Marijuana is becoming legal in more and more places, which means that more and more people are bringing home weed. No matter if you prefer low-key vape cartridges, sticky nugs, tasty edible treats, or the myriad varieties of concentrates, one thing remains the same: You have to keep that stuff away from your kids.
New regulations went into effect this month in California mandating all products come in child-resistant packaging, which is a step up from the child-resistant go bags that dispensaries use to wrap up your entire order. Those can be tricky enough for kids to open, but the problem is, most people don’t keep the products in that bag once they get them home. As of July 1, in California, “All cannabis goods must be in child-resistant packaging, only having exit or secondary packaging be child-resistant shall no longer suffice.”
So the industry is getting more creative—and relying on some old standbys, too. Pill bottles, for example, are popular since their child-resistant tops are easy for adults to open—you’ve opened hundreds of them in your lifetime, no doubt—while still thwarting most little kids. All Pax Era pods come in a package with a push-and-twist lid like a pill bottle, and MarijuanaPackaging.com sells a black glass stash jar with a similar child-resistant cap, like a high-end pill bottle that’s suitable for concentrates or flowers.
Crativ makes a plastic case perfect for edibles, that doesn’t lock but is very tricky to open—you have to press in on the sides and then push a latch on the front for the lid to pop up. When your edible treats are gone, you can recycle the case or repurpose it for any number of child-unfriendly items.
Of course, keeping your weed out of your kids’ hands isn’t up to the industry—it’s up to you, their parents. Luckily, there are a million ways to do that. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Disguise it
You know what kids aren’t into? Cans of instant coffee. A big old box of prunes. You could repurpose some very boring, empty packaging into a hiding place for your stash, especially if that stash is still in its childproof packaging and just needs to be removed from sight. Or pick up a $12 hide-in-plain-sight personal vault that just looks like a can of meat. Want a hiding place that also locks? When’s the last time your kids borrowed a dictionary from your bookshelf? AmazonBasics has book safes that lock with keys or a combo lock for under $13.
Lock it up
Speaking of locks, if you already have a safe, that’s the obvious choice or even one of those fireproof boxes for storing important documents. For around $9, this smell proof stash bag can help keep the scent of weed off of your mortgage documents and Social Security card.
Even better, pick up a dedicated lockbox just for your stash—and you don’t need to shell out $150 to $300 for the Cannador, a fancy locking humidor especially designed to keep cannabis flowers fresh, although you certainly could. But any old box that locks would work, like the $40 BUYaSafe, which locks with a key. Other lockboxes let you program a combination, like Vaultz, which come in various sizes like the this $20 box or this $10 case that could slide inside a desk drawer.
Turn to the Internet of Things
Want to step up the security even more? Use a sensor to notify your phone every time your stash is accessed. If you keep your stuff in a safe, for example, stick a motion sensor on the safe’s door, or use a door/window sensor to know when it’s opened.
Which one depends on your setup, if you’re using any IoT gear already—for Google Home households, there’s the $49 Nest Detect, and you can find affordable motion sensors for Samsung SmartThings hubs ($25), the Wink system that plays nice with Alexa ($29), an Elgato Eve Motion ($50) or Eve Door & Window Sensors ($40) for HomeKit setups, this D-Link sensor ($39) that you can automate with IFTTT, and so on.
Keep an eye on it
You could watch your hiding place with a cheap Wi-Fi camera like the Wyze Cam v2, which is only $20 and requires no cloud storage fees. It can notify you when it sees motion, and provide video evidence of what happened. (It can also send you a notification if the smoke detector goes off, which hopefully won’t be related to your kids finding your stash.) If you’ve got an old smartphone or tablet lying around, you could install the Manything app to repurpose it as an IFTTT-friendly security camera.
Use a device with a child lock
Pax makes portable vaporizers that pair with Bluetooth to a mobile app which gives them extra features like adjustable temperatures, different modes—and a lock. If you tap the lock icon in the app, the vaporizer won’t operate until you unlock it again.
This works with the Pax 3 ($300), which vapes flowers and concentrates, as well as the Pax Era($30), which only works with compatible concentrate pods, and the feature can be just as useful for roommates as for kids.
Credit: lifehacker.com