An Underground Community Of Hash Oil 'Craftsmen'

Transcript

ARUN RATH, HOST:

The legal pot business has grown into a multibillion dollar industry. And much of that growth these days is coming from marijuana concentrates, potent distillations of the plant known as hash oil. Here's the weird thing. While smoking hash oil is legal in some states, making it isn't. Reporter Mike Sager spent time in the underground community of artisanal hash oil makers. If smoking pot makes you think of joints or bongs, get ready for a strange new world.

MIKE SAGER, BYLINE: Hash oil lends itself to a couple of different delivery methods. And that's one of the reasons why it's become so popular. The first important thing about hash oil is that it doesn't smell in that typical, skunky way, like marijuana flowers do. So there's a little more ceremony involved in some of these methods. The people I wrote about in my California Sunday story, who call themselves Wooks, they're sort of more like connoisseurs of hash oil. And they tend to use expensive, hand-blown glass pipes and titanium accessories.

RATH: Tell us about this community of hash oil manufacturers and enthusiasts you spend time with. Who are the Wooks?

SAGER: These guys tend to be in their 30s or 40s. They're kind of wooly and tattooed. And they...

RATH: They look like Wookiees.

SAGER: Yes, exactly, that's where they get their name. And they are kind of nerdy guys. And they all learn their trade from the watching online. There's YouTube; there's a community of them. So every single person is sort of like, in the grand old American spirit, a self-made man.

RATH: And walk us through this. I'm not sure what to call it. It sounds like a kind of competition circuit. You talked about the Cups, the Cannabis Cups.

SAGER: Right. Well, you know, there's been a tradition in this country for some years, starting with the High Times Cannabis Cup. And it brings together a community of artisanal hash oil makers who aspire to be the best. You know, it's a madcap community, and there's a lot of sort of love. And there's a lot of backbiting at the same time. And it's very interesting because you go to these contests, and the guys judge each other. And often, you find that, you know, if there's a really good entry, everyone will judge it down. So you can almost, like, look at the judging and reverse it.

RATH: And you refer to the manufacturers as craftsmen. You use terms like artisanal. So what makes them different from other drug manufacturers?

SAGER: First of all, they're not doing it on a huge scale. You know, they're producing 20 grams or so of hash oil. And there's a - there's a certain amount of love that goes into making this. People are tending their plants. They're doing different things. They're trying different methods in order to have different flavors and consistencies. I like to think of it as there is wine in a box, and there's wine, you know, from Italy. It's like, I think you could look at these makers as microbrewers or micro-vintners. And I think it's very much the same to them. Of course, the big difference is it's illegal.

RATH: Well, you write that the national market in hash oil is expected to reach $47 billion in total revenue by 2016. If that's where this is headed, isn't it probably going to be more of the large-scale manufacturers who are - who are edging things out here?

SAGER: That's what the worries are in some quarters. But these guys who are doing this, they're doing it for the love. No one is getting extremely rich. I think some of the extractors, if they set up with the right farms and get the right contracts, are making really good money. But most people aren't doing a big-scale operation. And, you know, they will perhaps lose part of the market, but I think that as long as there are people with differentiating tastes, you know, there'll be room for different kinds of hash oil.

RATH: Mike Sager wrote "Dab Artists: The Craftsman At The Front Edge Of The Marijuana Concentrate Boom" for The California Sunday Magazine. He's also the author of the new book "Stoned Again: The High Times And Strange Life Of A Drugs Correspondent." Mike, thanks very much.

SAGER: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.