President Donald Trump announced yesterday he wants to ban the sale of flavoured vaping products to protect young people from the dangers of e-cigarettes. Typical for him, the guy is as careful as a bull in a china shop, going after an entire industry on the basis of flimsy, incomplete information.
And if this goes through, there are going to be some innocent bystanders hurt in the crossfire.
For example, Vapen MJ Ventures (VAPN.C), which announced today that their vaping products don’t contain vitamin E acetate, the chemical widely believed to be the culprit in the 450 cases and four (and counting) deaths from vape products.
“The health and safety of our customers is our greatest concern and at Vapen MJ we strive to produce clean and safe products subject to rigorous testing and compliance. In addition, we hold all our suppliers and partners to the highest compliance standards. We operate in a regulated industry and believe that the longevity of our business is tied to compliance with the regulations and requirements that allow legal and regulated cannabis,” said Thai Nguyen, founder and CEO of Vapen MJ.
The company doesn’t offer a nicotine product, and its e-juice is made of 100% distilled cannabis oil with a small amount of terpenes for flavour and strains that do not contain vitamin E acetate. They’re a completely vertically integrated business throughout all the products the company produces, including flower, edibles, concentrates and manufacturing processes, each intentionally designed to ensure the product is safe, consistent and clean.
They went to each of their suppliers to make sure that the various diluting and thickening agents commonly found in black market products are not used in any of their products. And they’re not.
“When there are black market products that aren’t sold through a dispensary, they’re possibly cutting it with whatever they want to cut it with so they can get a higher profit margin. And some of those things aren’t supposed to be ingested, and it’s not the right way to do it, so no. We’ve seen no problems with ours and we are making the same assumption that many people are making that these black market items that are not using the proper ingredients are the ones causing the trouble,” said Bob Brilon, CFO of Vapen MJ in an interview with Equity Guru.
Their latest patent-pending product doesn’t even use heat as a propellant, but instead a technology borrowed from traditional asthma inhalers.
Here’s what we wrote about it last month:
Vapen’s inhalers offer a safe, easy-to-use alternative to smoking or using edibles to consume THC or CBD products. No burning lung and no health complications. The inhaler offers a pressurized, metered 10 milligram (mg) dose of pharmaceutical grade THC or CBD isolate.
There’s no need for a widespread sweeping ban here, or even on the flavoured nicotine based products that may be producing the problem. At least not while the jury’s out on the cause of the medical emergencies. For right now the market is regulated enough.
Especially when their product does some actual good for the community.
“We here in Arizona are actually a medical state still, and we go by some pretty strict guidelines and we’ve seen only positive results from people getting involved with us. It’s getting them off of percocet and opioids, and we think that’s a good thing,” Brilon said.
So do we.
—Joseph Morton
Full disclosure: Vapen MJ Ventures is an equity.guru marketing client.
