Worth a collective $25 million, roughly 620,000 vaping products are gathering dust. The products have been awaiting testing since September.
The devices have been quarantined under Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s ban on the sale of vaping products, according to an article in the Boston Globe. Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commision (CCC) is under pressure to do something.
″(Businesses) have reached out to us … and we’ve talked to them,” CCC Chairman Steven Hoffman explained. “We’re trying to find a position that works for everybody, but at the end of the day, we won’t compromise on public health and public safety.”
Baker instituted a ban on the sale of vaping products in September amid an outbreak of severe lung ailments associated with e-cigarettes and vaping products containing marijuana.
The ban was lifted in December for shops that met certain requirements — including posting signs warning of the dangers of severe lung disease and other health risks; keeping all vaping products behind the counter; and prohibiting the sale of unpackaged tobacco or vaping cartridge refills — and the CCC began allowing marijuana retailers to sell newly manufactured marijuana vaping products that were tested for contaminants such as vitamin E acetate, which was suspected to have caused the illnesses, according the article.
It also further regulated the requirements for testing of vaping products.
But that meant that a large amount of inventory — nearly 620,000 units, according to CCC Executive Director Shawn Collins — had been removed from circulation, according to the article.
Moreover, the testing of that product has been “a mixed bag of results,” Collins said.