Whipped Cream Difficulties

…reading the newspaper.

A couple of local idiots blew up their apartment last week, and now face “third-degree felony arson charges” to go with their third-degree burns. (I kid: apparently, their burns were only second-degree.)

How did they manage this? They were making BHO.

No, not “Barack Hussain Obama”, but “Butane Honey Oil”. I’d never heard of BHO before (not being a stoner), but the Statesman goes into an astounding level of detail about the process. Apparently, you put pot in a pipe with coffee filters at one end, screw a drilled cap on to the other end, and spray butane through it. The butane supposedly extracts the THC, and the butane/THC mix drips out through the coffee filter into a catch vessel (like a Pyrex pie plate). Then you can evaporate off the liquid butane, and viola!

What’s left is a concentrated oil, which can have a THC content of 40 percent or more, he said.

Back in the bad old days, when I was young, I would have had to do much more painful research to figure out the few details of the process that the Statesman left out. (Not that I was a stoner: I didn’t smoke then and I don’t smoke now.) Kids today have it easy: they can go watch idiots do it on YouTube.

(I got a kick out of the YouTube commenter who pointed out that that mask will do sweet FA for inhaled butane. I also got a kick out of the suggestions to use glass instead of PVC. Of course, if something does go wrong and these South Austin engineered rigs do explode in your hands, it won’t make any difference: the doctors will still have to dig fragments out of you.)

The Statesman does not detail, but I assume that something went wrong in the process of evaporating off the butane. Probably “didn’t do it outside, away from ignition sources like pilot lights”.

In related stories, “Using butane to extract THC from pot risky, experts say“. Gee, you think so?

This year, authorities said a man and a woman were critically injured in an Ocean Beach, Calif., motel room trying to extract hash oil from marijuana using butane when the man lit a cigarette, causing an explosion, according to the Los Angeles Times. It took 45 firefighters half an hour to get the fire under control, the newspaper reported.

Dude, I’m sorry. I don’t wish burns and hospital stays on anyone. But if you’re lighting a smoke while messing around with butane? Think of it as evolution in action.