Plain old pot has lost its edge

Sarah Maslin Nir reports in the New York Times that some marijuana users are chasing bigger highs, called "dabbing."

On a recent bright afternoon, two teenage boys in boat shoes and shorts strolled up Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in a crowd of passers-by. At 56th Street they paused as one pulled an electronic pipe out of his pocket and held it to his friend’s lips. Inside was a potent and little-studied drug made from distilled marijuana; they were emboldened, they said, by the fact that the gooey wax hardly has a smell, and is so novel in New York that, even if discovered, parents, teachers or even the authorities hardly seem to know what it is.

As throngs walked by, the boys stood in front of the diamond-filled windows of Harry Winston, getting high.

The practice of consuming marijuana extract — a yellow, waxy substance that can contain high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical in unprocessed marijuana that produces a high — appears to have risen rapidly in New York City over the past few years, according to federal law enforcement officials as well as people who use and sell the drug. Its rise crosses social lines, from experimenting teenagers to workers on Wall Street. And it is driven by many factors, including the Eastward-trickling effects of a much more permissive marijuana culture in the West, where it is now dispensed legally in some states.


marijuana extract photo by Sam Hodgson of the New York Times

...Federal law enforcement officials, however, say the drug, also known as shatter, butter and honey, is now on their radar. “We monitor any type of new twist on drug use in order to warn the public of its danger,” James J. Hunt, special agent in charge of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York division, said in an email. Referring to the marijuana extract, he said, “Not only is the method of production explosive, but the use has serious physical and psychological side effects.”

Underscoring the drug’s rise is a profound cultural shift: As social mores regarding marijuana have loosened, there is a sense among some that dabbing, as the practice of using the extract is popularly known, titillates because plain old pot has lost its edge.

“A lot of it is, we’re doing it in disguise,” said one of the teenagers on Fifth Avenue, both students at the Masters School, a private boarding school in Dobbs Ferry, New York. The two asked that their names not be used because they did not want get in trouble with the police or school administrators. The advent of vaporizers and the smaller “vape pen,” a device similar to an e-cigarette, users say, is also increasing the popularity of dabbing. Just squeeze the extract into a chamber inside the pen, one teenager said, and inhale. “And we can do it so freely,” he said.

His classmate says the appeal is the ferocity of the high. Users can sometimes pass out after inhaling, and the stupefying effects can last for hours, and border on the hallucinatory. Marijuana, in its traditional plant form, has a THC concentration of about 20 percent, according to information distributed by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The wax used for dabbing can have a concentration of up to 80 percent.

The extract is typically made by pouring a solvent over marijuana plants to extract the THC, then letting the solvent evaporate. The waxy substance that remains, and its variants, now make up a booming sector of the marijuana economy, according to the ArcView Group, a company that studies and invests in the cannabis industry.

There has been little research on marijuana concentrates and whether they affect the body differently than other forms of marijuana. But what is known is cause for concern, according to Emily Feinstein, the director of health law and policy for the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. “There is some evidence to suggest that the outcomes, like the effects, may be supercharged,” Ms. Feinstein said in an email. “Side effects can include: a rapid heartbeat, blackouts, psychosis, paranoia and hallucinations that cause people to end up in psychiatric facilities.”

In New York, users say there is a heightened appeal: the ease of evasion. Videos are traded among teenagers that show off brazen dabbing in public, in the bleachers at high school sports games, or even in school.

One user, a 27-year-old man who lives in Midwood, drew a parallel with the technological advances that have shrunk computers into palm-size smartphones and as driving the fad for a smaller, more powerful punch. “Back in the day, people had to find a way to smoke weed, to roll it into something,” he said, adding that to do so now, in this era of concentrates, seems archaic.

...A man who sells marijuana on Craigslist, who identified himself as Tony Holl, said in an interview that his business had risen dramatically. “I was surprised; once one person asked, then a whole bunch of people asked,” he said. “It’s definitely a trend.”

On a recent afternoon in SoHo, Mr. Holl, who is 40, produced manila envelopes he said he was on his way to deliver. A police officer walked nearby, but Mr. Holl said he was not concerned as he displayed his wares: white paper smeared with brownish wax. He said most people would not recognize it as a drug.

One thing Mr. Holl says he will not do, however, is use his product. The high, he said, is too intense. “That’s the only dangerous thing about it,” he said. “Opportunities can pass you by.”

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