Dear Fellow Patients,
I am Zeke Shortes, owner of Sacred Garden. I know there has been a lot of news recently about vape pens and cartridges, made with both cannabis oil and nicotine. At Sacred Garden, we’ve had many discussions internally about the safety of these products and have received questions regarding what and how we make our cartridges. Our goal is to produce medicine and promote wellness, not make anybody’s life worse.
Below is a great summary from the Holistic Cannabis Academy outlining the issue:
“While most of this problem stems from the additives used in illicit vape pen cartridges, there is also newfound scrutiny of additives that have been approved for cartridge use.
A wide variety of contaminants long found in illicit market vape pens, such as propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, MCT oil (sounds harmless enough, but is not meant to be inhaled), pesticides, heavy metals, and residual solvents, can cause pulmonary injury. Another friendly-sounding contaminant is Vitamin E oil, especially cheap synthetic tocopheryl-acetate, which has emerged as a recurring suspect among those who have gotten ill.”
Sacred Garden is proud to declare that WE DO NOT USE ANY OF THE ABOVE DESCRIBED INGREDIENTS IN OUR CARTRIDGES. We have long known there could be a potential problem using propylene glycol (often referred to as PG or PEG), MCT oil, vegetable glycerin, and Vitamin E oil. Also, we have chosen never to use the above ingredients or pesticides in our cultivation of cannabis. We believe less is more. The only way to truly ensure the efficacy and safety of all of our medicine is by controlling every aspect of cultivation and processing ourselves.
At Sacred Garden, more than 80% of our employees are patients. I am the founder of Sacred Garden, and I am a patient (I was patient #1244 in the state). I believe in cannabis as medicine, serving both mental and physical health. As such, we use all the flower and cannabis products we make in house (over 100 products made weekly in house).
How do we do that? We grow and produce 95% of everything we sell. We have our own kitchen, extraction lab, tinctures and topicals lab, and cultivation. Additionally, 90% of our cannabis is grown under the protection of a greenhouse, so we can produce medical grade cannabis under our beautiful and intense New Mexico sun.