Now with the lawsuits and so many of the original players gone from the industry and the shift from black market to legal to cbd to its current state I feel like the story arc for BHO is now complete.
What are the agreed upon chapters?
What are the stories that need to be told?
Who are the players that need to be highlighted?
1960s–1970s: The early oil era
Cannabis concentrates had existed for centuries in the form of hash, but modern solvent-based cannabis oil began developing in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Early experimenters were using solvents to strip cannabinoids and resin from plant material, producing what became known as hash oil or honey oil. The equipment was crude by modern standards and there was almost no real safety infrastructure. These were underground chemists working without legal laboratories, standardized equipment, testing requirements or much published information.
At this point, cannabis oil was rare, difficult to make and understood by very few people. The value was largely in knowing how to make it at all.
1980s–mid 1990s: A niche underground product
Hash oil continued to exist, but it never became a major part of cannabis culture.
Flower and traditional hash dominated the market. Oil was difficult to handle, difficult to smoke and inconsistent from batch to batch. There was no real concentrate industry and no established equipment market supporting it.
Most knowledge still moved person to person. If somebody knew how to make good oil, that knowledge usually stayed within a relatively small circle.
1996–2000: Medical cannabis creates a marketplace
California’s medical marijuana law in 1996 changed the environment dramatically.
For the first time, a semi-public cannabis market began developing where growers and extractors could sell products to a much larger group of consumers.
Dispensaries created a place for experimentation. Products could now gain reputations. Customers could compare one extract to another. Makers could improve their techniques based on feedback.
At almost the exact same time, the internet began changing how cannabis knowledge spread.
Late 1990s–early 2000s: BHO tek goes online
This was one of the biggest turning points.
Butane extraction methods began appearing openly on cannabis forums and websites. What had previously been underground knowledge could suddenly be read by anyone with an internet connection.
The word “tek” became part of the culture. Someone would develop a method, post it online, and then hundreds of people would experiment with it and make improvements.
Discussions began focusing on yield, color, potency, purge quality, starting material and consistency.
The information barrier was disappearing.
The secret was no longer knowing that butane could extract cannabis resin. The challenge was learning how to do it well.
Early to mid 2000s: Wax, budder and shatter
BHO stopped being simply “oil.”
Extractors discovered that differences in material, temperature, agitation, solvent removal and post-processing could produce completely different textures.
Wax, budder, honeycomb, glass and eventually shatter became recognizable categories.
This was when extraction really began becoming a craft.
People started following particular extractors in the same way they followed growers. A good maker could develop a reputation because clean, stable, flavorful concentrate was still difficult to produce consistently.
The margins were also extremely high. There were relatively few skilled extractors and increasing demand for the product.
2009–2011: The modern dab arrives
One of the biggest obstacles to concentrates had always been consumption.
There was no convenient equivalent of the joint or bong for oil.
That changed with the development of dedicated oil rigs, domes, swings and eventually titanium and quartz nails.
The dab gave concentrates their own ritual.
Now BHO had its own hardware, language, culture and identity.
Once people had an easy way to consume concentrates, demand accelerated quickly.
2010–2013: Social media creates dab culture
This was probably the cultural explosion of BHO.
Cannabis forums were already active, but Instagram and other social platforms turned concentrates into something visual.
Large slabs of clear shatter photographed beautifully. Macro shots of oil looked almost like amber or glass. People posted massive dabs, elaborate glass rigs and increasingly exotic concentrate textures.
Glassblowers became celebrities. Extractors developed followings. Cannabis concentrate brands began building recognizable identities.
The term “710” spread through concentrate culture as the oil equivalent of 420.
Cannabis competitions began adding concentrate categories and BHO moved from a niche product into the center of cannabis culture.
For a few years, being able to produce truly good concentrate could make someone extremely valuable.
2012–2015: The garage becomes a laboratory
The popularity of BHO also exposed its biggest problem.
Open blasting butane was dangerous.
Explosions and fires involving amateur extraction received major media attention. At the same time, professional extractors began developing increasingly sophisticated closed-loop systems.
The industry started moving toward pressure-rated equipment, solvent recovery systems, vacuum ovens, ventilation, gas detection and explosion-resistant electrical systems.
Extraction was slowly changing from something done by a talented underground maker into a legitimate manufacturing process.
This was also the beginning of a major capital shift.
Instead of spending a few hundred or a few thousand dollars on extraction equipment, companies could now spend hundreds of thousands building laboratories.
2013–2015: Live resin changes the product
Live resin was another major turning point.
Instead of drying and curing cannabis before extraction, processors began working with fresh-frozen material.
The goal shifted from simply maximizing THC to preserving the smell and flavor of the original plant.
Terpenes suddenly mattered much more.
Consumers began talking about flavor, aroma, sauce, terpene content and strain character.
BHO had evolved from a way to concentrate THC into something that could preserve qualities of the plant that flower smokers cared about.
This was probably the artistic peak of hydrocarbon extraction.
2014–2018: Legalization creates the gold rush
Colorado began recreational cannabis sales in 2014 and other states followed.
Cannabis extraction suddenly became a legitimate industry.
Investors entered the market. Companies bought larger closed-loop systems, chillers, vacuum ovens, recovery pumps and automated equipment.
Trim, which had once been considered waste or a cheap byproduct, suddenly had significant value because it could be converted into concentrate.
Processors realized they could take relatively inexpensive plant material and turn it into a high-value finished product.
For a while, the economics were incredible.
The industry began scaling rapidly.
The question was no longer whether someone could make good oil.
The question became how many pounds they could process in a day.
