Today vaping makes up a tiny fraction of the booming legal marijuana industry.
But a small group of marijuana companies are poised to change all that.
Investors looking at the most established, capitalized, and innovative vape companies today are going to be set for a long and lucrative ride as the vape segment explodes.
First though, if you've got to think like a vape company. That means understanding your customer.
Why Marijuana Users Are Turning To Vapes
Marijuana users are increasingly turning to vape for a slew of reasons.Research data from National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Since marijuana is still illegal federally, the NIH had to study e-cigarette users who also vape marijuana.
In a study titled "Predictors Of Adult e-Cigarette Users Vaporizing Cannabis Using e-Cigarettes And Vape-Pens," researchers found the top five reasons marijuana users turn to vaping.
The 522 respondents to the survey which have all tried vaping marijuana identified all the following reasons for choosing vaping over smoking:
1. Stronger Better High (58.1%)
2. Healthier (42.9%)
3. Doesn't Smell (42.9%)
4. More Convenient (42.9%)
5. Tastes Better (39.3%)
6. Easier To Conceal/Hide (35.7%)
2. Healthier (42.9%)
3. Doesn't Smell (42.9%)
4. More Convenient (42.9%)
5. Tastes Better (39.3%)
6. Easier To Conceal/Hide (35.7%)
All these reasons for vaping are self-explanatory.
Now it's a matter of providing these products to the marijuana market.
Types Of Marijuana Vapes
There are two main types of marijuana vapes - Dry Herb and Atomizer.
A dry herb vape is a vape that heats dried marijuana flower to up to 300 or 400 degrees to turn it into a vapor and inhaled.
Dry herb vaping is as close as you can get to smoking a traditional joint.
Atomizers are the other type of vape.
These vapes turn a cannabis oil into a vapor which is then inhaled.
You've likely seen atomizers before. The top-selling e-cigarettes are all atomizers which turn oil which contains nicotine into a vape.
The Big Winner In Marijuana Vaping
Concentrate oil will be the big winner in the vaping segment of the marijuana industry.
There are just too many advantages over the dry herb variety.
Just go back to the NIH study which covered the most important marijuana vapers choose it over smoking.
Three of them are shared by both dry herb and atomizing vapes.
Dry herb vapes and atomizers both provide the concealment, convenience, and health advantages over smoking marijuana flower.
Atomizing vapes, however, provide a significant advantage in the other three categories important to marijuana vape users.
Since the atomizer takes the concentrated oil extracted from marijuana flower, there is so much more which vape companies can do with it to meet their customers’ needs.
They can take out a lot of the odor-creating elements if the user wants less smell.
They can provide a better taste by adjusting the terpenes and other flavor-creating elements.
They can also create more potent and highly customized levels of concentration of the active elements like THC to give the stronger/better high which more than half of all vape users turn to vapes specifically to get.
The Rise In Marijana Vaping Starts Now
Investors looking to catch the next major wave in marijuana stocks must look at the vape segment now.
The data points to 2019 being a turning point for the vape segment of the legal marijuana industry’s marijuana legalization spreads across the country, the potential market for marijuana vape pens and the concentrated oils they use will continue to grow.
Whether its medical marijuana or recreational marijuana, vaping will be a part of it and vape stocks will be a part of it all too.