Marijuana Business Magazine February 2020

Marijuana Business Magazine | February 2020 52 Authorities in Kenosha, Wisconsin, found more than 31,000 illicit marijuana vape cartridges traced to the vaping crisis in September. Courtesy Photo too cool, the company will go back to the manufacturer and work with that company to fix the problem. “We’ll work with manufacturers to dial-in the parameters of those devices,” Ingram said. CERAMIC COILS PRAISED Like a growing number of cannabis companies, Cresco Labs uses cartridges that employ ceramic heating coils rather than metal heating elements, which were prevalent until a few years ago. Ceramic heating elements are consid- ered superior because they don’t conduct heat as strongly as metal, and therefore there is far less chance that vaped oils will taste burnt. Another advantage is that, because ceramic withstands higher tem- peratures better than metal, there is no oxidation and the ceramic coils last longer. Most ceramic cartridges, including those used in the U.S. cannabis industry, are produced by CCell, a company founded in Shenzhen, China, in 2015 by its e-cigarette parent, Smoore Technology. CCell has only a small number of distributors in the United States, including KushCo Holdings, 3Win Corp. and Jupiter Research. “We do a tremendous amount of due diligence on who we buy from,” said Jason Vegotsky, president of Cypress, Califor- nia-based KushCo Holdings. The firm has seven employees in China who visit the CCell factory at least quarterly, he said. “ We have procedures that we go through when we visit these factories. We need copies of their certifications; we don’t just take it from hearsay,” Vegotsky said. “We have employees there to make sure nothing goes awry when we’re not looking. It takes a real partnership with your factory to be able to produce qual- ity, on-time goods all the time. And that takes money.” DOUBTS RAISED While ceramic technology is prevalent in the industry, it also is not without critics. One rival cartridge tank company, Shenzhen-based Uwell, suggested that ceramic coils it tested had possible contaminants, while ceramic dust from the coils could be hazardous if inhaled. Some industry experts dismiss such assertions, but others recommend caution. “The truth is, we need better testing of ceramic coils to really put this (safety) issue to bed,” Lee Johnson, a vape hardware reviewer in the United Kingdom, wrote in a blog sponsored by Black Note, a tobacco vaping liquid company in Irvine, California. “For now, it’s still very possible that there is a risk to using ceramic coils over the long term, although it’s likely true that occasional vaping using one won’t cause any issues.”