The social alarm produced by the adulterated CBD oil encouraged an independent team to investigate the issue
Adulterated CBD oil. The adulteration of CBD oil has sent dozens of people to the hospital in the last two years. One of the cases of CBD oil adulteration left a young military man named Jay Jenkins in a coma after he inhaled the product twice. Jay’s friend had bought a CBD oil cartridge from YOLO vaping, which is the acronym for “you only live once”. Jay remembers having a terrible experience. He had very intense hallucinations and later he could not move and finally went into a coma. At the hospital they discovered that Jay Jenkins had not consumed CBD oil but a very cheap illegal drug sold on the black market: a type of synthetic marijuana to which 11 deaths in Europe were attributed.
The social alarm increases as more people are discovered that they can end up in the hospital after consuming adulterated CBD oil. Sometimes CBD oil is adulterated with other products, but on other occasions the product does not contain any CBD oil at all. All cases that have ended up in the hospital have been caused by adulterated and inhaled CBD oil with vaporizer or by adulterated CBD in foodstuffs. This must not be confused with another social alarm that is also worrying many consumers who inhale THC extracts. We wrote an article called “Lung diseases from vaping cannabis extracts?” about this subject.
The social alarm produced by the adulterated CBD oil encouraged an independent team to investigate the issue.
This team commissioned laboratory tests of the CBD oil for vaporizer inhalation that Jenkins used, in addition to 29 other vaporizer products sold as CBD throughout the country. The team focused on brands that authorities or users considered suspicious. Among the 30 samples analyzed, 10 contained a type of very dangerous illegal synthetic marijuana known as K2. The rest of the analyzed samples had no CBD oil at all but contained other substances. Half a kilo of synthetic marijuana costs $ 25 on the black market while the same amount of natural CBD oil costs hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
James Neal-Kababick, director of Flora Research Laboratories, the laboratory that tested the products, said they were extremely dangerous to health. Vaping, in general, has been controversial in recent weeks because hundreds of consumers have developed lung diseases and even some have died. This research has focused on cases where psychoactive chemicals are added to products sold as CBD oil.
The results of laboratory tests performed by government laboratories in 9 states are worrisome. 128 samples from more than 350 that were analyzed had synthetic marijuana in products marketed as CBD oil. The most worrying thing was discovered in Mississippi: authorities found fentanyl, the powerful opioid that caused the death of more than 30,000 overdose deaths last year. We are no longer talking about adulterated CBD oil with a harmless substance. Obviously, the social alarm against this type of adulterated CBD oil is justified.
Because the tests conducted focused on suspicious products, the results cannot be considered as representative of the general market, which includes hundreds of products.
Unfortunately, the people who operate behind the adulterated CBD oil products enjoy impunity because the industry has grown so rapidly that regulators have not caught up and drug control agents have other priorities.
Marielle Weintraub, president of the US Hemp Authority, an industry group that certifies the quality of CBD cosmetics and dietary supplements, says that the rapid growth of the CBD market has made some companies want to earn a lot of money in no time. Many companies adulterate CBD oil with synthetic marijuana, which creates a great social alarm. Weintraub says that when an adulterated CBD oil product appears, the people or companies behind them often blame adulteration or pollution on the supply and distribution chain. She also ensures that although the adulteration of CBD oil with synthetic marijuana is a concern and cause for social alarm, the reality is that most companies have good practices and have a good reputation.
The US Food and Drug Administration have approved a CBD-based medication to treat seizures associated with two forms of epilepsy. But the reality is that apart from this the agency has done little to stop the sale of adulterated CBD products.
It is difficult for consumers to know how much CBD there really is in the oil they are buying, if there is anything. As it happens with many products, federal and state regulators rarely analyze what is inside the product and leave quality control to manufacturers. This is a serious error since it can occur, and in fact it happens, adulterations of CBD oil that, as is happening now, are dangerous and generate a great social alarm. At the end it has to be some independent team the one that investigates the issue.
State and federal authorities have failed to identify who created YOLO, the brand that made Jenkins ill and more than 33 people in the state of Utah. According to documentation submitted to a California court by a former accountant of the company, a company called Mathco Health Corporation sold Yolo products to a distributor that sold the products at the same address where Jenkins’ friend bought the adulterated CBD oil.
Two other former employees told the independent team that they have conducted the investigation that Yolo was a product of Mathco Health Corporation. Mathco’s executive director, Katarina Maloney, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Carlsbad, California, that Yolo was run by her former business partner and she didn’t want to discuss it.
Maloney also said that Mathco does not participate in the manufacture, distribution or sale of any illegal products. She said that Yolo products in Utah bought the products from them but that the company cannot control what happens to the products once they are shipped.
The reality is that the situation remains unresolved and in the meantime the social alarm increases. CBD oil is a product that is widely accepted among American people. But adulterated CBD oil is very difficult to control with the current the laws. It is difficult to understand that such an important investigation has been carried out by an independent team. CBD’s low-transparent oil manufacturing and distribution system hinders criminal investigations and leaves victims of adulterated products with few resources.
