What will new vape regulations mean for a growing segment?
Personal beliefs and politics aside the vaping industry has an obligation to protect public safety including how its products are perceived by young people. And there is evidence that current products in the market are attracting youth and vape use among this demographic has increased.
Interesting to note, these regulations are being proposed for both the Health Canada Act and the Tobacco and Vaping Act, with more specific language and interpretation around extracts included in the report. The theme of the recommendations are for extract products to be limited to flavours that are expected when consuming cannabis, even as specific to include terpenes, keytones, and aldehydes as acceptable chemicals. I’m curious to see how powerful the nicotine industry will be in resisting the most restrictive recommendations made for this legislation.
The level of the value chain that is subject to change is also still up for final decision. Assuming that Option A, changing nothing won’t be a solution, the choice is left to regulate the marketing of cannabis extracts to only hemp-like flavour or regulate bot the formulation and marketing of extracts to be hemp-like in their flavour and marketing.
The presumed costs of compliance are probably where I would disagree most with the report. At Flow Scientific we have many of our products tested for traditional hemp cousin analysis including pesticides, heavy metals, microbials and aflatoxins, . Last week these tests cost us almost $4,000 to complete and the first results we received were wrong and required an internal investigation to verify our botanical terpenes did not contain cannabinoids. It is not a simple process and at high costs to those of us committed to maintaining compliance with Health Canada.
Our position in situations like this has always been to highlight our Bill of Materials and review the list of each ingredient included in a terpene profile. Most specifically for these guidelines the Chemical Abstracts Services (CAS) number which is a universal chemical reference for identifying compounds, and the source material distilled to create the terpene isolate. As these recommendations are reviewed and ultimately registered in their final form we will continue to ensure our documents demonstrate the compliance of our products within current and proposed regulations.
Flow Scientific has extensive expertise in creating terpene profiles that mimic our customers intentions, as Health Canada adjusts their boundaries we are confident in our ability to deliver high quality terpene profiles that will continue to be used in sativa products consumers’ love.
Flow Scientific has extensive expertise in creating terpene profiles that mimic our customers intentions, as Health Canada adjusts their boundaries we are confident in our ability to deliver high quality terpene profiles that will continue to be used in sativa products consumers’ love.