Since 2011, at least 68 people were treated for burns caused by butane hash oil fires and explosions, at northern California burn centers, including Shriners Hospital for Children, Sacramento, and at the UC Davis Regional Burn Center.
Usually those making BHO suffer the most, but several times it has happened at homes with children. The most recent baby who was badly burned in a hash oil (BHO) explosion was a 19-month old boy at a student housing complex in Montana. The law has not kept up with the problem, as parents who engage in this deadly practice still have custody and visitation rights. Children are threatened by neighbors who do it, too.
Butane hash oil (BHO) production is a marijuana extraction process which has exploded in popularity over the past three years. The victim had burns covering 28% of the body, according to Dr. David Greenhalgh, reporting to the Sacramento Bee in August. A past president of the American Burn Association, he called hash oil burns an “epidemic.” Greenhalgh’s research in wound care, skin grafts and reconstruction make him a leading national figure in the burn field.
Thanks to quick emergency response and to the quality of emergency medical treatment available in the United States, it appears that all of the children have survived. However, we have raised a group of young adults who are so accustomed to hearing “marijuana is safe” that they have no notion of the need to protect children from the dangers pot involves.
Those who make BHO and cause the explosions–31 in Colorado, this year, 20 in San Diego County within a year, 6 in Riverside County, 6 in San Bernardino County, 6 near Portland, OR and 7 in the Puget Sound—have been extraordinarily lucky. Of those who died from hash oil explosions, at least one was in California, one in Oregon and one in Hawaii. Two of the deaths were neighbors who were affected by the fires. In Spokane, WA, a neighbor with respiratory problems died two months after the fire in January, while in Bellevue, WA, it was a former mayor of the city who died from a broken pelvis. (see previous articles on this topic)
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Hash oil explosions increase with legal marijuana, as has happened up and down the west coast, including four explosions in late November, one each in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. There is a question as to how much lax enforcement of marijuana laws in parts of Washington, Oregon and California have allowed the practices to continue.
Fires while in the Care of Neglectful Parents
At least 2 children died by fire this year when neglectful parents smoked marijuana. BHO is not the only way marijuana users threaten children by fire, because pot-smoking parents can be “out of it” and consumed by addiction. Two-year-old Levi Welton of Sterling, Colorado, was left alone with his four-year-old brother with matches while his parents smoked marijuana with friends in another room. (The parents and his brother survived.) In Oregon, during the last week of October, a mother was high on marijuana as a fire consumed her four-year old son. Neighbors reported her too stoned to be aware and to show any emotion when her son died.
It also happened last year in a state without a legal marijuana program. In Pennsylvania woman pled guilty to leaving her 3-year-old twins to die in a fire while she left the house to see whether her marijuana had been stolen by her 15-year-old daughter. Police say the boys turned on a burner on a grease-covered stove, sparking flames that soon engulfed the house.
The cost of an addiction is putting the substance ahead of the loved ones. About 1 in 6 who begin using marijuana under age 18 become addicted, although marijuana promoters claim it is not addictive.
Oregon recently enacted a law forbidding daycare employees and operators from using medical marijuana. Let’s hope other states follow suit, and that, in family courts, states do not give custody and visitation rights to marijuana-using parents, especially those making BHO.
As California Gov Jerry Brown has said, the world is too dangerous a place for Americans not be alert by using pot. This concept applies to parenthood. Parenthood is too large a responsibility for us not to protect our children. We need not expose small children to the manufacture of BHO or put them in the care of parents who prioritize marijuana over their children. However, when neighbors make hash oil, parents may have no warnings.
Our tolerance for marijuana has taught a new generation of young adults that marijuana is safe. Making BHO is mainly done in western states, but the explosions have happened in Florida, Ohio, Massachusetts, Florida, Chicago, Michigan, Virginia, Houston. It will spread east if we don’t watch out. No longer should anyone say, “safer than alcohol” or “it’s just pot.” We have sent the wrong message, and need to replace it with a message that parenting and pot use do not mix.
