Vapes, Concentrates and more…
By: The Tall Cop Says Stop
Updated August 2022:
The below article was first published in February of 2021. And we all know how the vape pen movement is going. Please re-read the article for a refresher and please continue tightening those policies.
Original Article:
Vape pens are one of the most rapidly evolving drug trends in the United States and around the world. Vapes are sweeping the country, but what we are quickly finding is that a vape pen can contain much more than just nicotine which is what we are going to highlight more in this article today. This article will highlight vapes for cannabis THC and CBD, nicotine vapes and a splash of other items inside of the vapes. First, there are no absolutes when you talk a vape pen or e- cigarette. There are vapes that work for nicotine, flavored oils without nicotine, cannabis THC and CBD and even synthetics. When someone is vaping in front of you there is a real chance you don’t know what they are really vaping “High in Plain Sight”.
The majority of the vape pens contain products that you believe are inside of the pen…nicotine. With that being said we are locating a laundry list of other drugs and items inside of vapes.
Recently I wrote an article highlighting marijuana concentrates aka dabs, wax, oils and shatter. Marijuana concentrates and vape pens are the perfect combination. Cannabis concentrates come in oil, wax or crystal form and the current version of vape pens can work for all three and an outsider can’t simply look at someone smoking from a vape pen and know what is inside. That is virtually impossible.
So, how can you figure out what someone is actually smoking? First, we need to understand these pens a little better. The baseline when dealing with vape pens is there are NO ABSOLUTES. Many of the pens that you see that are being used for nicotine look similar to some of the pens in the drug world and vice / versa. Also, the vape pen market is flooded and is very hard to keep up with. For example, I do frequent and common community scans all across the US and Canada. During these scans I see various forms of vapes that look slightly different, are different sizes, work for different products and vary in price points from $5-$400. Although a common price point for a popular cannabis vape is around $15-$45.
Over the last few years, vape pens for various drug use have continued to gain in popularity. As mentioned earlier these pens can look like nicotine-based pens. Since they are new, colorful, small and can very discrete, with the latter being a large selling point to these various pens I expect popularity will continue to rise.
Through my own personal experience as a former police officer, or from the over 600,000 class attendees I have trained in 49 states and multiple countries, here is what we seem to be coming across the most as far as vapes (with non-nicotine substances) on our streets: dry herbal cannabis, cannabis wax THC and CBD, cannabis oil and other oil forms of synthetic drugs.
Basically, we are still very early stages of the vape pen movement and I expect to see these trends continue to rapidly evolve. With that being said, the product in vape pens can be hard to identify, offer a new way of use, are VERY discrete, produce less of an odor and can make some means of drug use easier to use.
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