A highly concentrated form of marijuana challenges the drug\u2019s benign reputation.<\/p>\n
The organizers of this summer\u2019s Hempfest in Seattle had to ban something that you might not expect to be a common item at a marijuana-themed festival: blowtorches. And despite that effort, people still showed up with them. Blowtorches are used for dabbing, which is a newish way of getting high that\u2019s becoming increasingly popular, especially in states with some degree of marijuana legalization. It has some parents and doctors concerned, and it puts advocates of legal marijuana in a rather uncomfortable position. That\u2019s because it gets you really high really fast, and sometimes people doing it blow up their houses.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re not from Colorado, Washington, California, or Oregon, odds are you\u2019re not familiar with dabbing. That\u2019s because it\u2019s most popular in the states with the loosest marijuana laws. Producing dabs \u2014 the technical term is \u201cbutane hash oil\u201d \u2014 is a fairly complex process. The short version is that you extract resins from marijuana with liquid butane, then evaporate the butane to leave behind a highly concentrated form of THC. The residue usually weighs 10 to 20 percent of what the original marijuana did.\u00a0 You consume the resultant product, called dabs or BHO, by using a blowtorch and what\u2019s called an oil rig to heat the concentrate until it smokes. Then you breathe the smoke in and get extremely high.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsaac,\u201d a black-market dealer based in a Denver suburb, tells NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE that people should use extreme caution when first dabbing: \u201cMost people I know who try it for the first time don\u2019t say much for about an hour and a half, two hours,\u201d he says. \u201cThey just sit there \u2014 \u2018Oh sh*t.\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 He adds that he\u2019s seen people throw up and pass out when trying it, and that dabbing once is like smoking an entire eighth (1\/8 ounce, or 3.5 grams) of marijuana. In general, he\u2019s not a huge fan of the process. \u201cIt\u2019s less of a social thing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re chewing on coca leaves or you\u2019re doing cocaine. It\u2019s kind of the same. You\u2019re smoking a joint and you\u2019re passing it around to your friends and having a good time, or you\u2019re sitting in the corner with a torch.\u201d<\/p>\n
But from the perspective of those in the cannabis industry, the increasing popularity of dabbing is good news. If you\u2019re in the black market, it\u2019s a boon because BHO is much more compact, and thus easier to transport, than marijuana flowers (the usual form in which the drug is consumed). Isaac says he can mail the BHO derived from a quarter pound of marijuana \u2014 worth up to $1,500 \u2014 for about five bucks. Flowers are much<\/p>\n
more fragrant and take up more space, which makes them a lot more likely than concentrate to be noticed by postal workers. And if you get pulled over with ten grams or so in your car, Isaac says, you can just eat it without getting especially high. Problem solved!<\/p>\n
Dabbing is also making a splash in the legal marijuana industry. Kayvan Khalatbari, who works as a consultant for marijuana businesses and owns a dispensary in Denver, tells NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE that concentrates are becoming a much bigger part of his market share than they were a few years ago: \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a huge part of where this industry\u2019s headed.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s lucrative. Producing the concentrates isn\u2019t very expensive, and as demand has gone up, so have prices. Khalatbari says concentrates were selling for $5 to $15 a gram wholesale six months ago but now go for about $30. Retail prices of concentrates have gotten as high as $90 in the state. And naturally, it\u2019s even pricier in places like Atlanta that are far outside the perimeter of states with lax marijuana laws. So a mail-order dabbing business can be very profitable. Isaac thinks that in ten years, half the marijuana consumed in this country will be through dabbing.<\/p>\n
From a PR perspective, though, dabbing isn\u2019t great for advocates of looser cannabis laws. For starters, some of the implements you can use to dab look a lot like crack pipes. There\u2019s also the risk that you\u2019ll inhale butane, which isn\u2019t fantastic for your lungs. On top of that, there can be flashy accidents when the steps involved in producing and consuming dabs aren\u2019t followed properly (houses blow up, people get third-degree burns all over their bodies, etc.).. An organization called notMYkid has issued a \u201cParent Alert\u201d on the subject, and news stories detailing doctors\u2019 concerns are starting to crop up.<\/p>\n
Source:\u00a0 WWW.NATIONALREVIEW.COM\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 DECEMBER 6, 2013 4:20 PM\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A highly concentrated form of marijuana challenges the drug\u2019s benign reputation. The organizers of this summer\u2019s Hempfest in Seattle had to ban something that you might not expect to be a common item at a marijuana-themed festival: blowtorches. And despite that effort, people still showed up with them. Blowtorches are used for dabbing, which is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,9,11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cannabis-marijuana","category-drug-specifics","category-effects-of-drugs","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drugprevent.org.uk\/ppp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}