Meet THC-O, a hemp-derived compound three times stronger than THC

[Gray Wolf]

No buzz kill. It's truth. Thco or acetates been around forever, but I know that several of the true heads that tried it said it was overkill, and it messed with their tolerance levels.
In Virginia there's still no legal way to buy or sell recreational or adult use. Only medical can be bought at dispos. All these cannabinoids will be in the gas stations till a user can legally purchase what they want, or Virginia outlaws them. But if VA outlaws them without legalizing retail then those cannabinoids will then be on the street and that's even worse because now they are being diluted and cut even further.

Crazy world nowadays. When I was young and wanted to catch a buzz I had track somebody down play the wait game, then the chase game, took all day..
Kids today can go into a Tobacco Hut and get legal synthetic drugs.
no Coffee? Grab a caffeine shot or a redbull.
Don't have Cigs? Just get a flavored nicotine vape
Don't have weed? Get delta 8 infused hemp flower.
Don't have pain pills? Buy a OPM Kratom extract capsules.
No speed? Legal stimulant ADD+ALL pills.
Wanna huff something? Nitrous Whippets.
Wanna trip? Get Mimosa powder and extract DMT.
Or get "Drunk" on Kava extract.
My local tobacco/vape stores have all your addictions covered! Some even have opium substitute Wild Lettuce resin...( Though I don't actually know if that works like all the other stuff.)
then to Pass a drug test they sell powdered dehydrated synthetic urine, called "Fetish Urine powder" Strange world indeed.
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I saw your post after responding to ECG and as you will note edited the last paragraph of my post.

Judging from local experience, VA must legalize it without heavily taxing it, to close the black window market. The first thing the bureaucrats did here was tax everything so heavily that the uncontrolled black market still flourishes.

 

[troutman]

For THC-O-Acetate starting with hemp CBD, it is first isomerized to delta-8 THC and then acetylized with acetic anhydride.

Obtaining acetic anhydride isn't easy. It's a watched chemical.

Making it yourself isn't easy and dangerous.

 

[BorpotChrist]

I saw your post after responding to ECG and as you will note edited the last paragraph of my post.

Judging from local experience, VA must legalize it without heavily taxing it, to close the black window market. The first thing the bureaucrats did here was tax everything so heavily that the uncontrolled black market still flourishes.

xxxxxxxxxxx

 

[Gray Wolf]

Obtaining acetic anhydride isn't easy. It's a watched chemical.

Making it yourself isn't easy and dangerous.

I picked ours up from the local American Scientific supply store here in Portland. Their e-address is sales@amersci.com, but they have stores nation wide and picking it up eliminates any hazardous material shipping issues..

It's true acetic anhydride is watched because it is used to acetalize opium into heroin and can be used to make explosives. That means that Skunk Pharm Research became watched, and we did get some students that were obviously cops, but there was nothing to see, because we were meticulous about not breaking any of the laws at that time.

We were already on the local watch list because of our OMMP medical marijuana activities that some of the more cynical LEO inferred was a wink, wink, nudge, nudge illegitimate cover for a drug operation. I haven't seen the new SPR bylaws, but our original stated that there would be no illegal activities by any of us three partners and that anyone who did so, was immediately no longer a partner and not representing SPR. Two of us were retired and too old to go to jail, and one was too young and pretty.

The other bigger issue is that we only ordered a one-liter bottle around 2010, which was still more than half full when we closed the SPR lab in 2016, because it doesn't take very much to process 10-gram lots and we weren't selling them, nor were there any laws against THC isomers at that time.

Had we ordered larger quantities or become a steady user, I have no doubt we would have been under even closer scrutiny. Had we been doing anything legal but scary, I also have no doubt they would have discovered or created new laws to thwart us.

That brings us to one of the central points, which is that laws vary by location and are constantly changing, including here, soooo do check at your own location before ASSuming it is legal, and the second central point is safety.

Don't attempt it unless you have the proper equipment and at least high school chemistry lab.

Both the Sulfuric acid and the Acetic Anhydride used in the process are highly corrosive acids requiring skin, eyes, and respiratory protection. Acetic Anhydride is also highly flammable so requires outdoor or C1D1 ventilated enclosures.

 

[Petrochemical]

While I find it interesting I also find this discouraging. Exploiting legal loopholes is just going to piss off the government and backtrack the efforts of hemp legal as well as MJ on a federal level.

