By MICHAEL R. BLOOD

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s a widely known vape cartridge in the marijuana economy, but it’s not a licensed brand. And it’s got the kind of market buzz no legitimate company would want.

The vape cartridges that go by the catchy, one-syllable name “Dank” _ a slang word for highly potent cannabis _ are figuring prominently in the federal investigation to determine what has caused a rash of mysterious and sometimes fatal lung illnesses apparently linked to vaping. Most of the cases have involved products that contain the marijuana compound THC, often obtained from illegal sources.

The suspect Dank vapes are a familiar product in the underground marijuana economy _ it’s not a legal, tested brand. It’s merely a name on a box or a cartridge, packaging that’s easily obtained online and used by illicit producers to lure customers.

But with colorful boxes and names like Cherry Kush and Blue Dream, the homemade vapes appear convincing on the shelf.

“It doesn’t look very different from what you can buy in a (legal) dispensary,” said Beverly Hills-based cannabis attorney Allison Margolin.

So far, investigators have not identified a culprit in the illnesses reported in dozens of states. But officials say patients have mentioned the Dank name frequently. Many of the people who got sick in Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, said they used cartridges sold in Dank packaging.

The raw materials to produce a Dank vape aren’t hard to find: Ready-to-fill Dank boxes and cartridges can be ordered from Chinese internet sites for pennies apiece. A Craigslist post last week offered a box stuffed with empty Dank packages for $16. And you can buy the boxes and empty cartridges in shops in downtown Los Angeles.

A rogue producer adds cannabis oil _ almost certainly untested _ and it’s ready for sale.

“It’s a generic product name that doesn’t really tie back to one store or one distributor,” Dr. Jennifer Layden, chief medical officer for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said last month. “Folks are getting it from friends or folks on the street, with no understanding of where it came from prior to that.”

The chief selling point for pot vapes in Dank packaging: It’s a quick high on the cheap, available for as little as $20 a gram on the illicit market, roughly one-third of what a customer would pay for a cartridge in a legal marijuana shop in California

But they come with risk: Products in the legal marijuana market are tested for safety and purity, while those in the illicit market are not and could contain pesticides, heavy metals or other dangerous contaminants.

“It was never a legitimate company,” said Los Angeles dispensary owner Donnie Anderson. “It was always an underground brand.”

Given the shadowy pedigree of Dank vapes, it’s not surprising that details about its history are scarce. In California, the Dank name appears to have emerged during the largely unregulated medical cannabis era, prior to broad legalization that began in 2018.

Dispensary owner Jerred Kiloh, who heads the Los Angeles-based United Cannabis Business Association, recalls seeing Dank vapes for the first time about seven years ago. Kiloh remembers being visited by vendors selling them at his shop, though that stopped long ago.

What remains is the name, which has managed to retain a surprising cache in the underground industry.

Last month, Wisconsin authorities uncovered an illegal vape-cartridge operation that they said was producing thousands of cartridges loaded with THC oil every day for almost two years. Photographs released by the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Department showed neatly stacked Dank boxes and cartridges, apparently ready for shipment.

Also last month, Minnesota authorities seized nearly 77,000 THC vaping cartridges, some of which were packaged in Dank boxes.

In November 2018, authorities in Lorain County, Ohio, intercepted four packages mailed from California holding individually wrapped and sealed packages of Dank cartridges. They believed numerous similar packages were sent to the area previously.

“Dank Vapes appears to be the most prominent in a class of largely counterfeit brands, with common packaging that is easily available online and that is used by distributors to market THC-containing cartridges with no obvious centralized production or distribution,” said a report by Illinois and Wisconsin officials, and from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Doctors say the illnesses resemble an inhalation injury. Symptoms have included shortness of breath, fatigue, chest pain, diarrhea and vomiting.

Ron Gershoni, co-founder of vape producer Jetty Extracts who sits on the board of the California Cannabis Manufacturers Association, said the strictly regulated legal industry has been working to distinguish itself from the underground market that continues to thrive in California.

