NFPA Journal - July/August 2020 - 12

Dispatches
only seven states nationwide allowed
medical marijuana. Today, that number
has grown to 33, and 12 of those states,
including California, have fully legalized marijuana to include recreational
use. Estimates put the legal cannabis
industry in the US at about $20 billion
in 2020.
One of the most explosive areas of
growth has been the rise in cannabis
extracts, including THC products as
well as non-psychoactive CBD products;
a range of CBD offerings is springing
up on grocery store shelves, including
oils, lotions, and lollipops. Globally,
the cannabis extract industry is poised
to grow by nearly 17 percent over the
next seven years, according to a market
analysis report released early this year.
From the beginning, extraction has
been among the chief concerns of fire
safety officials-and for good reason. In
2011, when Mahon moved to Colorado
from his home state of Wyoming to
join the burgeoning medical marijuana
industry, he started doing extraction
using open blasting. Essentially, the
technique involves stuffing marijuana
flower into a tube or pipe and blasting the contents with butane or other
solvents to force out the oils. It's a dangerous process that can easily result in
an explosion, but "that's how everyone
was doing it back then," Mahon said.
Since then, as the industry has
matured, its processes have become
more refined. Now operators like
Mahon crave regulation. "I struggle
now when I go into a new state and
they have a book of regulations that's
only 30 pages, when I'm used to 300
pages," he said.
The company Mahon works for,
ExtractionTek Solutions, has been a
force in promoting safe extraction
methods in particular, selling equipment that extracts marijuana through
what's known as a closed-loop system.
"The gas gets recycled, and it's a much
safer and more efficient way to operate," Mahon said.
Even so, open blasting, which Mahon
referred to as a "Wild West approach to
extraction," hasn't been entirely eliminated. "It's inevitable," he said. "Just as

there are still people illegally making
moonshine, there are always going to
be people out there trying to skirt the
rules. Open blasting is a cheap, quick
way to make a high-potency product."
It's unclear whether the Smokes
Tokes fire was the result of open blasting, the improper storage of butane, or
something else altogether. Either way,
the incident has already been labeled
a consequence of the legal cannabis
industry.
"Normalization and legalization fuels
demand, and demand fuels these kinds
of things happening," Kevin Sabet, who
authored a 2013 book arguing against
marijuana
NFPA.ORG/
legalization,
DISPATCHES
wrote on TwitListen to a recent
ter in the days
NFPA Podcast on fire
following the
safety in the legal
cannabis industry.
fire. "No drug
dealer invented
Read "Welcome to
the Jungle" from the
this increased
September/October
appetite for
2016 issue of NFPA
ridiculous THC
Journal.
products-good
Read "The New Face
of Pot" from the July/ old American
August 2018 issue of
capitalism did."
NFPA Journal.
Media reports
also identified
Explore all of
NFPA's resources
Smokes Tokes
on preventing fires
as a hash oil
or explosions in
marijuana growing
manufacturer,
and processing
suggesting the
facilities.
business was
part of the legal cannabis industry in
California. But according to an article
published in Forbes two days after the
fire, a spokesman for the state Bureau
of Cannabis Control confirmed there
was no state-licensed cannabis business at the address. In other words, if
extraction of any kind was occurring at
the facility, it wasn't legal.
That has representatives of the
legal cannabis industry holding their
breath. "Though it may be weeks or
longer before arson investigators piece
together the actual cause, the lesson
for drug-policy reform advocates and
anyone in the cannabis industry is
that baked-in anti-drug biases will
take much longer than that to fade
away," cannabis-industry reporter Chris

Roberts wrote in the Forbes article.
"You can do everything right and still
suffer a setback in the information
wars."
According to Ray Bizal, misconceptions over the legal cannabis industry
existed among public safety officials
and policymakers even before the Los
Angeles blaze. Bizal, the regional operations director for NFPA, stressed that
point in a recent episode of The NFPA
Podcast, where he was interviewed just
days before the Smoke Tokes fire. Many
people unfamiliar with the industry
assume extraction and other processes
are conducted in an unprofessional
manner, Bizal said in the interview.
"And I think that's a misconception,"
he added. "The cannabis industry does
want to do a good job. They want to be
safe ... They don't want to jeopardize
their business and create problems."
For Mahon, the best way for industry
insiders to overcome whatever hurdles
the Smokes Tokes incident introduces
will be by continuing to embrace regulation just as he and so many others
have done in recent years. "We need
to be the leaders. We need to self-regulate," he said. "The only way this
industry can survive is with regulations
and uniformity across the board."
In 2018, a new chapter on marijuana
growing and processing facilities was
added to NFPA 1, Fire Code. Mahon
described the addition as "a big step in
the right direction," and urged anyone
in the legal cannabis industry who isn't
familiar with the chapter to study it.
(The chapter, along with NFPA 1 in its
entirety, can be read for free online at
nfpa.org/1.)
While growers and extractors can
work to familiarize themselves with the
current regulatory resources, it's also
critical for authorities having jurisdiction to learn more about the industry
and to try and prevent future incidents
like the one in Los Angeles.
"The cannabis industry changes
quickly," Bizal told NFPA Journal. "It's
important to inspect these facilities,
make sure they're code compliant, and
note what they are doing now as a
benchmark for the next inspection."

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