marijuana concentrate (aka “a dab”)
A deadly new version of marijuana is showing up across the country, and it has doctors terrified.
The new marijuana trend, called dabbing, has four times the amount of THC found in regular marijuana, according to Your Nation News.
LA Weekly describes dabbing as the “flash vaporization” of marijuana concentrate. It results in a high that lasts only a few minutes, but it can cause extreme anxiety and paranoia — and can even lead to addiction.
While marijuana advocates say the regular version of the drug is not physically addictive, dabbing is a different story, according to Dr. Michael Miller of Rogers Memorial Hospital in Wisconsin.
“Addiction is a bio-psycho-social-spiritual disease,” Miller, former president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, told LA Weekly. “If you have a predisposition for addiction, the more potent rewards are more likely to kick in the addictive process in the brain. Very strong exposures to very intense rewards triggers a preoccupation and craving and cues to use again. That results in addiction.”
Many readers expressed skepticism toward the concern, arguing that dabbing does not present any real danger.
“This is a joke,” one Newsiosity reader wrote on the site’s Facebook page. “Nobody dies from dabs. People injure themselves or die from making the wax or concentrate to smoke. I love how he said one dab is like 5 joints … idiots. 5 joints is nothing to some people. The danger in dabbing is not dabbing itself it’s making the wax, shatter or whatever you want to call it.”
“Wax isn’t made with butane anymore,” another Facebook user added. “It’s made with c02. It’s literally just contentrated THC. For experienced high dosed patients. also, the body produces endocannabinoids and has receptor site specifically for THC. with wax being like 60+ % THC it’s pretty difficult to develope a tolerance to it. You cannot die unless you blow yourself up making some nasty ghetto wax. Educate thineselves.”
“This is the worst misinformation I have ever seen on this subject,” a Your Nation News reader wrote in response to the story. “First off, butane is a cheap easy way to make them but it isn’t the only way and the other ways are much safer. So not all wax contains butane. If you buy it off the street it might because you dont know exactly what you’re getting. And hitting one dab IS NOT the equivalent of smoking 5 joints at once. And it only causes psychosis with a very small number of users, mostly new users. … Back to the butane. Butane is dangerous all by itself and is also legal to buy and while it has a number of legal uses, many choose to abuse it also, in many different ways too. So yes, please talk to your children about all substances and the risks involved, but be truthful. And quit trying to scare people with propaganda that either isn’t true at all or is a small bit of truth peppered with lies.”
Others sided with the doctors, supporting the assertion that dabbing is dangerous.
“Sorry all you pothead users and supporters but this article and the panel of doctors speaking in the video are 100% spot on accurate,” another Your Nation News reader commented. “Some of us in the fields of emergency medicine, law enforcement and medicolegal death investigation see this shit all the time and know facts and evidence. There’s a reason marijuana is in the drug classification it is in.”
Sources: LA Weekly, Your Nation News, Newsiosity/Facebook / Photo credit: Andres Rodriguez/Flickr