His company doesn’t view Dank vapes as a competitor, but he understands how the name has survived in the illegal market.

They “essentially sell empty packaging, and anyone can fill it,” he said. “It’s a business model that made sense. Anybody who wanted to make a buck.”

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Blood is a member of AP’s marijuana beat team. Follow the AP’s complete marijuana coverage: https://apnews.com/Marijuana

By JAKE BLEIBERG

DALLAS (AP) — A white Dallas police officer who said she mistook a neighbor’s apartment for her own and fatally shot him in his living room was sentenced to a decade in prison in a stunning courtroom scene that included the dead man’s brother and the black judge embracing the sobbing officer.

People outside of the courtroom reacted angrily to the sentence given to Amber Guyger in the death of Botham Jean, believing it was too lenient. But Jean’s brother addressed her directly from the witness stand.

Brandt Jean told Guyger that his brother would have wanted her to turn her life over to Christ, and that if she asks God for forgiveness, she will get it.

“I love you as a person. I don’t wish anything bad on you,” he said to the 31-year-old Guyger, before asking the judge, “I don’t know if this is possible, but can I give her a hug?”

The judge said he could, and Brandt and Guyger stood up, met in front of the bench and embraced while Guyger cried. Judge Tammy Kemp also hugged Guyger before she was led from the courtroom Wednesday.

The shooting in September 2018 drew widespread attention because of the strange circumstances and because it was one in a string of shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers.

Guyger, arrested three days after the shooting and later fired, was convicted of murder Tuesday. The jury, which was largely made up of women and people of color, could have sentenced her to up to life in prison or as little as two years. But prosecutors asked them to send her to prison for 28 years, which is how old Botham Jean would have been if he were still alive.

She will be eligible for parole in five years, after serving half of her sentence.

As video of the dramatic hearing circulated online, critics blasted the judge, saying her hug was inappropriate for the jurist overseeing the case. Meanwhile at a Dallas church where the Jean family gathered to worship and Botham Jean used to lead congregation singing, video of Brandt Jean embracing Guyger in court drew applause and “amens” when showed Wednesday night.

Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, a former trial judge, called Brandt’s embrace of Guyger “an amazing act of healing and forgiveness that is rare in today’s society … especially for many of our leaders.”

If Jean’s 18-year-old brother “can heal and express healing in that fashion, in his words and in his deeds, I would hope that the greater community, not just Dallas but all of Texas and all of the United States, could gain a message from that,” he told reporters.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson issued a statement saying he would “never, ever forget the incredible examples of love, faith and strength personified by Botham, Brandt and the entire Jean family.”

Dozens of demonstrators marched through parts of downtown Dallas on Wednesday night to protest the sentence. One woman was taken into custody after she appeared to disregard police orders not to obstruct traffic.

Guyger’s attorney had asked jurors to show mercy, pointing to the good she did for people, including some who spoke at the sentencing hearing.

Among them was officer Cathy Odhiambo, who described Guyger as a longtime friend who dreamed of being a police officer when they waited tables at a TGI Fridays. She said the two of them went through the academy and then came through the police ranks together.

“Everybody that knows her knows that Amber is the sweetest person,” Odhiambo said.

Odhiambo, who is black, was not asked about text messages that prosecutors said indicated a lack of sensitivity by Guyger toward black people. However, another fellow officer, Thomas MacPherson, said some of those texts sounded “out of character” for Guyger, whom he described as “someone you could depend on.”

When a sniper opened fire on police during a rally in downtown Dallas three years ago, killing five of them, Guyger was “so brave,” MacPherson said. He said the two of them ran toward the gunfire and helped panicked citizens along the way.

LaWanda Clark, who is black, said was struggling with a crack cocaine addiction when she met Guyger during a drug house bust. She said Guyger, while ticketing her, told her it could be the catalyst for turning her life around. She said Guyger treated her as a person, not an addict, and that she’s sober now.

