The conversation around white ash has been going in circles for decades in the cannabis community. Smokers all over the world will claim that the color of their ash is the sole indicator of the quality of what they’re smoking, backing it up with photos and videos across their social media. However, a recent report published by High Times may finally put this conversation to bed.
The discovery was made after court documents from a years-long court battle between Republic Technologies LLC and BBK Tobacco & Foods, LLP revealed a full ingredient list for some OCB and JOB Rolling Papers which includes an additive the average cannabis smoker may not be familiar with - calcium carbonate.
Excerpt from unsealed court documents. SOURCE: High Times - ‘Cheap Schemes and Big Tobacco Tricks: The Recipe for White Ash’
The court documents were from 2014, and showed there were varying amounts of calcium carbonate used in the production of some OCB and JOB rolling papers. The report specifically cited OCB No. 1 Single Wide, JOB Tribal King Size, OCB Slim, OCB Red 1 ¼, JOB Gold 1.25, OCB Organic Hemp 1-¼ and OCB Organic Hemp King Size Slim as products containing the chemical compound.
Calcium carbonate is obtained when limestone is ground or can be manufactured in a lab.
What exactly is calcium carbonate?
Without getting too weighed down in the science, calcium carbonate is an inorganic salt that’s found in things like limestone and the shells of marine organisms. While it is typically used as an ingredient in chalk, the High Times report was able to find three separate patents from tobacco companies claiming calcium carbonate was a way for them to “make cigarette ash more attractive.” Two of the patents cited in the article date back to the 1990s, meaning big tobacco has been using calcium carbonate to bleach cigarette ash for decades now. If you want to take a look back even further, Marlboro was telling smokers that the white ash produced by their cigarettes meant you were smoking the finest tobacco in advertisements from the 1950s.
Tobacco companies have been supporting the myth about white ash since the 1950s. SOURCE: High Times - ‘Cheap Schemes and Big Tobacco Tricks: The Recipe for White Ash’
While calcium carbonate is not thought to be an outright harmful substance to include in a product like rolling papers, a study from the National Institute of Health found that the elemental components of calcium carbonate are found in the lungs of smokers but not in non-smokers. This suggests that it has the potential to leave residual particles in the lungs, flagging it as a possible respiratory irritant.
What does this mean for smokers?
There is no singular metric that can measure whether or not you’re smoking high quality product; factors such as the soil the plant is grown in, the dry and cure cycle, and cultivation methods all play a huge role in producing top-shelf cannabis. The High Times article cited one of big tobacco’s age-old ash-related tips as a better indication of the quality of your flower: how the ash stacks up.
This revelation highlights broader issues of transparency and consumer awareness within the cannabis industry. The High Times report claims “if a substance this common can be added to rolling papers, it would be very easy for an unscrupulous marketing team to use this knowledge to their advantage to sell more cannabis.”
Large scale industrial mines serve as one of the sources for calcium carbonate.
As cannabis legalization becomes more widespread, the demand for more accountability and openness regarding product ingredients and manufacturing is only increasing. Now more than ever, it’s important for smokers to know exactly what they’re inhaling. The High Times report puts a new spin on the age-old white ash debate. While calcium carbonate might make your ash look pretty, it raises some big questions about what's really in your rolling papers.
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