The O.Pen personal vaporizer and a Strawberry Cough vape cartridge.

The O.Pen comes with a base that holds a rechargeable battery, a vape cartridge with either a clear tank or a tank with a small window, and a molded plastic tip. Choose from dozens of sativa, indica, or hybrid strains. Note the package’s attached refrigerator magnet and the color-coded red logo on the solid cartridge.

The “O” in O.Pen may as well stand for OMG — it’s god’s gift to personal vaporizing and it’s O.utrageously good. In fact, I’m wracking my brain trying to think of a reason not to own one. So far, I’m coming up empty.

What’s not to like about:

OrganaLabsThe stealth factor: Take your O.Pen to airports, churches, sporting events, concerts, county fairs, PTA meetings, malls, movies, restaurants, bowling alleys and bars; no one’s the wiser after you sneak a quick hit.

The odorless factor: Seriously, you could toke on a plane and no one sitting around you would ever suspect you just expanded your mind.

The portability factor: Your O.Pen isn’t going to take up space or weigh you down on that climb from Everest base camp to the summit.

The convenience factor: Forget baggies and stash jars. Just twist different cannisters onto the holder, depending on your mood of the moment.

A ridiculous amount of strains: Which strains does Organa Labs offer? Perhaps the question should be, “which strains don’t they offer?The line-up of strains offered in vape cartridges that dock with an O.Pen base is a veritable who’s-who of exotics culled from the four corners of the Earth. Available cartridges are tracked by leafly.com, making it ridiculously easy to find ones close to you — provided you live in Colorado, California or Washington as of this writing.

The fun factor: Each strain is packaged with a refrigerator magnet sure to impress friends, colleagues at work, and potential romantic conquests. Perhaps she’s on the fence about whether she’s really into you, spots your extensive collection of O.Pen refrigerator magnets, identifies you as one of her kind, relaxes, then surrenders on the spot.

O.Pen refrigerator magnets

The Periodic Chart of Extracted Elements, color-coded green for indica, red for sativa, and purple for hybrids.

Color-coded cartridges: Each vape cartridge is imprinted with a color-coded logo to quickly identify it as indica, sativa, or hybrid. Sweet!

The save-your-lungs factor: Many stoners have it in the back of their minds that there was some study conducted somewhere sometime which proved smoking marijuana like a human smokestack isn’t bad for your lungs. Thanks, but until pulmonologists transplant lungs, I’m not trusting my set to one study. Don’t know about you, but if I’m smoking instead of vaporizing, at 5280 feet I sure feel the effects when I’m hiking, swimming, singing, or even walking up stairs.

Many stoners have it in the back of their minds that there was some study conducted somewhere sometime which proved smoking marijuana like a human smokestack isn’t bad for your lungs. Thanks, but until pulmonologists transplant lungs, I’m not trusting my set to one study.

Stays charged indefinitely: This USB-charged device seems darn near eternal. Under light but daily use, mine remained charged a good six weeks. While the O.Pen is charging you watch, mesmerized, as tiny LEDs slowly turn from red to orange to green. You may find yourself asking, “How did they do that?”

Plenty of fuel in the tank: My favorite strain so far has been Jack Herer. While I only take about 5 hits a day, I’ve been afraid for months that any hit could be my last and that I’ll have to “settle” for strains some stoners would lick their way across Kansas to try. But the hits keep coming.

A smooth high: Vape cartridges are manufactured using Organa Labs’ big, honking, commercial CO2 extraction machines. Home-brewed extraction methods can’t touch Organa Labs’ extracted Honey Oil for purity, consistency, or balance. Hours after vaporizing, you’ll revert to a basically unmedicated state — unlike the body and mind effects that can linger after smoking (which sometimes you want, but sometimes you don’t).

Low Cost It’s free for the moment: O.Pen has been running a special promotion where if you purchase two 250 mg. vape cartridges [around $30 each], you get the vaporizer free. That was supposed to be for the first 10,000. Shhhhh — don’t tell anyone, but so far they’ve given away over 40,000!

The end of the pen serves as a smartphone or tablet stylus: Clever.

Lifetime no-questions-asked warranty: Just return your O.Pen to the store you bought it from for an instant exchange —  whether your Rottweiler mistook it for a bone or not.

OK, I came up with a few things that aren’t “perfect.”

  • You can’t smoke raw buds in one; that’s like saying you can’t snowboard with skis.
  • You don’t get that junkie-like rush out of inhaling real smoke, the feeling that a substance has entered your bloodstream that’s gooey, gunky, stoney and skunky. Why not have the best of both worlds? When you want a rush, smoke … when you want all the advantages detailed above, vaporize.
  • You miss the taste sensation only smoking can offer; on the other hand, you’ve got a buzz on that’s undetectable.
  • Using an O.Pen won’t enable you to hang drywall with your mind.

What about the competition? Well, the AtmosRx and the Stratus personal vaporizers were fine for first-generation devices. But enterprising minds and manufacturers from a certain Asian land have had two years to top them.

Top them they have in three main ways:

  1. You no longer have to press a button before inhaling like you had to on the AtmosRx.
  2. The oval plastic tip on the O.Pen feels more natural between your lips than the round metallic tip on an AtmosRx.
  3. The O.Pen has a generous return policy.

Various THC-rich strains await extraction at Organa Labs.

Various THC-rich strains await extraction at Organa Labs. The baggies contain “sugar,” or any part of the cannabis plant that’s not a bud excepts stems, stalks, and sticks. Once sugar’s been pulverized into “honey oil,” it’s used to “activate” MIPs [marijuana infused products].

In summation, let me attest that the O.Pen personal vaporizer has accelerated my personal growth as a stoner,  The Third Planet From the Sun seems like a better, brighter place now that I O.wn one, and my refrigerator has been transformed from a cold, impersonal appliance into an artistic outlet for bold, personal expression.