Unregistered cannabis product brands just seem to get a higher profile the farther along we go. Fiyaman Extracts is a brand with a variety of products including vape carts and edibles. None of them appear licensed.

Fiyaman can afford a Tommy Chong endorsement, but not a license

Let’s address the celebrity elephant in the room: Tommy Chong endorsing Fiyaman products as part of a series called “20 for 20,” where he hypes 20 cannabis product brands for the year 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHYlK__-SFE

So that happened. Where do we start? Did everybody else see this? Tommy Chong seems kind of like he’s phoning it in here, perhaps out of his element addressing vape cartridges, to which he simply exclaims “liquid!” Maybe he was in the room next door playing bingo and they just dragged him in here. Adding to the surrealism is the video opening and closing with this logo of a guy’s head in a sweater cap on fire. We have so many questions.

The rig you see him hitting is actually this battery for carts:

There are a number of these generic batteries made by Chinese companies. This is just a novelty shape.

Celebrity endorsements and celebrity-branded cannabis products work out about like they do in any other industry. They’re incidental to the product quality. We’ve tried a few strains over at our Nevada Cannabis Flower Reviews, and so far with these and other reviews only Willie Nelson’s brand makes the grade.

Let’s explore deeper…

Fiyaman has a website that’s strictly a lifestyle brand clothing site

This Shopify kiosk is the only prominent web presence for Fiyaman on the web. There is no mention whatsoever of any consumable product there. It’s all apparel, albeit with cannabis strains and logos printed all over it.

Seeing this shirt was no help in our search for legitimate licensing of a cannabis product brand. If anything, it’s even more discouraging.

Fiyaman also has the obligatory Instagram tag. Lots of merchandise shown, but no company information, no clue who controls the products under what authority, and not even the standard token R&D lab test sheet. The Fiyaman Extracts Instagram “official” account is private, naturally, and only links to the clothing store.

Adding to the confusion is multiple Fiyaman accounts, including the unrelated Atlanta content creator.

We reached out to the email address listed at TheFiyamanShop website asking about any possible licensing or parent company we might have missed, really not wanting to nail a brand endorsed by Tommy. We have received no response.

User all over ask about Fiyaman and get no answers

Reddit threads:

• 1 month ago – somebody points out that they’re not genuine CCELL carts
• 3 months ago – Fiyaman carts all seem to come in bags
• 3 months ago – In a Bay Area subreddit, mention of spotting them at events
• 7 months ago – interesting encounter reported which we find screenshot-worthy below

That screenshot (you never know when a Reddit thread or comment gets deleted):

So the rep at an Oakland weed convention insists they’re 1.5 gram carts when they’re clearly not, and the user reports they look like plain distillate + terpenes even though they’re claimed to be “live rosin.” Again, with no license stake or regulation of the brand, we have no idea if this was a company representative or somebody peddling fakes.

We also find snaps posted by an Anaheim, CA user:

There’s also a couple reviews on YouTube, from “Smokesfatdoinks 707” and “KingMart” (LOUD VOLUME WARNING) reviewing the edibles. So we know the product is getting out all over the street, definitely in the California area.

The part that loses our faith in Fiyaman

There is a QR code on Fiyaman packaging.

Could we have a lab test, however symbolic, at last? Nope, it goes to the useless Instagram private account that links right back to the clothing store with no information about consumables whatsoever.

This is the part where a brand loses our trust. They known damn well what users think when they see a QR code. They’re counting on most users to not check the code and find out there’s no lab test behind it, not even an “about us” page. We don’t mind a street brand if they just come out honestly and say “hey we’re a street brand, but trust us please.” When a brand tries to deceive you and make them think they’re more legit than they are, they’ve been caught lying once already. Now what else are they lying about?

The mystery burning man logo

Remember the flaming head logo on that Tommy Chong video and the man’s face branded on all these Fiyaman carts?

We tracked that down.

There’s a Fiyaman Twitter channel… with ZERO posts! It just says Oakland CA. Again: Went to the trouble of registering this account, posted a picture, and then nothing.

However, we checked the 2 accounts this channel is following, one of which is Rihanna and the other is Heartafiya. And finally, finally, we find an actual human being behind this brand:

Yes, we’ve got another music artist associated with an unregulated cart brand. Both the websites listed in his Twitter bio, heartafiya.com and officialheartafiya.com, are dead links. But we did find this page. We’d better save a screenshot before that disappears too:

The head logo! It’s like finding the Holy Grail, because otherwise we would have mistaken him for this Fiyaman or this Fiyaman, both apparently unrelated music artists. Or the comedian Fiyaman. Heartafiya leads us to this YouTube channel, with an interview featured and everything. He’s a Reggae artist.

Wow. At this point, we still don’t know if this is a musician who decided to go into the vape cart business, a vape cart producer who decided to go into the music business, or just a musician lending his visage and stage name to a cart brand.

This is no way to run a cannabis business.

Unlicensed, unregulated brands like Fiyaman Extracts may contain anything

There is a deadly epidemic of lung illness tied to black market cart usage. Vaping-associated pulmonary injury has so far claimed 64 lives and hospitalized more than 2700 users – a number only recently overtaken by Corona Virus COVID-19 cases. Unregulated vape carts could contain heavy metals like lead, pesticides, cut such as Honey Cut, or simply bunk. Or they could be fire if you’re lucky. But a lot of people in the hospital right now weren’t lucky.

If anybody has more information on where these are circulating, please feel free to help us protect public safety by sharing it with the community here in the comments or in our forum.