The Unraveling, Part 3: Temporary Mental Instability vs Bipolar I
(Read Part 1 and Part 2. Permission required for reprinting) After Ryan’s death, I remembered reading many years ago in a magazine about Margaret Trudeau, then wife of the Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. She was in her 20s, partied with socialites, and also suffered psychotic breaks. Each time she referenced her use of marijuana as the trigger for those episodes. I’ve since read current articles, and she continues to share. For her, marijuana led her into “madness.” It was much later that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It’s hard for me to accept her son, Justin Trudeau, wanting to have the same position his father held. He’s a proponent of pot, despite knowing his mother’s mental health was so affected by marijuana. It speaks volumes on how great the opposition to promoting the truth about this drug!
Ryan was not helped to understand why his brain lost touch with reality under the influence of THC–this is the “elephant in the room.” The fact that hospitals don’t consider marijuana a factor in the picture of mental health is a tragedy. We need every researcher, past and present, across the globe, who understands the truth about what pot does to young brains to stand up in solidarity.
The experience of Great Britain was that it decriminalized marijuana, saw a spike in mental illness as a result of loosening the law, and then tightened their laws again. Canada has website on the cannabis-psychosis-schizophrenia link. The US, on the other hand, is not noticing its problem, or influenced by the marijuana financiers, is refusing to see that so many young people who are addicted to it are also having psychiatric problems. I believe the psychiatry community has failed to connect the dots, ignoring the facts of today’s cannabis – so much stronger than when they were in school, or even 10 years ago.
The Lancet Journal of Psychiatry’s recent article points to a sevenfold risk of suicide for teens who use marijuana.
The second break happened 18 months after the first one, but this time I pre-arranged for Ryan to receive drug rehabilitation at a different hospital. The hospital in Pasadena gave the ‘green light’ for rehab. We paid $12,500 up front and Ryan’s PPO would insure the rest. His uncle and grandfather came, too, for support. Less than 24 hours after admittance, the staff coerced Ryan to their locked unit, where he was warehoused for 13 days with anti-psychotics exceeding the FDA limits.
The staff asked us several times: “Could Ryan have dropped acid? He doesn’t seem like our bipolar patients.” Once again his toxicology report came up positive (+) for THC. Again, in 2011, just like 2009, no one believed marijuana could cause this effect.
By now, we realized that our son’s drug problem was with weed and that he had relapsed with weed, but he never got a shot at the drug rehab for which we had already paid.
Ryan was “dumped” from their unit on the 13th day. The insurance refused to pay for it, perhaps after reading the notes of how much worse Ryan had become inside the hospital unit. Why are insurance companies allowed to have so much influence on a patient’s treatment when they don’t have expertise? He was drugged mercilessly into just a state of stupor. It was an endless nightmare for our son and for his family.
Ryan was taken off the last anti-psychotic at the first follow-up visit with the same psychiatrist because he appeared normal, compared to his state during hospitalization. However, he was still actively psychotic at that one week follow up. (I had stopped Haldol when he came home, as I was horrified my son had been receiving Haldol round-the-clock. Of course, at 6’4”, Ryan was intimidating. He had never become violent, but he tried to escape several times, realizing he had been tricked from the open unit into the locked unit.)
Coming Home Again
Ryan was hit with a personal betrayal at the same time–which just leveled him. Yet, with love and support of our family, he emerged once again from psychosis 10 weeks later. It came within the same time frame as the first episode, probably not a coincidence. This time it happened without medications, and I am suspicious that the medicines didn’t really affect his state of mind coming off psychosis after the first episode.
Ryan stayed with the Ivy League psychiatrist after coming out of psychosis for several visits. He drove all the way to his office in Pasadena, then had to wait up to 1 1/2 hours, as he piled in patients for the 15-minute check-in. I always hoped Ryan would invite me to go with him, but he didn’t. On the last visit, Ryan came home and announced “Mom, I’m not going back to see him because he never takes his head out of the computer, and doesn’t even look at me.”
After my son died, I subpoenaed his records only to find many days of nursing notes documenting: “Please call my mom she’ll know how to help me.” “I can’t stay in here like the last time, you don’t know what happened to me there.” But no one called me or told me despite my calling twice a day and visits every night.
During the 2nd hospitalization, I believe the massive anti-psychotics administered threw him into full-blown psychosis, as compared to the mild state of psychosis at the time he entered to get drug rehab. Drugging a young person into such a state of stupor, and then stopping medication upon discharge, surely that plays havoc on the young brain – already under siege from the effects of THC.
