Do Carts Expire?

Not by law. A cart counts as a manufactured cannabis product, and California's labeling rules spell out what its informational panel has to carry: the maker, the ingredients, the batch number and "the date the cannabis product was packaged for retail sale." No expiration date appears anywhere on that list.

A maker may print a best-by date of its own. Once one is on the box, it holds the shop too: a California retailer can't sell a product that has passed a date the maker set.

The same rules file a vape cartridge under concentrates, and a concentrate's THC goes on the label in milligrams per package. The one-gram carts on our menus print a median of 84% THC, which on the box reads as about 840 mg.

We haven't found a published study that timed sealed carts sitting in a drawer, so the best evidence comes from studies of the oil itself. The most recent we found, published in 2026 in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, kept cannabis extracts, isolates and oil formulations at room temperature, in a refrigerator and in a freezer. For most of them, room temperature "accelerated the degradation of THC into cannabinol (CBN)," and the THC-rich samples were "highly susceptible to ambient degradation." They held up best at -20°C.

A 2024 study in Planta Medica points the other way on cold. Its team made cannabis oils with olive oil, followed them for eight months, and reported that "refrigeration seems to be detrimental" for THC. Different oils behave differently, and neither study tested a cartridge.

Where they agree: a cart's THC was checked by a lab before it went on sale, and it drifts down from there, faster when the cart is kept warm. Light matters as well. The 1976 storage study in our guide to how long weed keeps found it was the biggest single cause of cannabinoid loss, most of all in solutions.

None of that gives a cart a use-by day. It does make one cart you'll finish this month a better buy than three you're keeping for next year.

An all-in-one, the kind sold as a disposable, follows the same label rule: a packaging date, no expiration date. Its oil ages the same way as a cart's. It also carries its own battery, so before you count on one that has sat in a drawer for months, check that it still charges and fires.

On October 14, 2026 our two menus listed 147 carts: 56 all-in-ones with a battery built in, and 91 cartridges that need a separate battery. Nearly all are one-gram carts, 143 of the 147.

At list price, before discounts and tax, they run from $16 to $120 a gram, with the middle of the shelf at $37. The cheapest are our own Eden Extracts carts, 35 of them at $16 to $18.

And the shelf turns over. Of the 133 carts on our menus on September 18, 57 had come off them 26 days later, while 71 new ones went on. That's a count of listings, which end when a product sells out or is pulled. For the age of the cart in your hand, read the packaging date on its box.

Every cart we carry is on the vapes page, and new customers get 40% off a first order. Order by 7pm for delivery the same day, or pick up at Hayward or Tracy.