The suspect Dank vapes are a familiar product in the underground marijuana economy — it’s not a legal, tested brand. It’s merely a name on a box or a cartridge, packaging that’s easily obtained online and used by illicit producers to lure customers.
But with colorful boxes and names like Cherry Kush and Blue Dream, the homemade vapes appear alluring on the shelf.
“It doesn’t look very different from what you can buy in a [legal] dispensary,” said Beverly Hills-based cannabis attorney Allison Margolin.
So far, investigators have not identified a culprit in the illnesses reported in dozens of states. But officials say patients have mentioned the Dank name frequently. Many of the people who got sick in Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, said they used cartridges sold in Dank packaging.
The raw materials to produce a Dank vape aren’t hard to find: Ready-to-fill Dank boxes and cartridges can be ordered from Chinese internet sites for pennies apiece. A Craigslist post last week offered a box stuffed with empty Dank packages for $16. And you can buy the boxes and empty cartridges in shops in downtown Los Angeles.
A rogue producer adds cannabis oil — almost certainly untested — and it’s ready for sale.
“It’s a generic product name that doesn’t really tie back to one store or one distributor,” Dr. Jennifer Layden, chief medical officer for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said last month. “Folks are getting it from friends or folks on the street, with no understanding of where it came from prior to that.”
The chief selling point for vapes in Dank packaging: It’s a quick high on the cheap, available for as little as $20 a gram on the illicit market, roughly one-third of what a customer would pay for a cartridge in a legal marijuana shop in California.
But they come with real risk: Products in the legal marijuana market are tested for safety and purity, while those in the illicit market are not, and could contain pesticides, heavy metals or other dangerous contaminants.
According to California records, no licensed company in the state is manufacturing a cannabis vape carrying the Dank name.
“It was never a legitimate company,” said Los Angeles dispensary owner Donnie Anderson. “It was always an underground brand.”
Given the shadowy pedigree of Dank vapes, it’s not surprising that details about the product’s history are scarce. In California, the Dank name appears to have emerged during the largely unregulated medical cannabis era, prior to broad legalization that began in 2018.
Dispensary owner Jerred Kiloh, who heads the Los Angeles-based United Cannabis Business Association, recalls seeing Dank vapes for the first time about seven years ago. Kiloh remembers being visited by vendors interested in selling them at his shop, though that stopped long ago.
What remains is the name, which has managed to retain a surprising cachet in the underground industry.
Last month, Wisconsin authorities uncovered an illegal vaping-cartridge operation that they said was producing thousands of cartridges, each loaded with THC oil, every day for nearly two years. Photographs released by the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department showed neatly stacked Dank boxes and cartridges, apparently ready for shipment.