There are families whose kids died from drug overdoses, but began their drug usage with pot. There are those who have children hopelessly addicted to marijuana and there are those of us whose children die from the consequences of marijuana usage. All of us are stymied by a cover-up of the marijuana-mental illness link, and the fact that mental health treatment doesn’t adequately connect with substance abuse and addiction treatment. Follow our posts by email to receive part 4 and part 5, to be published in December.
Bellevue’s Massive Fire One Year Later
Exactly one year ago today a hash oil explosion in Bellevue destroyed 10 apartment units just outside of Seattle. Three men started the fire at 6:20 a.m. while using butane to extract the hash oil from marijuana. One hundred police and fire fighters were called to battle the fire which lasted several hours and injured seven.
Nan Campbell, former mayor of Bellevue died in the fire after suffering from a broken pelvis. Other residents ended up with broken bones, after jumping out of 2nd and 3rd story windows. Originally it was thought that the injuries were not life-threatening.
Residents who were interviewed lost all their belongings. There were $1,500,000 in damages to the building and about 1/3 of that in personal possessions. The one shining light at the end was that a woman who thought her cat was gone later found the pet under the rubble. After investigation and with the aid of federal agents, three men were charged on July 22, 2014.
It has been said that marijuana legalization privatizes profits while the public pays all the costs.
Home processing of BHO from marijuana is not legal. However, when police had come to investigate the two men living in the apartment on October 17, they showed their medical marijuana cards and denied making butane hash oil. One of those charged was visiting the complex. At least 5 other explosions occurred in the Seattle area this year.
Photo: U.S. District Court Of Western Washington
This year 31 home explosions triggered by making the marijuana concentrate, BHO, occurred in Colorado by the beginning of May. Butane is a highly volatile solvent and a flammable gas at room temperature. Without proper ventilation it can easily go off like a bomb with ball of fire, blowing out windows, and doing damage to a house, condo or apartment and putting innocent neighbors at risk. This is particularly of concern to multilevel housing units like motels, condos and apartment buildings. Twice children in Colorado were trapped on the 2nd level and had to be rescued.
The first hash oil explosion in Colorado happened in 2012. There were 11 explosions in 2013. With legalization these incidence increase.
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Stop BHO Blow-ups and Fires
Fires and explosions from butane hash oil (BHO) production sent 17 people to a Portland burn unit in a 16-month span, according the Oregonian in a series of reports in May. The BHO-explosions caused numerous injuries, extensive property damage and at least one death in Oregon. A few of those in the burn unit had come from the state of Washington.
Let’s not repeat the chaos that Washington and Colorado have had since legalization. Because of the expense of buying marijuana concentrate at a dispensary or pot shop, potheads are using homemade recipes off the Internet to manufacture hash oil at home (remember meth labs?), to be used for dabbing and vaping. Law enforcement tried in vain to get marijuana concentrates banned in California.
Once marijuana advocates get what they want, it will be very difficult to stop marijuana in any form, including the “bomb”, BHO.
Marijuana possession has been allowed since December 5, 2012. The most horrific case involving BHO hash oil, was a year ago, in Bellevue, Washington near Seattle. All ten units of an apartment building were destroyed and residents jumped from 2nd and 3rd story windows, sustaining many broken bones. The explosion and fire caused $1.5 million in damage and the loss of $500,000 in belongings. A total of 7 people were hospitalized, and a former town mayor, who lived in the building, died from her injuries. The young man who started the fire wasn’t even on the lease, he was staying with friends.
Colorado legalized marijuana as of January 1 of this year. By May, 31 home explosions occurred in Colorado. The incidents were triggered by those attempting to make homemade Butane Hash Oil, a marijuana concentrate. Butane is a highly volatile solvent and a flammable gas at room temperature. Without proper ventilation it can easily go off like a bomb with ball of fire, blowing out windows, and doing damage to a house, condo or apartment and putting innocent neighbors at risk. This is particularly of concern to multilevel housing units like motels, condos and apartment buildings. A child was trapped in an apartment above one of these explosions in Colorado.
The first hash oil explosion in Colorado happened in 2012. There was one in 2012, 11 explosions in 2013. We get the picture. Legalization increases desire to get high, and get the faster high, but at what expense to the rest of us?
Downloadable Fact Sheet
Get the Parents Opposed to Pot Hash Oil Facts! Download our new flyer, which describes the hash oil explosions in states which have permissive marijuana laws: POPPOT-Hash Oil Statistics.