21st century hashish by todd mccormick

8/20/2019 21st CENTURY HASHISH by Todd McCormick

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21st CENTURY HASHISHBy: Todd McCormick

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Cannabis has been safely used for centuries by

countless cultures all over the world. Cannabisextracts, which are mainly concentrations of the

resin glands from its flowering tops, are often

referred to as Hashish.

A LITTLE HISTORY

Breaking up a bud and smoking a joint or packing a

bowl is the traditional way that Americans smoke

Cannabis, but the extracted resins of Cannabis

have been popular throughout the world for

thousands of years. Humans long ago realized that

while smoking the flower was nice, separating andconcentrating the resins found on the flowers and

leaves deliver the most desirable effect. What the

media is now calling “Dabs”, is really just 21st

century Hashish.

Initially hashish aficionados used silk screens, then

moved on to mechanical separation with precise

sieving sizes so that they could separate the resin

glands by specific micron size. In the early 1990s,

the concept of using ice water to separate the

resin from the flowers came onto the scene and

that became known as water-hash, or if it was

really good, bubble-hash, because when you would

put it in your pipe to smoke it, it would literally

bubble, not because of the water, but because the

oils were so pure.

Water, like butane, is not something you want

mixed in with what you're smoking or vaporizing

and if the resin that is separated with water is not

dried properly, it can mold easily, and mold is yet

another substance you do not want mixed in with

what you are smoking or vaping.

On May 1st 1999, an author named Indra put an

article up on erowid.com titled The Boffo Butane-

PVC Hash Oil Extractor and fortunately for the

culture of Cannabis, some enterprising and brave

Cannabis growers and amateur researchers, took

on the task of perfecting this new extraction

technique. Almost 15 years later butane hash oil or

BHO or under its many names, wax, budder, erl or

simply oil; is all over the news and bringing right-

wing paranoia back into the Cannabis

controversy. Since gas extraction became part of

the hashish conversation, and in an effort to make

a cleaner product, hash makers started

experimenting with carbon dioxide to extract

resins, with varying degrees of results.

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MEDICAL USE OF CANNABINOIDS

I am a chronic pain patient who uses Cannabis to

quell the neurological damage and pain associated

with a five vertebrae spinal fusion that was

performed on me when I was a two-year-old child

dealing with a rare form of cancer. I have a lot of

experience with medical Cannabis and I enjoy awide range of Cannabis products that help me deal

with chronic pain. Over the past couple years I

have come to enjoy vaporizing high quality BHO as

my personal medicine, because I find it overall

easier on my respiratory system, mostly because I

no longer have to inhale all of the vegetable

material found in a joint or bowl. I found that I can

use far less material throughout the day for the

same desired effect and I also find that the

extracted levels of cannabinoids do a better job of

providing medical relief more instantly

comparatively to a joint or a bowl and a flower.

CONSISTENCY OF MEDICATION

The other benefit to using a quality extract, be it

BHO, water or CO2 extraction, is

consistency. Cannabis flowers are not consistent

from flower to flower for the same amount of

cannabinoids in the same bag. So metaphorically,

if your grandmother is suffering from nausea due

to her chemotherapy and she tries to “medicate”

by smoking a joint, one bud out of her bag mightwork wonderfully while the next bud might

not. Compare that to a gram, ounce or kilo of

extract and toke after toke, or dab after dab, the

extract is going to be consistent and it is going to

work for grandma’s nausea.

For chronic pain patients trying to manage their day,

hit and miss medicine is not an option. People need

consistent cannabinoid delivery that they can count

on, and the consistency of the experience when

using extracts is the main reason why I feel this issuch a hot topic among the Cannabis community.

Extracts are not a fad, and are not going away. In

fact, it's a very effective way of medicating a

complex array of cannabinoids, terpenes and

flavonoids. It is also not a new drug, it is actually a

very old one: human’s Cannabis consciousness just

figured out in the past 15 years, how to extract a

common flower’s resins with a common organic

gas.

FOOD EXTRACTION TECHNOLOGIES

Have you heard of TBHQ? No? I will leave you to

discover that frozen food ingredient on your own.Would you be surprised if I told you that there is an

old patent to decaffeinate coffee using propane

and butane? Or that “winterization” was an even

older food extraction patent to clean up

mayonnaise that when refrigerated, caused the

fats and oils to separate, which was unsightly and

science stepped in to clean it up.

The dangers of inhaling raw butane from BHO are

also greatly exaggerated, people who grew up in

the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s and packing bowls of

marijuana flowers and twisting joints and then

lighting them with their cheap butane lighters,

inhaled far more butane each hit and every hit

from the trail of that low temperature butane

flame than any person doing dabs would ever beexposed to. Laboratories that test Cannabis

samples for medical clubs here in California fail a

BHO sample if the butane level is over 500 ppm.

After vacuum purging and testing, there is clearly

little but anything other than cannabinoids left in

the resin, according to laboratory testing results.

