A few weeks ago, I noticed some stickers around campus. They were advertising a business called Ganja Goods. I was curious.

Once I started noticing them, I saw them everywhere: on a lamppost outside of the Lory Student Center, on a traffic sign outside of Ingersoll Hall — surely there are others you might have seen yourself.

The cannabis section previously did a piece on something called e-cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury, or EVALI. Researching this piece left me a bit sensitive to the matter of people trying to sell bootleg weed cartridges to the uninformed. Sixty-eight people died by late February 2020, and the finger was unanimously pointed at vitamin E acetate, a vegetable oil-like substance used as a thickening agent in gray-market THC vapes.

I’m no cop, but someone trying to sell my fellow Rams a product that might land them in the hospital didn’t sit right with me. The investigation was on.

Of course, I started by checking out their website, ganjagoodslove.com.

“We hold three principles that guide us through life and business,” their about section says. “They are integrity, transparency and love. We would never compromise these principles because they are where we find our purpose, and as we all know, without purpose, we would not exist.”

This is pretty boilerplate weed company talk. Let’s check out their products section, shall we?

Oh, it’s only one product? A single 1-gram vape called “1-Gram Liquid Diamonds Disposable Vape”? OK.

“We created an ultrapure, delicious vape that’ll feel like a loving embrace and is guaranteed to be free of cuts, fillers, added terpenes and other ingredients,” the product description boasts.

“I asked for the license number — they couldn’t provide it out of fear their supplier would get in ‘big trouble’ — which is also why their lab results don’t show the actual lab where the testing took place.”

The reviews are even better — five stars across the board except for a single one-star review: “Mane this shit wack. My homie dropped this MF in the toilet and shit ain’t even work no more. Not durable for a real G like me.”

Anyone who has ever shopped online knows displayed product reviews often appear selected by the seller, but the one critical review being completely unreasonable was a new one to me, and it makes me grin every time I read it.

Clearly, Ganja Goods knows how to talk the talk. The stuff on their website is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data and the established opinion for why EVALI stopped being a problem: the market responded more than the authorities. Consumers and manufacturers made a choice to stop cutting corners with harmful ingredients, and now even these gray-market purveyors are making a point to advertise the purity of their products.

But don’t take their word for it — their website links to a PDF of lab test results, showing these cartridges are loaded with delta-9 THC and THCA but pass all the contaminant tests with flying colors.

Of course, there’s no “buy now” button, but there was a “contact us” link. I put in my phone number under the name Kevin Houghley and waited.

Even though the form said I would be contacted through Telegram, I was inexplicably contacted through iMessage about 24 hours later.

The person asked how I heard about the company, and I told them it was the stickers. They seemed excited by this. I felt the guilt of wasting a small business owner’s time rise inside of me. I’d come too far, though.

I tried to play it as cool as possible — in my mind, I was wearing a wire with a gun to my head, despite the fact that I had absolutely nothing to lose here. They offered me 50% off and said they only accept payment in Bitcoin and that the concentrate comes from a licensed lab in Los Angeles.

I asked for the license number — they couldn’t provide it out of fear their supplier would get in “big trouble” — which is also why their lab results don’t show the actual lab where the testing took place — but they insisted if I were to buy and retest the product myself, I would get identical results.

I had to come clean: I admitted I wasn’t actually interested in buying the product, linked my new friend to The Collegian’s cannabis content and apologized for my dishonesty. I expected to be ghosted or yelled at, but to my surprise, the response began with “LOL, all good.” I was shocked — delighted and shocked.

After a few days of no more responses, I asked what he thought of the Will Smith Oscars incident, and my text went green. I was blocked — disappointed and blocked.

The whole experience left me wondering: Who is putting up these damn stickers? A student who actually received a product in the mail from our friends at Ganja Goods or someone in cahoots? Was the call coming from inside the school?

If it was you, send me an email. It’s right here:

Reach Hayden Hawley at cannabis@collegian.com or on Twitter @hateonhawley.