Butane hash oil (BHO)

A hot new product on medical marijuana shelves and on Craigslist is butane hash oil: a potent hash oil most often made at home with the help of DIY  (do-it-yourself) YouTube clips and canisters of butane.  Also known as amber, honey, wax, earwax and by its initials BHO, butane hash oil is a highly concentrated form of the active ingredient in marijuana (tetrahydrocannabinol).  Using BHO is often called “dabbing,” because of the way BHO is ingested.  To ingest BHO, users place a small dab of the substance on a hot, metal surface, and then inhale the resulting puff of smoke.

Dangerously, the high is much more intense than regular marijuana: It’s not uncommon for people to lose consciousness after inhaling BHO.  Dale Gieringer, of NORML, a marijuana advocacy group, told foxnews.com, “Things like this never happened until the popularization of hash oil in recent years.  The dangers are dire enough to merit a special warning.”

BHO is especially dangerous due to its flammable nature.  BHO is consumed by using portable hash oil pens or water pipes heated with propane torches, which comes with a cost.  Oregonlive.com reports, “butane-fueled blasts have sent 17 people to a Portland burn unit with serious injuries in the past 16 months, including one Northeast Portland man who later died from his injuries.”  Further, oregonlive.com reports that there were, “nine major BHO-related blasts in Oregon since 2011, four of them in homes or hotel rooms where children, including a newborn, were present. In one case last year, a 12-year-old girl suffered multiple broken bones after leaping from the second floor of a Medford apartment building rocked by a butane (BHO) explosion.”