The Missouri state affiliate of NORML is publicly questioning why newly adopted regulations explicitly allow for elevated levels of the potentially toxic additive vitamin E acetate in state-authorized cannabis products, including vape cartridges.
In 2019, the US Centers for Disease Control identified vitamin E acetate as a toxic additive most likely responsible for the EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury), which resulted in dozens of deaths nationwide and nearly three thousand hospitalizations. Unregulated vape cartridge producers had been using the oil to thicken the consistency of their e-liquids and to mask dilution. Following the outbreak, many states explicitly banned any use of vitamin E acetate in legal cannabis products.
Nonetheless, Missouri regulators recently raised the allowable limit for vitamin E acetate in state-authorized cannabis products from 0.2 parts per million to 5 parts per million.
Missouri NORML is pushing back on regulators’ decision. In a recently published op-ed, Missouri NORML Coordinator Dan Viets, who also currently serves as NORML’s Board Chair, wrote: “Vitamin E acetate does not naturally occur in organic cannabis. If it is there, it is [present] only because someone has intentionally put it into the product. The addition of this product is usually for the purpose of increasing the marketability of the product by giving it a greater viscosity. Vitamin E acetate should never occur in any amount in a legal and regulated cannabis product.”
Viets added, “There appears to be no rational explanation for why the state of Missouri would dramatically increase the amount of a very toxic substance in legal cannabis products when none of it whatsoever should be present in them.”
NORML’s Deputy Director Paul Armentano also added: “Given what we know about this additive and its role in the EVALI public health crisis, there is no rational basis for this decision. The advantage of a state-regulated market is to provide consumers with product purity and safety. This decision greatly undermines these public health goals.”
Additional information is available from Missouri NORML or by contacting Dan Viets at (573) 819-2669 or danviets@gmail.com.
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