Are Michigan Marijuana customers vaping the real stuff or the results of a science experiment?
It sounds like alchemy with a dash of Frankenstein.
People who are vaping marijuana may not be getting the end product of a plant in their lungs, but a converted, synthetic form of THC derived from CBD instead.
Unscrupulous marijuana producers, basement chemists and black-market players are converting CBD to THC -- the active agent that produces the “high” -- because it’s cheaper, according to industry experts.
But it may also be more dangerous.
While the method remains legal, so long as it passes state safety tests not designed to identify it, doctors think inhaling this converted form of THC could cause lung issues or other long-term health problems.
Josh Swider, the CEO of Infinite Chemical Analysis, a licensed marijuana safety testing lab in Jackson, is one marijuana industry insider sounding the alarm.
“Anything in the state of Michigan to give someone a leg up in this industry, a lot of people will cut a corner,” he said. “You go down this path of legalization and everyone thinks that it’s so great. Then, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, you see a commercial: ‘Do you smoke marijuana in the state of Michigan,’ and now you have cancer ... and maybe it’s not just the marijuana, it’s really because these conversions are coming.”
Conversion and possible health risks
The conversion process is mechanically simple and has existed since at least the 1970s, said Cassin Coleman, chair of the National Cannabis Industry Association scientific advisory committee. She also runs her own consulting firm, Cassin Consulting.
Producers extract CBD oil -- which doesn’t cause a high -- from readily available, loosely regulated hemp. It’s then exposed to a strong acid, producing new THC molecules that are intoxicating, Coleman said.
The process, however, may also introduce harmful -- or at least unstudied -- contaminates, mutations and byproducts that customers don’t know they’re ingesting, Coleman said.
“I don’t have any evidence to say that those impurities are dangerous,” Coleman said, “but I also don’t have any evidence to say they aren’t.”
Swider warns that without more thorough testing the conversion issue could lead to another health crisis, such as occurred in 2019 and 2020 when vaping illnesses were caused by the addition of vitamin E acetate.
Thought to be benign but later proven sometimes deadly, the additive was banned after being linked to nearly 2,800 hospitalizations and 68 deaths in the U.S. by February 2020, including three Michigan deaths.
Testing and regulations
Vaping cartridges made up nearly 20% of all Michigan marijuana sales last year, nearly $585 million in revenue to retailers. The converted THC oil may also be used in edibles or sprayed on flower to increase potency.
Yet testing and regulation regarding additives and conversions remain a matter of debate among marijuana experts.
“Depending on the level of due diligence that the producer did, it would be very difficult with our normal testing in the state of Michigan to know if there was any difference,” said Coleman.
Several lab operators and chemists who spoke to MLive said there is no single test that can identify converted THC oil, but there are ways that involve looking for levels of compounds that don’t naturally occur in the plant or trace amounts of chemicals only used in conversion. Otherwise, the THC molecules appear identical to naturally-occurring THC and effect the human brain the same way.
“I’ve been in 13 (state-licensed) labs, which isn’t all of them ... but I haven’t seen any lab here that has the level of instrumentation” required Coleman said.
Northern Michigan University Assistant Professor Alex Wilson, who is co-director of the of the university’s Medicinal Plant Chemistry Program estimated anywhere from 10%-60% of vaping products may not contain pure, plant-originating THC.
“I’m not trying to be alarmist here,” he said, “but we really don’t know.”
Infinite Chemical Analysis independently tested 200 vaping products from 57 brands sold in Michigan marijuana stores and found 35 cartridges, 17.5%, contained converted THC oil, Swider said.
“Everyone is kind of making these assumptions that cannabis is safe to consume because it’s been done for so long,” he said, “But we’re not even really calling it cannabis or marijuana anymore. It’s these conversion products with byproducts.”
And even if testing does occur, there’s no disclosure requirement for converted THC oil.
If marijuana companies were regulated by the FDA, they would have to outline every impurity in their products and set a safe consumption limit,” according to Coleman. “Our industry doesn’t have that same amount of rigor, yet.”
Wilson said if it was possible to identify all impurities in conversion oil, “we don’t have any data on their safety.”
“We know the relative safety of smoking dried cannabis flower,” he said, “but some of these other products we don’t have long term data on.”
‘Popcorn lung’
Henry Ford pulmonologist Dr. Krishna Thavarajah said it’s difficult to pinpoint what about vaping in general causes lung issues, since there are so many unstudied components.
But the lung issues she treats are similar, including bronchiolitis obliterans -- commonly known as “popcorn lung” that causes coughing and shortness of breath -- cases of aggravated asthma, non-infectious pneumonia and irritation of the lung tissue.
The vaping cases she encounters, both involving nicotine and marijuana products, are usually exacerbated quickly, within a matter of days or weeks, but she said there are longer-term impacts that still need to be studied.
“You have a cough that’s not resolving, you’re getting more out of breath, you feel like you’re tight in the chest or wheezing,” Thavarajah said, “those are all reasons to seek help.”
The future
CRA Director Brian Hanna in 2023 vowed to clamp down on illegal THC oil when he spoke publicly about rumors of out-of-state trucks “driving around with (THC) oil, going licensee to licensee, offering illicit oil at a cheaper price.”
Despite stricter enforcement, including the closure or suspension of multiple marijuana processors over the last year -- one busted with “barrels of an unknown substance that were wrapped in plastic” -- there may be a long way to go.
State regulators acknowledge the issue and say they’re working on rules to ban converted oils while building a testing lab to help root it out, according to Cannabis Regulatory Agency (CRA) spokesperson David Harns.
The state lab is expected to be operating by the year’s end, he said.
In the meantime, vaping customers are left in limbo.
Stacey Watrobski, who worked in a marijuana shop at the time, began vaping marijuana in 2020, because “they’re the most convenient things,” she said.
Safety wasn’t a concern.
“My personal opinion and the opinion of coworkers and stuff ... we thought this stuff was already researched,” Watrobski said. “All of these things were going to be safe because the state said it was going to be, because that’s what ‘licensed’ was supposed to mean.”
Watrobski said she quickly realized the effects from vaping were different than smoking. She attributed it to the form. It was just the THC with the other plant parts discarded, she presumed. Then she began hearing rumors about converted oil infiltrating the market and other potentially harmful effects of vaping, such as byproducts created when metal in the devices combust vaping oils.
She started wheezing and “getting these strange pains in my head,” she said. “I looked it up. They’re calling it brain zaps.”
Watrobski, who is in her late-30s, doesn’t know if the effects were because it was converted oil or something else, but the lingering questions were enough to make her quit.
She’s not alone.
“We stopped using vaping cartridges in my household about a year and a half ago because of the amount of impurities I was seeing,” Coleman said. “It was kind of off the charts.”
