Have you ever tasted a strawberry or watermelon candy and actually thought it tasted like either? You look at the wrapper to check the ingredients and see “artificial flavors added” or “no fruit juice is used in this product” and you know you are never going to confuse that flavor with the taste of real summer fresh strawberries or ripe sweet real watermelon. If you are particularly health conscious, then you might also think “I would rather not put artificial chemicals into my body” and “I would rather stick with organic produce”. The same consideration should be made when you vape cannabis oils because there is a growing trend to “recreate” flavor profiles through the use of added terpenes.

Terpenes make the flavor profile of the cannabis flower and studies show that terpenes play an important part in the medicinal value of cannabis as they work with the cannabinoids. These days, in the race to attain pure THC, the use of solvents to achieve that goal strips the original terpenes out of the oil, leaving a taste that is something like stewed industrial waste. So, terpenes derived from things like oranges and papaya are added back to attempt to recreate the flavor profile of, say, a sour diesel for example.  While that might improve upon something that is otherwise unpalatable, like the candy example, if you put enough sugar on dog doo you can make it edible but it is still dog doo. Besides, why destroy what was great enough as nature intended? Marinols are pure THC. Have you ever tried one of those and thought you would never use cannabis any other way?

The issue is whether you know or know what has been added back into your cannabis oil to recreate or enhance its flavor in terms of terpenes or its medicinal value in terms of potency. Producers only voluntarily reveal their methods of production or ingredients so the conflicts of interest are inherent. Do you always know if your oil was processed with Butane or what the purity is and would you be concerned how much butane was residual? You certainly wouldn’t want to inhale butane so knowing the purity of oil processed with it should be a concern and some companies don’t even disclose the fact that butane was used in their process.

The green rush is great but should not rush past the concerns for health and transparency. The processors of refined cannabis products need to heed mindful and reasonable methods of production to assure safety and practice ethical disclosure so patients and recreational users know what they are using. The reforms for cannabis law must continue and there is no reason to keep the negative stereotypes of old, where users had no idea what was in their product, or how potent it would be.