I can't read it because I have used up my 3 free posts for the site. I hope it is picked up by another news agency.
Here you go. I have a wapo sub. (Hope this is allowed here)
“A lot of businesses had cannabis that wasn’t compliant under the new regulations,” said Abernathy. Some of that winds up on the black market, he said.
One illicit operation recently uncovered by Wisconsin law enforcement authorities involved a massive drug ring that produced 4,000 to 5,000 counterfeit
vaping cartridges filled with THC oil every day for almost two years.
Authorities allege that Tyler T. Huffhines, 20, who they charged as the ringleader, flew to California in late August to buy “forty to fifty jars of THC distillate to manufacture additional THC cartridges and he was going to have the jars sent to Wisconsin,” according to a criminal complaint filed this month in Kenosha County.
Over Labor Day weekend, Huffhines allegedly flew to California again, this time with over $300,000 in cash to buy additional distillate, the complaint said
.
At the Kenosha County condo where his operation was based, authorities seized more than 31,000 pre-filled one-gram THC vape cartridges, about 98,000 unfilled vape cartridges, 57 Mason jars of “refined liquid THC,” and thousands of empty vape cartridge boxes and packaging, among other paraphernalia, the complaint said. The estimated street value of the THC products
exceeds $1.5 million, authorities said.
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth said the THC products are being tested to see if they can be tied to the vaping illnesses. In Kenosha County Circuit Court last week, Huffhines’s attorney, Mark Richards, said there is no evidence tying his client to the injuries, the
Kenosha News reported.
“There have been no deaths in Wisconsin,” Richards said, calling statements the vape cartridges could be tied to illnesses and deaths “hysteria.”
'Hurting somebody just for money'
Here in downtown Los Angeles’s Cannabis District, the shops wedged between the homeless tent city of Skid Row and luxury condos in Little Tokyo have names such as “Doctor Vape,” “Smoke Tokes” and “Cart Cartel.”
Inside many of the stores are shelves stacked with ready-to-fill cartridges and empty counterfeit packaging that copies the most popular vape cartridge brands, said hardware supplier Hackett. Virtually all of it is manufactured in Shenzhen, China, he said.
In the past year, Chinese companies have also opened offices in Southern California, including the Los Angeles area, because of the lucrative vaping market here, he added.
Sidewalks outside the storefronts double as ad hoc loading docks. One shop representative who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation from other store owners, said more business people from China have come to the district in the past four months to sell counterfeit Honey Cut thickener in large quantities.
“We know for an absolute, 100 percent fact that the Chinese were coming here and selling products called Honey Cut on our blocks by the barrel — barrel after barrel after barrel,” the shop owner said. “We didn’t see any problems until we started seeing the Chinese knock this off.”
On a recent Saturday, two men leaving a shop with a box of products confirmed that thickening agents, including Honey Cut, are widely available for sale.
“Honey Cut, yeah. That’s the biggest cutting agent. Honey Cut,” said one of them, a heavily tattooed man who offered only a first name, Roger.
The men said they do not use cutting agents or diluents in their products, which they sell outside the area.
“A lot of people are just filling these pens or vapes or whatever with trash,” Roger added.
The other man, who gave his name as Timmy, agreed. “It’s hurting somebody just for money,” he said.
