Pot Regulators Order Industry To Disclose Ingredients In Vapes

The agency in charge of overseeing the legal marijuana industry will begin requiring that all vaporizer cartridges, marijuana extracts and concentrates sold in Massachusetts come with a more detailed list of the chemicals and ingredients they contain.

The new level of transparency comes while public health officials at the federal and state levels eye a multi-state outbreak of lung disease associated with the use of e-cigarettes and vaporizers, or vapes. Many such products can be used to ingest either nicotine or THC, the psychoactive component in marijuana.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has suggested that people stop using those products until it can be determined what is making people sick and, in six cases, dying.

"Given what's happening with the issue surrounding vaping, there's a lot of concern and while I stand by the statement that while the industry says that vaping is safer than smoking, it never said it is safe. People really need to be aware of what's in that product," Cannabis Control Commission member Jen Flanagan said Thursday. "This gives us one layer of protection to tell people what's in the products. It gives consumers an added layer of information to understand what they're ingesting."

The CCC voted on changes to its regulations Thursday, including the new requirement that extract and concentrate manufacturers include on their products' lists of ingredients of every additive used in the product, including thickening agents and specific terpenes, which are oils that naturally occur in cannabis and contribute to its distinctive odor.

To this point, the CCC's rules for the marijuana industry only required the ingredient list to include information about the cannabinoid profile of the marijuana and its THC content.