Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jan 2015
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Hearst Communications Inc.
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Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Pubdate: 18 Jan 2015

HOMES BLOWING UP IN FALLOUT FROM LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

DENVER - When Colorado legalized marijuana two years ago, nobody was 
quite ready for the problem of exploding houses.

But that is exactly what firefighters, courts and lawmakers across 
the state are confronting these days: amateur marijuana alchemists 
who are turning their kitchens and basements into "Breaking 
Bad"-style laboratories, using flammable chemicals to extract potent 
drops of a marijuana concentrate commonly called hash oil, and 
sometimes accidentally blowing up their homes and lighting themselves 
on fire in the process.

The trend is not limited to Colorado - officials from Florida to 
Illinois to California have reported similar problems - but the 
blasts are creating a special headache for lawmakers and courts here, 
the state at the center of legal marijuana. Even as cities try to 
clamp down on homemade hash oil and lawmakers consider outlawing it, 
some enthusiasts argue for their right to make it safely without 
butane, and criminal defense lawyers say the practice can no longer 
be considered a crime under the 2012 constitutional amendment that 
made marijuana legal to grow, smoke, process and sell.

"This is uncharted territory," said state Rep. Mike Foote, a Democrat 
from northern Colorado who is grappling with how to address the 
problem of hash-oil explosions. "These things come up for the first 
time, and no one's dealt with them before."

Over the past year, a hash-oil explosion in a motel in Grand Junction 
sent two people to a hospital. In Colorado Springs, an explosion in a 
thirdfloor apartment shook the neighborhood and sprayed glass across 
a parking lot. And in an accident in Denver, neighbors reported a 
"ball of fire" that left three people hospitalized.

The explosions occur as people pump butane fuel through a tube packed 
with raw marijuana plants to draw out the psychoactive ingredient 
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, producing a golden, highly potent 
concentrate that people sometimes call honey oil, earwax or shatter. 
The process can fill a room with volatile butane vapors that can be 
ignited by an errant spark or flame.

"They get enough vapors inside the building and it goes off, and 
it'll bulge out the walls," said Chuck Mathis, the fire marshal in 
Grand Junction, where the Fire Department responded to four 
explosions last year. "They always have a different story: 'Nothing 
happened' or 'I was cooking food, and all of a sudden there was an 
explosion.' "

There were 32 such blasts across Colorado in 2014, up from 12 a year 
earlier, according to the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug 
Trafficking Area, which coordinates federal and state drug 
enforcement efforts. No one has been killed, but the fires have 
wrecked homes and injured dozens of people, including 17 who received 
treatment for severe burns, including skin grafts and surgery, at the 
University of Colorado Hospital's burn center.

The state attorney general has weighed in to say legalization does 
not apply to butane extraction. And this month, a western Colorado 
judge overseeing the case against a 70-year-old man charged with 
making hash oil in his home rejected arguments that drug laws in 
Colorado were now unconstitutional.

In the mountain town of Leadville, a landlord named Bill Korn spent a 
month last spring cleaning up after one of his tenants blew apart the 
kitchen trying to make hash oil in his 1880s home. The tenant pleaded 
guilty to an arson charge and agreed to pay Korn $7,000 in damages, a 
sentence Korn said felt "a little bit light."

NEW YORK TIMES
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