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.
Medical
experts have begun to raise alarms, saying the substance is too new to
be fully understood and could pose unknown health risks. Critics cite
its largely unregulated production, in a process that often involves
home cooks who douse marijuana with volatile butane, which can lead to
explosions.
The New York Fire Department did not have information on whether there had been fires linked to local production, but in 2013 a teenage boy was killed and a girl badly injured while allegedly making the substance inside a home in Marine Park, Brooklyn.
A
spokeswoman for the Police Department said there were no records of any
officers even encountering the extract; last year, 15,000 summonses
were issued for possessing small amounts of marijuana.
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.
“Marijuana,” the teenager said, “is the beer of THC, as dabbing is to vodka.”
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.
The
product is so new that even in states where marijuana is permitted to
some degree, there is frequently no regulation concerning its labeling
or how it is made. “The laws haven’t caught up with this part of the
marketplace,” said Paul Armentano, the deputy director of Norml, a
national organization that advocates the legalization of marijuana.
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.”
Even
among marijuana proponents, dabbing is a polarizing topic. On message
boards and online forums, some say it is just another way to consume the
drug, while others fear that it could be misused. “When a product is
more potent, and when the root of administration is conducive to people
experiencing a very strong high very quickly,” Mr. Armentano said, “then
one can argue that the risk of abuse goes up.”
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.”
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.
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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