If you use vape, then you probably are confused about which products are safe and which products are not. Luckily, mature cannabis markets like Colorado have already figured all the best in class products for you, all of which you can find on the shelves at Trenchtown and have been tested for years. In fact, this week the CDC identified vitamin E acetate as the likely culprit in vaping-related lung illness, a cutting agent never found in any of our products. We take great pride in ensuring that the products we carry are clean. It’s what sets us apart from our competitors. Please do not even consider vape oils from the black market.

Here are some common FAQs from one of our Vape vendors, Lucky Turtle.

1) We do not add any additives such as Vitamin E acetate to any of our vape oils.  Companies are using Vitamin E acetate to make thinned out oils appear thicker.  It is used more commonly in skin creams.

2) We only add natural terpenes to our products for synergistic effects – not as a diluent. We extract 100% of the cannabis-based terpenes ourselves using only subcritical and supercritical CO2 extractionon.  We extract only high quality trim we source ourselves.  The CO2 extraction process is a safe and highly effective method for keeping terpenes in their natural state, maintaining the original integrity of the plant inside our oils. In some of our products, we also use small amounts of botanical terpenes that are certified free of any additives and solvents free.  We do not use any synthetic terpenes!

3) We do not add any thinners or thickeners.  Common thinners included polyethylene glycol (PEG), vegetable glycerin (VG) or medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) oil.  While safe to ingest, the safety profile of these additives when inhaled/aerosolized is unknown. 

4) We only use one ingredient in our primary extraction process: CO2, the same gas you exhale with every breath. This is the safest and most sustainable extraction solvent for cannabis presently.

5) We only use ethanol in a four-step winterization process through our Advanced Biotech Filtration process. We have designed a process that importantly removes all waxes and lipids. Excessive lipid content in the final extract can lead to lipoid pneoumonia symptoms.  We also don’t use any harmful hydrocarbon solvents used by other manufacturers.  While these solvents are more efficient at wax removal (chemicals such as hexane and heptane) they are toxic and potentially carcinogenic.  We won’t touch them.  Our ethanol is removed (and recycled) in our final processing steps.

Are There Heavy Metals In Your Vape Hardware?  Do They Come From China?

Currently, all our vape cartridges come from China.  It’s the sole source for all vape hardware in the world right now. There’s no US manufacturers, only a handful that claim “US made” but they’re only assembled in the United States.  Components are still manufactured in China.

We trust our hardware vendor and have performed on-site inspections of their facility.  Our vendor provides heavy metal testing for their hardware.  We are ahead of the curve from a regulatory standpoint.  More importantly, we are ahead of the curve from a product quality and safety standpoint.

Additionally, we use glass tanks with ceramic coils on all our vapes.  This is important because plastics, especially with the higher temperatures and longer exposure times that occur with vape cartridges, have the potential to leach harmful compounds.  Most compounds that leach from plastics are characterized for safety through toxicity safety assessments.  Toxicity safety assessments are far better defined for injection and ingestion than for inhalation.  Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars every year running extractable/leachable studies on plastics to ensure patient safety.  Running studies like these was part of our founder’s scientific background.  We avoid plastics in our vape hardware because of this potential problem.  Glass is safe.  Ceramic is safe.  Leachables from plastics and wicks in vape hardware are unknown.