High on Wax

Sticking a baggie in your underwear used to be a great way to carry weed on an airplane or across a checkpoint without detection. But today’s pot is so smelly a drug-sniffing dog can detect it from three counties away. Most waxes are less pungent and easier to conceal or to vape in public without detection.

So how do you turn a flowering bud into a small bit of wax with super-potency? Any number of ways. The most common extraction method is pouring butane over buds. You’re probably not interested in burning down your home, however, so this method should be done outside. Other solvents like carbon dioxide and pure hydrocarbons can be used for safer extraction. The endproduct is a highly potent oil that varies in consistencies, colors, and textures.

Extraction processes range from employing industrial-size vats to making your own at home. In Colorado, extraction companies are producing quality wax using safe methods and proper equipment. In Texas, kitchen chemists try not to blow up themselves but sometimes use cheap and unsafe ways to extract the THC oil –– tetrahydrocannabinol is the main psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana.

For a lot of tokin’ Texans, extraction is worth the effort. Wax can have a 70 to 90 percent THC content. Even the best modern day buds reach only about 30 percent THC. This means that inhaling a small speck of wax is the equivalent of smoking a whole joint in one hit. Most cannabis consumers seeking out concentrates are simply looking for a stronger experience.

THC wax appears to be gaining wide acceptance across the country, rising in popularity “in the past three years,” High Times senior editor Bobby Black recently told Wired. “It’s been done for decades, but it was only done by a few people, and it was very underground. Even at High Times, we didn’t really talk about it or cover it because it was so rare.”

No longer. One place where Black has seen wax’s popularity up close is High Times’ annual Cannabis Cup, a weed competition that takes place only in California, Colorado, and Washington, the states where medical and recreational marijuana is legal. Once-marginal hash oil or wax entries have not only increased over the last several years but “pretty much eclipsed traditional hash at this point,” Black said.

Solvent-based extracts remained in the shadows of pot culture until 2005, when a Vancouver man calling himself “BudderKing” introduced his own brand of concentrate — “Budder” — during a medical marijuana conference. Chemist and plant analyst Dr. Paul Hornby, who runs a company that tests marijuana, told Cannabis Culture magazine in 2005 that Budder was “the cleanest, most potent cannabis product” he ever tested.

BudderKing used cannabis message boards and High Times to spread his extraction technique. Cultivators in California, Colorado, and Washington — states where voters legalized marijuana for medical use in 1996, 2000, and 1998 respectively — began making Budder and a wide variety of wax products to sell at dispensaries.

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So how can Texans get their hands on wax? These days you can make the 20-hour-roundtrip trek to Colorado, where anyone over 21 can buy weed legally for any reason. Or you can extract your own wax. Most Texans buy locally through friends or underground dealers, who risk personal freedom every day to bring weed to North Texas. We’d tell you who these unsung heroes are, but they would probably get busted. They can’t help anyone if they are in jail.

Despite pot’s illegality, Texans are keeping up with the trends.

Texas legally allows for some forms of medical marijuana. Many states have legalized it for many different diseases and conditions, including cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder. Texas law permits the use of cannabis oils high in CBD, a non-euphoric compound found in the marijuana plant, and low in THC. Recreational pot smokers typically seek out strains high in THC. Medical patients, however, often seek out products high in cannabidiol, or CBD, because of the medical properties. The Texas Department of Public Safety will oversee the distribution of cannabis oils beginning in early 2016 only to patients who have epileptic seizures and have tried at least two traditional epilepsy medications with no positive results. The patient also must get the approval of two doctors before taking advantage of the new law.

Wax contains both of the chemicals that give marijuana its healing powers and psychedelic side effects. The non-psychoactive CBD offers a wide range of proven medical uses, while THC provides the high. CBD has been scientifically proven to reduce nausea and vomiting, suppress seizure activity, and combat psychosis, neurodegenerative disorders, tumors and cancer cells, anxiety, and depression disorders.

Gov. Greg Abbott signed the Texas Compassionate Use Act into law at the beginning of 2015, a law directly related to epileptics. At the time, the legislation stopped short of providing real relief for patients who qualify under the law’s restrictive nature.

“There is currently no cure for intractable epilepsy, and many patients have had little to no success with currently approved drugs,” Abbott said in a statement. “However, we have seen promising results from cannabidiol oil testing, and with the passage of this legislation, there is now hope for thousands of families who deal with the effects of intractable epilepsy every day.”

Texas is the 15th state to legalize non-intoxicating cannabis oil. The law now calls for three dispensaries to be operational by September 2017.

It’s still early 2016, and what happened may surprise you. Industrial cannabidiol oil can now be purchased at your favorite head shop. That’s right. Just pop right in, grab a new oil rig or a vaporizing pen, and some industrial-grade CBD oil. But the good stuff made from potent buds is for only qualified patients.

Industrial-grade CBD oil is packaged as a cure-all, reminiscent of the tonic bottles of the 1800s. These modern-day oil manufacturers are using hemp rather than high-grade marijuana and yet claiming the same medical benefits. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has threatened industrial CBD companies. In late February, the feds sent letters to seven companies that market CBD products to treat health conditions, five of them for humans and two for pets. The FDA warned that the companies’ products are not “generally recognized as safe and effective” and that the companies are engaging in illegal interstate commerce.

Despite the FDA threats, scientists are learning that a combination of different cannabinoids applied together are far more effective than a single cannabinoid applied by itself, according to cancerresearchuk.org, a cancer research website based in the United Kingdom. This means that a combination of similarly formed molecules can work together in the human body to produce a greater effect than a single molecule by itself.

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