How to Spot Fake Delta-8 Carts

In 2019, Rolling Stone reported that fake vape carts were everywhere – and the problem hasn’t gotten any better since then. Although the producers of fake carts know that their products might make people sick – or even potentially kill them – that’s not enough of a deterrent when the profits from making and selling fake carts could potentially amount to many millions of dollars.

Since Delta-8 carts are federally legal, you might assume that you don’t have to worry about fake carts when you buy Delta-8 products. That, however, isn’t the case at all. In fact, the danger of buying fake carts may actually be even greater with Delta-8 because few people are suspicious of products that they can buy over the counter in ordinary stores.

Why should you be concerned about fake Delta-8 carts? Here are just a few reasons.

• The process for making Delta-8 is extremely complicated and requires the use of harsh reactants and solvents that have to be removed, or the resulting product will be dangerous to use. Vaping fake Delta-8 is essentially the equivalent of drinking bathtub gin.
• Many fake carts are diluted with other substances because cannabis distillate is expensive, and a cart that contains less distillate can be sold more profitably. Vitamin E acetate – once a popular diluent for fake carts – was implicated as the likely cause of a serious lung illness that sickened more than 2,700 people and killed at least 64. The fact that most makers of fake carts probably aren’t using vitamin E anymore doesn’t mean that they aren’t diluting their products with something else that’s equally dangerous.
• There’s also a chance of simply getting ripped off because a fake Delta-8 cart may not contain the advertised cannabinoid content and may even contain no cannabinoids at all.

Buying Delta-8 carts isn’t like going to a dispensary and buying whole cannabis flowers that you can examine yourself. All of the processing for vape carts is done behind the scenes, so all you can do is trust that you’re getting a legitimate product.

Assortment of fake carts. Rolling Stone.

Trust should only go so far where your health and safety are concerned, though, so it’s important to use your eyes and your mind when buying Delta-8 carts. Thankfully, you can trust your eyes to a certain extent because there are a few telltale signs of fake vape carts for which you can be on the lookout.

When you buy Delta-8 carts, nothing beats buying a reliable brand from a reliable seller. Before you start puffing, though, here are a few common signs of fake carts.

Fake Delta-8 Carts May Have the Wrong Color

Pure cannabis distillate is usually yellow or golden in color. Since a Delta-8 cart should be filled almost entirely with pure distillate, that’s the color you should see when you hold the cartridge up to a light.

• Is the oil pink or clear? The cartridge may be diluted.
• Is the oil cloudy, or does it have visible sediment? It may have been made in unsanitary conditions or could have microbial growth. Don’t use the cartridge.
• Is the oil brown or black? It may have undergone heavy oxidation due to improper storage. Don’t use the cartridge.

Fake Delta-8 Carts May Have Poor Packaging or Printing Errors

There’s a lot of competition in the Delta-8 industry, and brands try to stand out on store shelves by putting their products in attractive packages. A real Delta-8 cart typically comes in a box that’s made from high-quality cardstock and has bright, sharp printing.

• Fake Delta-8 carts are often packaged in low-quality cardstock because good paper is expensive. The box may look squished or crumpled at the edges.
• The packaging for fake carts often has poor printing quality because the maker of the product doesn’t have access to the digital files used to make the original package. A maker of fake Delta-8 carts may try to recreate the original logos and text manually, but the result will never look quite the same as the original. The maker may also scan a legitimate box — but in that case, the result will look blurry and washed out.

Fake Delta-8 Carts May Have the Wrong Viscosity

As we mentioned above, a real Delta-8 cart should be filled almost entirely with pure cannabis distillate. In addition to being hued a rich golden color, real distillate is also quite thick. If you take a real vape cartridge and invert it, the air bubble should travel slowly from one end of the cartridge to the other. If the bubble moves quickly to the top of the cartridge, it’s very likely that you have a fake cart.

You should note, though, that inverting a vape cart and watching the bubble isn’t a 100-percent reliable way of identifying a fake cart. The reason why vitamin E acetate became popular as a diluent for fake carts is because it has about the same thickness and color as cannabis distillate.

Fake Delta-8 Carts Don’t Have Real Authenticity Codes

Because of the proliferation of fake carts, many Delta-8 brands are now putting authenticity codes on their products. That way, you can go to the manufacturer’s website and enter the code to confirm that you have a real Delta-8 cart. If the website confirms that the code is real and hasn’t been used before, the cart is almost certainly legitimate.

• If you enter a code – and the website tells you that the code has already been entered before – you may have a fake cart and should not use it.
• When you want to check the authenticity code for a vape cart, you should go to the manufacturer’s website manually instead of using a QR code. The box for a fake cart could have an illegitimate QR code that sends you to a lookalike page instead of the real manufacturer’s site.

Fake Delta-8 Carts May Carry Fake Brand Names

During the vaping lung illness crisis of 2019, many of the people who became sick reported using vape carts from a company called Dank Vapes. Some people might have avoided that problem if they’d done a little research, though, because Dank Vapes wasn’t actually a real company. It was simply a box with fake information printed on it, and anyone could buy Dank Vapes boxes in bulk from a printer in China and put whatever they wanted in them.

Before you buy any Delta-8 cart, make sure that the brand name on the box actually exists. If you search for the brand and can’t find a real website with reliable lab reports that you can download and view, you’ve probably found a fake cart.

Fake Delta-8 Carts Are Often Too Cheap to Be Real

Did you know that the price can actually help you tell if a cart is fake? Delta-8 is expensive to produce. Even though there’s plenty of competition in the hemp industry, the prices for Delta-8 carts can only go so low before sellers start to lose money. If the price for a Delta-8 cart seems too good to be true, it probably is. You should avoid buying it.

If a Delta-8 Cart Tastes Wrong or Makes You Feel Wrong, Stop Using It

The last way to identify a fake cart is by listening to what your body tells you when you use it. If you’re an experienced Delta-8 user, you’ve learned through experience what a real vape cartridge tastes like and how it should make you feel. If something doesn’t feel or taste right, you may have a fake cart and should stop using it immediately.