Making Butane Hash A Lethal Mix in Home Drug Labs

Last edited Fri Feb 7, 2014, 03:01 PM - Edit history (2)

By Joe Mozingo
February 5, 2014, 5:18 p.m.

The "chef" hunkered over a batch of hash oil he was making in a kitchen in Redondo Beach, using a common but extremely dangerous method known as "open blasting."
The 26-year-old meticulously stirred and heated the marijuana extract into the highest clarity, slowly producing "butane honey oil" that would be as clear and pure as amber.
This potent type of hash, also called "wax," has taken off in the marijuana market with the rise of electronic cigarettes and other vaporizing devices. Dabs of it can be vaporized and inhaled without the smoke and pungent odor of weed, an act called "dabbing." And they bring on a soaring high even among longtime cannabis smokers who have a strong tolerance for the drug.

But the butane used to extract the essential oil of the marijuana plant frequently blows up in the faces of the people making the wax.
In the last 14 months, at least 17 cooks and bystanders have landed in Southern California burn centers with catastrophic injuries, a toll far worse than from meth lab explosions. In Northern California, the UC Davis Health System's burn unit treated 27 victims last year with similar injuries, and six have come in during the last two weeks. Officials suspect that the overall numbers are much higher because victims don't disclose the illicit cause of their injuries.

The Redondo chef, who asked to withhold his name because making this type of hash is a felony, started by packing a glass pipe with discarded marijuana trimmings. He put vinyl mesh over one end and sprayed a high-pressure canister of liquid butane in the other end. The butane — better known as lighter fluid — bonded with the resin glands in the marijuana, and the solution poured into a Pyrex baking dish placed in a larger dish of nearly boiling water.

He stirred and heated it for hours, while butane slowly evaporated out of the solution to leave the purified, nonexplosive wax. All that time, the butane gas was spilling into the air. "When butane is expelled into a room, it is odorless and colorless," said Ashley Rosen, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the
major narcotics division. "It builds up in the room until it's basically a bomb."


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http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-butane-hash-20140206,0,5499031.story#ixzz2sbjDCqTm