Medical Marijuana ‘Dabs’ Have Taken Over Southern California

At The High Times Cannabis Cup In Los Angeles, Dabs Were A Fan Favorite

If you are a medical marijuana patient from California, this article will seem like I am just stating the obvious. However, if you are not from the great state of California, chances are you have no idea what ‘dabs’ are. I have been a medical marijuana patient in Oregon for half a decade, and have been consuming marijuana for 18 years, and I had no idea what dabs were until I was hanging out at the WeedMaps headquarters about a month ago.

Barry Blunt from KushSmoke.com and Justin Hartfield of WeedMaps looked very confused when I asked them what dabs were. The best definition for medical marijuana dabs I could find online comes from Buds of Steele (with some additives in parenthesis), which is basically the definition I got from the WeedMaps staff, “any (concentrated) product of a chemical (or organic) extraction being performed on cannabis. Isopropanyl and Butane are the most common solvents used for this process but there are many that will work.” So hash oil, budder, earwax or most any form of concentrated cannabis could be considered a dab. It’s how you smoke it that makes it unique.

This months Kushsmoke.com Girl proudly puffing off a bubbler designed for smoking dabs - image via: kushsmoke.com

I have been smoking hash and kief for years, but always mixed in with my weed. Smoking dabs is way of smoking 100% concentrated cannabis through a specially designed bubbler (or attachment). It almost requires three hands and enough safe space to not light a fire around you with your butane torch (see video below). Yet, dozens of people were zipping around the Cannabis Cup smoking dip after dip of dabs, with no torch burns reported (to our knowledge, lol). All of the best booths at the High Times Medical Cannabis Cup were giving out dab hits for free to event participants. There were lots of people with blunts, joints, pipes, and bongs, but dabs were all the rage.

I think most people in California forget that they are inside the fishbowl, and quite frankly, no one does it on a level like Cali does. Oregon is very advanced in the world of marijuana, and I can’t find anyone up here that is smoking dabs like they are down in California. There was a guy at the WeedMaps booth at the High Times Medical Cannabis Cup in Los Angeles named Eric that had brought 15 grams of hash oil to smoke on day 1 alone. People in California have the dab smoking process down so well, that I even saw people walking around with torches smoking dabs while milling through the crowd.

That’s what happens when you have a State that leads the world with marijuana innovation and culture. California was the first state in the country to legalize medical marijuana, and the first to have dispensaries. Combine that with a ‘cutting edge’ minded population and LOTS of people, and you have a recipe for excellence. If you live in an area that does not have a burgeoning dabs industry, just wait, because it’s coming. As with almost anything these days, it has started in California, and the popularity will spread sooner than later.