False advertisement, contamination, mislabeling, counterfeit packaging, risk of legal trouble, inconsistent potency and in some cases, deadly additives are just a few of the risks you run into when purchasing cannabinoids from the black market. Basically, your dealer is lying to you. Aside from the potential danger of blind consumption, there is also the fact that you could be consuming a cannabinoid completely different than intended. Street dealers are counting on consumers to not know the difference yet pay the premium.
The process to isolate these cannabinoids requires cumbersome, expensive,equipment-equipment typically not accessible to your local trap house. This bait and switch tactic used by dealers to keep up with the regulated market leads to distrust within the industry. With the frequency of headlines reporting on record overdose numbers, it is a wonder that anyone trusts their dealer. With street drugs, you never truly know what you’re going to get. You can be promised the purist snow and risk consuming fentanyl. While dealer dishonesty with cannabis products may not quite be as immediately devastating as unknowingly consuming fentanyl, it is still worth taking a closer look. By purchasing edibles, vapes or even flower from a dealer you are risking consuming pesticides, by-products of extraction methods, heavy metal contaminants, and let’s not even get into the mold problems. Overtime, the accumulation of any one of these silent additives can lead to some serious health concerns. The benefit of buying extracted cannabinoids from reputable companies is that they are required to submit their batches of distillateor finished goodsto independent labs for comprehensive testing. Each batch is tested for cannabinoid composition, potency and the presence of heavy metals, pesticides, residual solvents, moisture, and microbials.
Don’t be fooled by fancy packing. When buying from a dealer, often, the nicely packaged products you are receiving are using counterfeit packaging. They are stealing packaging designs from brands in the regulated market. The issue with this is? The claims on the packaging do not accurately represent what you are consuming. To avoid this pitfall and to ensure you are getting genuine products; check for a company website, ensure you are purchasing from a reputable source, and look for things like lot numbers and updated lab reports. Have you ever eaten an infusedgummy and not felt anything? Or the opposite, it hit too hard? The potency variation of street cannabinoids is unreliable and leads to poor experiences. When you purchase products from a reputable company, you are provided with an exact concentration and dosage to ensure you are only taking as much or as little as you plan. When you purchase a pack of 25mg Delta8 gummies from your favorite brand, you can assure you are getting 25mg per serving by verified batch testing that breaks down the percentage and concentration of each cannabinoid present in the product. When purchasing from the black market, you do not get that guarantee. To prove this point, we brought a batch of dealer purchased gummies to an independent lab for testing and found a range of variance from 10-30mg of Delta8 present in each gummy that were advertised as 25mg. Why risk facing legal consequences for purchasing street drugs when you can purchase better quality products from a local store or even more conveniently ordered online and delivered to your door?
Hemp derived cannabinoids are federally legal under the 2018 Farm Bill (except for a few states that have voted to ban it). While many states have made recreational cannabis legal or decriminalized, there are still laws prohibiting the unregulated distribution of marijuana resulting in fines and/or jail time. Cities like Toronto and Amsterdam provide free testing of any street drug for consumer safety. Unfortunately, we have not seen such public health initiatives make their way state-side. Until then, play it safe and steer away from black market drugs and purchase from reputable companies when possible. When enjoying cannabinoids, the only risk worth taking is the risk of finishing the whole bag of chips.