As for people blowing themselves up using butane

in confined environments, well – Darwin has a way



of bringing us to heaven. One could compare what

the media calls "blasting" of butane over Cannabis

flowers as being no more dangerous than pumping

gasoline, although neither of which I would do in

my kitchen. Every day there are explosions at gas

pumps all over the world simply because of the

explosive fumes, but we all don't get scared and

stop pumping gas into our automobiles becausesome idiot had a cigarette lit while doing the same

thing and blew himself up. We also don't blame

the gasoline or the gas pump or the gas station or

the car, we blame the idiot who did not know how

to handle himself around a flammable substance.

The same logic should apply to butane hash oil, but

it’s clear that the media wants to blame the

substance instead of the idiot and I don't think that

is fitting.

SAFETY AND EFFICACY

If carefully extracted in a controlled environment

by educated people who know what they're doing,

butane hash oil is a wonderful substance that

delivers not just cannabinoids, but a rich supply of

terpenes and flavonoids that are lost with CO2

extraction and the universal solvent that is water

extraction, as both of those methods wash away

terpenes whereas for some reason, the butane

extraction technique collects it.

And that is another reason why butane hash oil is

so popular, humans love terpenes and out of thethree main extraction techniques; water

extraction, CO2 extraction and butane extraction,

butane does a better job of preserving the flavors

and scent associated with the flower. CO2 oil

usually tastes flat and is so lacking in taste that CO2

extraction companies are purchasing terpenes

online and adding these synthetic terpenes back to

their CO2 oil for a better taste. Water hash is not as

popular because it is simply not as potent as BHO,

and also has its own issues with potential mold

contamination and storage problems. Premium

quality water hash is also more laborious to

produce and takes longer to prepare and

dry. There have been people calling water hash

“solvent-less” in an effort to brand their product

away from butane hash oil extraction, but don’t be

fooled, it is simply water hash and water is indeeda solvent washing away many of the precious

terpenes that were found on the flower.

A WORD OF WARNING

Now that so very many people are turning their full

harvest into some form of HASHISH, be it dry

sieve, water or gas, the one thing I want to

emphasize is that what you spray on your flowers

will be in your extract. Growers have to stop using

the many pesticides, fungicides and natural

remedies they have long relied on. The biggest

problem with BHO is the concentration of

pesticides along with the resin. This is a serious

problem which would also be largely prevented

through regulation.



Pesticides have to be avoided, as concentrated

amounts of poisons in the end product is not

acceptable and labs are now testing for

contaminated samples. Furthermore, old organic

garden tools to combat bugs and mold such as

neem oil, potassium salts and sulfur, if applied on

to the flowers, will ruin product processed by even

the best extraction artists and must be avoided.

I can practically hear you all now wondering aloud

about how to deal with bugs and mold without

using any of the standard garden tools. Well, I

fortunately have a suggestion and it’s a

combination of technology and simplicity: ionized

water. These new countertop machines that use

electrolysis to separate the water into two

streams, both a low PH acidic, and a high PH

alkaline, that can be used by growers to do

everything from wash and rinse away insects with

acidic water to rinsing away powdery mildew with

high PH alkaline water, leaving no residue and no

harm to the plants, because no chemicals were

used to achieve the high ph. Water is the best

solvent and does an amazing job at cleaning and

dissolving waxes and oils at a high PH, so be

careful spraying very mature flowers with very

high PH water or you can rinse away your aromatic

oils.

THE SWEET SCENT OF THE FUTURE

Hashish innovators are now talking about ways to

capture the terpenes and apply them back onto

the organic material, reuniting the cannabinoids

with the terpenes after the extraction process is

complete, just as they would have been on the

flower.

The best of the best hashish will always be dry

sieved, often mechanically separated resin glands

which have been touched by nothing but air. But

obtaining a consistent medical supply of dry sievedresin glands is not easily procurable during current

prohibition.

21st century hashish is here to stay, legalization

and regulation is what is needed to guide this

infant industry into safety. The danger is not the

product, as science has shown us that

cannabinoids are safe at any concentration, the

danger is in the prohibition of Cannabis, which

pushes the manufacture of extracts from safe

laboratory type controlled environments to

people’s backyards, much like alcohol prohibition

did in the 20s. In the liquor industry, concentrated

forms of alcohol are common, Everclear is 190

proof, extremely flammable and highly toxic,

ironically, it is the complete opposite of butane

hash oil, which is nonflammable and non-toxic,although both of which should be manufactured in

a controlled environment.

Be safe, do some research and if you are going touse the extracted resins of Cannabis, learn how to

identify the different varieties and how to spot

problems like moldy water hash or improperly

purged butane hash oil, your health depends on it.

Todd McCormick is the author of How To Grow

Medical Marijuana and the soon to be released

GrowMEDICINE, he also appears in the documentary:

The Union: The Business Behind Getting High and

was the editor of the 12th edition of Jack Herer’s,

classic: The Emperor Wears No Clothes - He iscurrently an executive producer on the soon to be

released documentary: The Culture High

More information: www.HEMP.xxx

21st century hashish by todd mccormick

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