Jean’s father told jurors about how his son’s death upended his life back in St. Lucia. Bertrum Jean said that after his son left their Caribbean island for college in Arkansas, he would call home every Sunday after church to catch up with the tightly knit family. Now, he said, his Sundays “have been destroyed.”

“How could we have lost Botham? Such a sweet boy. He tried his best to live a good honest life. He loved God. He loved everyone. How could this happen to him?” the father said, breaking into tears.

After the hearing, Jean’s mother, Allison Jean, criticized the investigation into her son’s death and the police training to shoot to kill.

If Guyger “was trained not to shoot in the heart, my son would be alive today. He was no threat to her. He had no reason to be a threat to her, because he was in his own apartment,” Allison Jean said.

The basic facts of the shooting were not in dispute. Guyger, returning from a long shift that night, parked on the wrong floor and mistook Jean’s apartment for her own, which was directly below his. Finding the door ajar, she entered and shot him, thinking he was a burglar. He had been eating a bowl of ice cream before she fired.

In the frantic 911 call played repeatedly during the trial, Guyger said “I thought it was my apartment” nearly 20 times. Her lawyers argued that the identical physical appearance of the apartment complex from floor to floor frequently led to tenants going to the wrong apartments.

But prosecutors questioned how Guyger could have missed numerous signs that she was in the wrong place. They also asked why she did not call for backup and suggested she was distracted by sexually explicit phone messages she had been exchanging with her police partner, who was also her lover.

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Associated Press video journalist John Mone and writer Jamie Stengle in Dallas, and writer Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed this this report.

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Follow Jake Bleiberg on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jzbleiberg

By GEOFF MULVIHILL

AP – Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday announced it had reached an agreement worth more than $20 million with two Ohio counties, becoming the latest company to settle a lawsuit to get out of the first federal trial over the nation’s opioids crisis.

The deal with Cuyahoga and Summit counties comes a little more than a month after an Oklahoma judge ordered the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based health care conglomerate to pay $572 million over its marketing of opioids in that state.

It was announced less than three weeks before the scheduled start of the first federal trial over the opioid crisis. Four other opioid makers also have reached settlements in recent months and will not be defendants in the trial, scheduled for federal court in Cleveland. Like most of the others, Johnson & Johnson still faces some 2,000 other lawsuits related to the nation’s opioids epidemic.

“The settlement allows the company to avoid the resource demands and uncertainty of a trial as it continues to seek meaningful progress in addressing the nation’s opioid crisis,” Johnson & Johnson said in a statement. “The company recognizes the opioid crisis is a complex public health challenge and is working collaboratively to help communities and people in need.”

Opioids, a class of drug that includes prescription painkillers as well as heroin and illicitly made fentanyl, have been linked to more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000.

Johnson & Johnson has sold three opioids in the U.S.: Duragesic fentanyl patches; the oral opioid Nucynta; and an extended-release version of Nucynta.

The company said its products accounted for less than 1% of the opioid prescriptions in the country since they were launched. It sold marketing rights for Nucynta in 2015 and has not marketed Duragesic to patients or prescribers in the U.S. for more than a decade, although it continues to sell the drug.

In recent months, the drug companies Endo, Allergan and Mallinckrodt also reached settlements with the two Ohio counties. Purdue Pharma has struck a tentative deal intended to settle all its lawsuits — although about half the states say they will object to the settlement in bankruptcy court.

Teva is the only drugmaker that would remain in the Cleveland trial if Johnson & Johnson’s settlement is finalized. The other defendants still in the trial are distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, Henry Schein and McKesson, along with the pharmacy chain Walgreens.

With most drugmakers out of the initial trial, it could mean less focus on how they marketed powerful painkillers to doctors and more on whether distributors shipped opioid orders that they believed were suspicious.

With the trial approaching, more settlements are possible. In a statement Tuesday, Endo said it “continues to explore various global settlement mechanisms,” including “a construct that could potentially be implemented through Purdue Pharma’s recent bankruptcy filing.”

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Follow Mulvihill at http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill