Objective: Legal restrictions have limited the overt marketing of cannabis and associated paraphernalia in the United States. This study assessed how one company, PAX Labs, marketed its devices for vaporizing cannabis while abiding by U.S. federal law on drug paraphernalia.
Methods: Internal documents from PAX Labs, dated January 2014 through December 2018, were accessed via the JUUL Labs Collection at University of California, San Francisco. An initial Boolean query of the collection followed by snowball sampling yielded 421 informative documents for a content analysis. Two additional sources, archived PAX webpages and political/lobbying expenditure reports, were analyzed to triangulate findings on messaging and legislative support, respectively.
Results: The company first marketed PAX devices for vaporizing tobacco, transitioned to marketing use for an unnamed plant material, and then promoted cannabis vaporization as U.S. state cannabis laws became more liberalized. PAX Labs carefully navigated marketing restrictions on drug paraphernalia through use of ambiguous messaging (i.e., "plant agnostic") and recruitment of cannabis-related third-party affiliates as a means of distancing the company from cannabis promotion. Although PAX Labs did not publicly or financially support U.S. state cannabis ballot measures in 2016, the company proposed to sponsor events facilitating public conversations on cannabis legalization.
Conclusion: Strategies used by PAX Labs pose challenges for government agencies that do not have purview to regulate cannabis vaporizers that are vaguely marketed. Yet, government agencies can better assess adherence to federal law on drug paraphernalia by carefully monitoring vaporizer companies' use of ambiguous messaging, affiliate marketing, and cannabis forum sponsorship.
Keywords: Marketing; archival analysis; cannabis vaporizers; industry documents; paraphernalia.