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REVENUE OFFICIALS – AND Sam the sniffer dog – found drugs with a value of over €500,000 when they examined parcels at a post depot in Dublin over the course of a week recently.
There were several familiar substances in packages from the US, the UK, Sweden, Canada, Thailand and India, including 20kg of herbal cannabis, a kilo of magic mushrooms, and various prescription drugs including benzodiazepine.
There was also over 5kg of butane honey oil (BHO). There has been a more than seven-fold increase in seizures of BHO by Revenue this year, The Journal has learned.
BHO is a highly concentrated form of cannabis. It was almost unknown here less than a decade ago.
Revenue told The Journal it’s commonly finding BHO in the postal system through shipments from North America, where it’s legal.
Revenue found 151kg BHO in the course of 119 seizures this year to 5 December, up from 21kg in 2023 and just 6kg in 2022. The estimated street value of BHO seized over the past three years was €3.3m.
In one operation in Dublin in August, 23.5kg of BHO was found with an estimated value of €470,000.
Sometimes cannabis sent through the post is hidden in items such as board games, children’s toys and clothing and sometimes it’s “detected in scenarios where there has been no attempt to conceal the product”, Revenue said.
A relatively new drug internationally as well as in Ireland, BHO is also known as shatter, wax or dabs. It can resemble honey or be hard like resin.
It’s consumed by heating it and inhaling the fumes using a ‘dab rig’ (similar to a bong) or a vape pen. This parphernalia is easily available online.
BHO is legally available in many US states where cannabis has been legalised in recent years, and in Canada.
Levels of THC – the main psychoactive substance – in legally purchased BHO have been reported at 70-90% in a 2020 peer reviewed study in the US of the drug’s effects, as compared with 15-25% THC in regular cannabis flower.
This research – funded by the public health department in Colorado, where cannabis has been legal since 2012 – found that the more concentrated product led to significantly higher THC levels in the blood stream, but surprisingly similar self-reported levels of intoxication or “feeling high”, with measures of balance and cognitive impairment also similar.
“People in the high [THC] concentration group were much less compromised than we thought they were going to be,” University of Colorado Boulder psychology and neuroscience professor Kent Hutchison said at the time.
One of the first mentions of BHO in an official report in Ireland was by the Blanchardstown Local Drugs & Alcohol Task Force (BLDATF) in its annual review of drugs trends in the Dublin 15 area for 2018. Some adult drug users who were in treatment indicated to the taskforce that they had used it. While the evidence suggested it was not common yet, the BLDATF said the mentions “may indicate a new emerging trend”.
A year later, in 2019, usage of BHO by under-18s in treatment for drug use was first identified in the Dublin 15 area, while its usage by untreated drug users, both adults and under-18s, was also reported. This was the first year in which the use of cannabis edibles such as sweets by treated under-18s was detected.
Janet Robinson, the BLDATF reserach and training officer, said that five years on, usage of the drug is still not particularly prevalent.
However, the BLDATF understands that it is being used by under-18s.
Robinson said that over the same five-year time period there has been an increase in reported use of cannabis oil, another high THC cannabis concentrate. Like BHO it can be used in a bong or in a vaporiser.
An Garda Síochána told The Journal the estimated street value for BHO is similar to cannabis at €20,000 per kilogramme. Garda data on national drug seizures does not include specific information on BHO.
Using butane as a solvent to dissolve the THC from cannabis plant material and make a more concentrated drug poses an obvious risk: butane is highly flammable and volatile. It can be ignited even by static electricity.
In February, a court in Cologne in Germany sentenced Niko Brenner to a suspended 18-month sentence for causing an explosion and for manufacturing and trafficking drugs, local radio station WDR reported.
Brenner told the court he had ruined his life.
He was badly burned in the explosion he caused while trying to make BHO in his recording studio in the basement of an apartment building in Cologne in 2017.
He was in a coma for four months after the explosion and suffered several strokes. Part of his skull was removed to save his life and he has been left paralysed on one side, the newspaper Bild reported. His friend, who was also in the building, was also severely injured.
