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How to tell if a vape cartridge is fake
Start with where you buy it: in Nevada a store the state licenses may sell a cartridge only after an independent lab has run the state's required tests on its lot, and its label must name its maker, the maker's establishment ID, the production run and the lab's potency results; an illegal seller's cartridge carries no such assurance.
What Nevada requires before a cartridge is sold
A store the state licenses may not sell a cartridge until all of the state's required testing on its lot is done (NAC 678B.235). For a vape's oil, an independent laboratory tests its potency and screens it for foreign matter, heavy metals, pesticides, mycotoxins and microbes, and for leftover solvent when it was made with a solvent other than ethanol or CO2 (NAC 678B.554).
What the label must show
- The name of the company that made it and its cannabis establishment ID.
- The production run number.
- The cannabinoid profile and potency the testing laboratory found, and the THC in milligrams.
- How the oil was extracted, any solvent or gas used, and any other compound added to it.
- The name and address of the store that sold it, and the date it was made.
Nevada's label rule lists these and more, and lets a store supply the label through an electronic medium the board approves instead of on the package (NAC 678B.614). A line you cannot find is a reason to ask, and our guide to reading a lab label shows where the laboratory's numbers are.
Check the seller
A brand's box and logo can be copied, so the seller is the first check. The testing and label rules above bind the stores Nevada's Cannabis Compliance Board licenses, which it publishes in its list of licensees; tribal stores, which the board does not license, are not on it. A cartridge from a seller licensed by no one carries no assurance of any of the above.
The 2019 vaping lung injuries
In the 2019 outbreak of e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI), the CDC found that "Vitamin E acetate is strongly linked to the EVALI outbreak," and a 2020 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found it in the lung fluid of 48 of 51 patients from 16 states and in none of 99 people without the injury. One of the recommendations the CDC and FDA gave, word for word: "CDC and FDA recommend that people not use THC-containing e-cigarette, or vaping, products, particularly from informal sources like friends, family, or in-person or online dealers." (CDC) Nevada's required tests do not include vitamin E acetate, and no test, label or store, ours included, promises that any cartridge is safe to vape.
General information, not medical advice. For use only by adults 21 years of age and older. Keep out of reach of children.