2015–2019: Distillate industrializes cannabis oil
Distillation changed the economics again.
Processors could take inconsistent or lower-quality material and refine it into highly standardized THC oil.
That oil could be used in vape cartridges, edibles and other manufactured products.
The original appearance or quality of the flower became less important.
Cannabis was becoming an agricultural feedstock.
A pound of trim could enter one side of a facility and come out the other side as standardized cannabinoid oil.
The business became increasingly focused on yield, throughput and cost per gram.
Extraction was becoming manufacturing.
2016–2019: Big legal markets accelerate industrialization
As California and other large states moved into regulated recreational cannabis, the cost of operating increased dramatically.
Extraction facilities needed licenses, engineering, fire approval, testing, security systems, tracking systems, employees, insurance and compliant buildings.
The old independent extractor could still make excellent oil, but now he was competing with companies that could process hundreds or thousands of pounds.
This was the beginning of the squeeze on small and midsize processors.
The quality gap between operators was shrinking while the difference in operating scale was getting larger.
2018–2020: The CBD boom
The 2018 Farm Bill created another enormous extraction boom.
Farmers planted hemp everywhere because CBD appeared to be the next major commodity.
Extraction companies expanded rapidly.
Facilities were built specifically to produce CBD crude, distillate and isolate.
For a short period, hemp biomass and CBD extracts were extremely valuable.
The margins attracted enormous amounts of capital.
Everyone thought demand would continue growing.
It didn’t.
2019–2021: CBD crashes and shows cannabis its future
Too much hemp was planted and too much extraction capacity was built.
CBD prices collapsed.
Material that had once been worth large amounts of money suddenly became difficult to sell.
Crude oil, distillate and isolate all fell dramatically in value.
This was an important warning for the THC industry.
The CBD crash demonstrated something that cannabis producers had not fully accepted yet.
Cannabinoids were not inherently expensive.
They were expensive because supply was limited.
Once agriculture and extraction scaled enough, cannabinoids could become extremely cheap.
2020–2023: THC markets hit the same wall
Legal cannabis markets began experiencing the same problem.
Cultivation expanded faster than demand.
Processors had more material available than they could realistically sell.
Trim became extremely cheap.
Outdoor biomass became extremely cheap.
Lower-grade flower was redirected into extraction.
Large processors responded by increasing throughput.
But increased throughput created even more oil.
More oil pushed prices lower.
Lower prices forced processors to run even more material to maintain revenue.
The industry entered a commodity cycle.
Small and midsize companies were hit particularly hard because their compliance costs were often similar to those of much larger companies.
A huge processor could spread those costs across thousands of pounds.
A smaller processor could not.
2021–2024: Consolidation and the margin collapse
By this point, simply knowing how to make good BHO was no longer especially rare.
Equipment had improved.
Processes were well understood.
Extraction knowledge was widely available.
Employees could be trained to operate systems that previously required years of underground experience.
The competitive advantage moved away from technical knowledge and toward scale.
Who could buy biomass cheapest?
Who could process the most pounds per shift?
Who had the lowest labor cost?
Who could survive at the lowest margin?
The extractor gradually stopped being the center of the business.
The facility became the center of the business.
2024–present: BHO becomes a commodity
BHO did not disappear.
In many legal markets, concentrates and vape oil remain enormous product categories.
What disappeared was the scarcity that once made them extraordinarily profitable.
Bulk hydrocarbon oil can now be produced efficiently by many companies.
Trim and biomass are widely available.
Extraction equipment is standardized.
The chemistry is understood.
Competition is intense.
As a result, generic BHO has become close to a commodity in mature cannabis markets.
A product that once seemed exotic and incredibly valuable can now be worth very little at the wholesale level.
The irony is that the industry succeeded so completely at learning how to make cannabis oil that it destroyed much of the economic value of knowing how to make it.
The market eventually split into two very different worlds.
At the bottom is commodity extraction: trim runs, bulk oil, vape feedstock, distillate input and inexpensive concentrates. The important numbers are cost, yield and throughput.
At the top is craft extraction: fresh-frozen material, live resin, terpene preservation, single-source products and carefully selected genetics.
Craft BHO still has value because the consumer is paying for the starting material, flavor and reputation of the producer rather than simply paying for THC.
And in some ways, solventless rosin has taken over the cultural position BHO once occupied.
It is expensive to produce, difficult to scale and highly dependent on exceptional starting material.
That scarcity allows it to maintain the type of premium that BHO enjoyed before industrialization.
The overall story of BHO is really the story of the modern cannabis industry.
At first, the valuable thing was knowing how to make oil.
Then everyone learned how to make oil.
The valuable thing became making clean shatter.
Then everyone learned how to make clean shatter.
The valuable thing became closed-loop extraction and professional equipment.
Then everyone bought the equipment.
The valuable thing became live resin and terpene preservation.
Then the market learned how to make that at scale.
Eventually extraction stopped being rare knowledge and became industrial manufacturing.
BHO went from underground chemistry to internet culture, from internet culture to a gold rush, and from a gold rush to a commodity.
The product never failed.
The industry simply became too good at making it.
If you can’t get Liev Schreiber, I’ll narrate.
1971: Aaron D. Yates was born
1985: Aaron wrote his first rhyme
1988: Aaron adopts the name Tech N9ne
1990: Tech N9ne teams with producer IcyRoc Kravyn
1997: Tech signs with Qwest Records
1999: Tech is released from the label
2002: Tech and Strange Music teams with MSC Entertainment and records…
[Tech N9ne]
Mothafucker, I’m a playa!
I’m a playa
