DEA Cracks Down on Potent Marijuana Product Called “Wax” in California
/By Join Together Staff
Jan 6, 2015
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is cracking down in California on a potent marijuana product called “wax,” according to ABC News. Wax is legal—and popular—in Colorado.
Wax is a distillation of marijuana said to be so potent that a single hit will keep a person high for more than a day, the article notes. A person making wax uses the flammable substance butane to strip out the THC, the chemical in marijuana that causes a high.
“There is no weed out there that possesses the punching power that the wax does,” an anonymous undercover DEA informant told ABC News’ “Nightline.” “And it’s like smoking 20 joints of the best grade of weed that you have into one hit of the wax.”
Gary Hill of the DEA’s San Diego office said, “We have seen people have an onset of psychosis and even brain damage from that exposure to that high concentration of THC. Our concern is that this is going to spread before we get it under control.”
In Colorado, wax is legal for anyone over the age of 21. It is sold in recreational marijuana dispensaries. A three-day contest called the X-Cup, held in Denver, is designed to determine who can make the most potent batch of wax.
The FDA recently voted in favor of pushing a new formulation of oxycodone hydrochloride for approval. The new OxyContin formula is more difficult to crush or dissolve which will hopefully make it harder to be used as a drug of abuse . The FDA recommended that Purdue Pharma's application for a new, resin-coated formulation should replace the original version, which has been on the market since 1996. Randall Flick, MD, an anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic who voted to recommend approval of the drug said, "Clearly the old formulation is worse than the new, although I think the difference is relatively small," Flick concluded, "Hardcore abusers are likely to devise new ways to break down the harder tablet or figure out which solvents will dissolve it fastest, within 'day or weeks' of the product's release on the market."