favor one strike laws.
If I can stand life sober, so can everybody else.
I was just reading comments on the local news site that pot, unlike cigarettes, does not harm lungs or cause cancer.
A report just came out showing that it does both, *much* worse than cigarettes.
I’m sure I’ll be mauled for saying that.
Not that I care.
“By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted.”
“When the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden’s face in an expression of rapt attention.”
“Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny.”
Give the sheep grass.
They’ll be complacent and content...and much easier to control.
You shouldn't get mauled for saying it. You should get mauled if you just accepted it as accurate without looking into any further.
Well, I did.
Are you always that gullible?
The psychotropic effects of THC end within a few hours with vaping or smoking and within about 12-16 hours with oral ingestion. Detectable MJ metabolites exist for longer, but aren't psychoactive.
Just as the man who killed his wife from eating pot cookies, just as the suicide kid who jumped to his death after eating pot laced cookies. .
The high doses in edibles are a real problem. They should be cut by at least 75% per item. This should be regulated just as is beer %alcohol, etc.
One good thing about MJ is that a user tends to "never do that again" after getting too high a dose. Very different from alcohol, where the dose over time tends to go higher even after a bad experience (except for me, I threw up once and quit forever)
Just as I don’t bicker with liberals, I do not discourse with dope defenders.
No matter what evidence is presented, they will unfailingly claim it’s “bogus”.
:)
Pot has gone GMO.
LOL
Then you wasted your time reading the report. Nothing it said was going to make any difference one way or the other.
You have no idea what it even said.
Thanks for making my point.
THC does not leave the system never to return. THC, particularly repeated use, does destroy brain capacity and function.
It is the old but true line, “use pot and nothing will happen to you.” and you continue to be nothing.
It is real simple pot smokers should not be allowed to drive at all. period.
I don't have to know that to know that if it had said the exact opposite you wouldn't have believed it.
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