Such cases have also occured in the UK.
On 23 February 2019, an explosion ripped through a block of flats on the outskirts of Bristol in the UK, tearing off the side of the building.
One resident told the BBC that as she reached the garden gate, running with her four-year-old daughter, “the whole house just fell in”.
James Toogood had caused the explosion trying to make BHO in his girlfriend’s kitchen.
Toogood admitted producing cannabis oil but claimed he was not doing so when the explosion happened, with his defence suggesting it was caused by a gas leak, BBC Bristol reported.
He was jailed for eight-and-a-half years following his conviction for damaging property and being reckless as to whether life was endangered, while his girlfriend, Laura Hawkins, was jailed for 15 months after being found guilty of allowing her flat to be used for production of a controlled drug.
Judge James Patrick told Toogood: “Your desire for a stronger high ruined other people’s lives.”
Last night a block of flats in Hartcliffe was severely damaged by an explosion with three people injured https://t.co/OxwbjfcbMO pic.twitter.com/9jE0qVLYXn
— BBC Radio Bristol (@BBCRB) February 24, 2019
People working in addiction treatment, healthcare and harm reduction said usage of BHO is part of a wider trend of cannabis being consumed in a greater variety of forms, and at increasing strength. Levels of THC in standard cannabis herb are now much higher than previously.
Colin O’Gara, a consultant psychiatrist specialising in addiction, said because cannabis wax is an emerging drug in Ireland, it has not featured in clinical presentations that he knows of yet.
However, he expressed concern at the risks it poses, given both the increasing appetite for stronger drugs among drug users, and the connection between higher THC-strength cannabis and people presenting for treatment for addiction and psychosis.
“There’s no question that the increasing THC has led to those two issues – and we’re seeing more florid psychosis and psychosis associated with violence,” O’Gara said.
“There seems to be an appetite for higher strength drugs,” he said, instancing crack cocaine and opioids such as fentanyl.
He said, given this appetite and pattern of progression to stronger drugs over the past 20 years, it was likely that concentrated forms of cannabis such as BHO were an “emerging trend”.
“If Revenue are picking it up, I think we’re on the cusp definitely of it becoming more popular,” he said.
Bobby Smyth, a specialist consultant child and aolescent addiction psychiatrist and like O’Gara a member of the College of Psychiatrists, agreed that the “ultra high strength” of BHO and related products meant they brought “amplified risks”.
“If you’re using these products with any regularity, you’re more likely to suffer adverse mental health effects such as psychosis,” Smyth said.
Smyth also noted evidence from the UK that much of what is sold by dealers as BHO may in fact comprise synthetic or semi-synthetic cannabinoids.
Recent research by the University of Bath analysed seven illegally purchased vapes, which were claimed by the UK-based supplier to have been THC-based products originating in the US. All seven actually contained synthetic cannabinoid compounds.
The vapes were sourced from a man who presented for drug treatment, who had been using them heavily and reported adverse effects including stomach cramps, loose bowels, loss of memory, difficulty focusing and feelings of dissociation from reality. On cessation, the man suffered extreme anxiety, panic attacks, low and angry moods, irritability and chest pains.
Another study by the University of Bath in July analysed hundreds of vapes seized in English schools and found one in six contained the synthetic cannabinoid spice.
“Police, schools and researchers believe the much cheaper spice is being substituted into vapes which are sold as containing cannabis oil,” the university said in a statement.
Eva Short, health and harm reduction editor at the youth information website Spunout, said demand and supply in the illegal drugs market will often mimic trends in the legal market in places such as California, as can be seen with the increased use of cannabis jellies here.
Short said it’s inherently riskier to use higher strength drugs because it is easier to miscalculate how much you’re taking.
“Whether cannabis, MDMA or whatever, issues arise when you have stronger batches,” Short said.
She agreed with Smyth that while something may be packaged or sold as a dab from, say, Oregon, there’s really no way to know what exactly you are getting, which brings added risk.
Short said potential users should also bear in mind that higher potency cannabis is particularly risky for young people, as their brains are still developing.
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