Budder, shatter, oil: Homemade cannabis extraction can be explosive, deadly

'YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING TO GET INTO IT AND NOT HURT YOURSELF'

WEST KELOWNA – Police have confirmed that a home explosion and fire that claimed one life and left two people in intensive care was caused by ‘the production of drugs.’

That might leave you with impressions of Walter White Breaking Bad with crystal meth but the more likely answer is careless use of chemicals and a far more popular drug: marijuana extracts — oil, budder or shatter.

The concept is simple; take raw cannabis, run a solvent through it to dissolve the active ingredients, then gas off the solvent leaving behind the purest forms of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.

It’s become increasingly popular in recent years because it gets you higher. The process to make it is relatively simple and is likely being made all around you.

But with cannabis legalization looming and a corresponding increase in home extraction likely, should you be concerned about the house next door blowing up?

Unlike such chemical drugs as crystal meth or MDMA, cannabis extraction doesn’t take elaborate equipment and a clandestine laboratory — you can build extraction kits to order on Amazon as well as buy smaller-scale extractors in local head shops and do it in the comfort of your own home.

But with such highly flammable compounds such as butane and isopropyl alcohol involved in the process, you better know what you’re doing, says a local man familiar with the extraction industry.

“Outdoors is the best place to do it. If those people were doing it indoors, it was beyond stupid with all due respect,” he said.

Problems arise when the gases aren’t properly dissipated during the process. Butane especially is heavier than air and tends to pool in low-lying and cooler places, needing only a slight spark to ignite.

“It goes off like a flash bang, like when your barbecue starts but it can start more fires. If there’s enough of it and it’s in an enclosed space, it explodes. I know someone who ignited butane with a spark from their socks walking on the carpet,” he said, pointing also to pilot lights, fridge motors as other possible ignition sources.

Not far from the Elliott Road site of this week’s explosion, on Webber Road, another home exploded in the early 2000s. A coroner’s report said the cause was butane accidentally lit by a pilot light on the hot water tank.

In the case of larger-scale commercial extraction, which the man suspects may have been happening on in the West Kelowna fatality, a closed-loop system is employed to recycle excess butane.

“So now you have high pressure, heat and an explosive gas on a large scale,” he said. “You have to know what you’re doing to get into it and not hurt yourself.”

The market for home extraction is niche, the man said, predicting that once legal most consumers would find it easier to buy a gram of budder or shatter at a dispensary than to produce it themselves.

“It’s not a particularly huge business, mostly guys just feeding their personal habits,” he said. “They are like hobbyists, they’re just interested in it."

For his part, the man says he would welcome the eventual legalization of cannabis extracts but they won’t be included October 17 when recreational cannabis becomes legal in Canada but are expected to be considered for addition within a year.

“I think government involvement is a good thing. It can protect people,” he said. “I don’t think any old yahoo should be spraying butane in his apartment. Just because you can afford to buy an extractor, doesn’t mean you know what you are doing.”

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