![]() ![]() What’s Law Enforcement to Do? When imported from a marijuana-legal state, these products may arrive in packaging identifying the substance as containing marijuana extract oil or otherwise denoting higher than legal levels of THC. There’s also a market for marijuana vape cartridge packaging, which can be purchased and attached to cartridges of one’s own making. To further complicate the situation, empty cartridges are widely available, to be filled with anything from nicotine vape juice to CBD to marijuana oil to Pine-Sol™, if one is so inclined. Marijuana vape cartridges won’t necessarily smell like marijuana when consumed, just like nicotine vapes don’t smell like cigarettes. The situation is even more complicated than trying to tell raw marijuana from hemp, because there are even more legal versions of these products that can be confused with the illegal version. Traditionally, crime labs only test for the presence of THC, and both legal hemp-based products and the illegal marijuana products will produce a positive result. They cannot be distinguished from one another without a lab showing quantified levels of THC-a test our state and local crime labs aren’t performing. Simply put, the sight or odor of these products may not be enough for probable cause, because there are hemp and marijuana versions of all of them. Just as law enforcement and trial courts have a hard time distinguishing smokable hemp from marijuana for purposes of probable cause (discussed here), the same issues arise with extract products. ![]() The questions most commonly involve wax and cartridges, so this post takes a look at the issues surrounding those cases (leaving the skin patches and edibles for another day). The illegal versions have found their way into North Carolina, and questions abound regarding how to handle these cases. The products can be made from lawful hemp, or from illegal marijuana alike. There are skin patches, food and drinks (for humans and pets), vaporizer or “vape” cartridges (or “carts”), and different concentrate or extract products (“dabs”, “wax” or “shatter”, among other names). The advent of cannabis legalization across the country has led to a proliferation of new types of cannabis products. ![]()
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