Gas stations, etc. selling these products are degrading the industry down to the level of "bath salts" which I do not like. Sorry if that's a buzz kill perspective.

While I agree with the ideas of freedom and liberty...its just going to take a few kids having an accident with some of this stuff to cause headaches for those fighting for legitimate legislative change.

My .02

I think the science and exploration is cool - no problem with that. Just hearing about the gas stations and smoke shops selling this stuff kinda turns me off, who knows how any of it is produced for those resale points?

You know it's funny it reminds me of all the folks that we see at fish shows that can't stand the band but are in the parking lot for you fill in the blanks
I don't know about the rest of the country but I can speak personally for the east coast of the United States and know that our society as we've known it 20 years ago is crumbling slowly but surely along those lines greed human nature will make things a lot more twisted and nefarious it just sucks that when people do hard work and they're starting to clarify things and they'll go someplace and try to share and for whatever reason get turned off and not want to share anymore it breaks my heart

 

[G.O. Joe]

The opening paragraphs below the picture read like a sales promotion, but the stupid picture itself tells the whole story of who that was written by and for. It's a cannabiz advertisement, not an intelligent review - the potency claim clearly demonstrates this. The lecture of my sig specifically mentions that the acetates were found to be less potent than the parent isomers from the beginning.

The 2x claim published in 1942 from the govt narcotics lab was made with a substance from hash distillate + activated alumina and had been through the acetylation process but was not actually THC acetate. The one fraction which they obtained by column chromatography having an optical rotation actually matching d9 acetate had 24% of the potency of the THC fraction which came closest to the optical rotation of real d9 - as obtained earlier by Adams from CBD, which may or may not have been almost pure d9 - and 27% of the potency of authentic d8 made from CBD in a different way. Other than the d8, no one will ever know what the different 1940's THC isolates were, unless the experiments are repeated exactly with better analytical tools.

"Tetrahydrocannabinols
Meaning tetrahydrocannabinols naturally contained in a plant of the genus Cannabis (cannabis plant), as well as synthetic equivalents of the substances contained in the cannabis plant, or in the resinous extractives of such plant, and/or synthetic substances, derivatives, and their isomers with similar chemical structure and pharmacological activity to those substances contained in the plant"

- is federal law, and model language which was copied in some way by most every state. There's no question that d8 acetate is included in that definition, and d8 itself is given as an example. There is no "loophole" in the "farm bill" that makes >0.3% THC legal if it is made from hemp or the CBD from hemp - obviously the industry from CBD farmers and extractors to CBD and d8 salesmen want everyone to believe otherwise. It did not invalidate any law except the part saying <0.3% THC hemp - other than stalks and sterilized seeds - is marijuana. Why isn't d9 or its acetate legally made from CBD? Why isn't legal meth, LSD, and fentanyl available, made from CBD? Legal states threw away all their legislation against synthetic cannabinoids and I can go to Seattle and set up a spice lab?

All problems related to cannabis are related to profit rather than cannabis.
There is no need for cannabis and profit to be related in any way.
Laws could be written which do not cause problems, by erasing profit motivations.
Only laws encouraging profit motivations are written.
It's as simple as not allowing sales, and large grows except for registered nonprofits.

$1000 in campaign contributions or tax receipts or a friend's business interests trumps $500 million worth of problems every time. d8 will be banned where legal only if those sales eat into profits of someone connected to a legislator.

It's true acetic anhydride is watched because it is used to acetalize opium into heroin

Given that heroin - and methaqualone - is rarely if ever made in the US, any real interest in small domestic transfers of Ac2O is because the easiest cheap way to make phenylacetone - the controlled substance coming out of Walter White's ThO2 tube furnace - in bulk is by heating Ac2O with phenylacetic acid and sodium acetate. It pleases China that Ac2O is watched internationally and everyone else has reporting laws - all the easier to sell theirs.

For what it's worth, we found THC-O to be unstable and prone to revert back to acetic acid. We never resolved that issue.

Maybe a better cleanup procedure would help. d9 acetate with sulfuric acid is quite unlikely as I've said before.

Obtaining acetic anhydride isn't easy. It's a watched chemical.

Making it yourself isn't easy and dangerous.

Making Ac2O or acetyl chloride by any method is inconvenient but not a challenge. The skill required to make impure THC acetates is not the lowest level, but not far from it. It can certainly be fucked up by following bad directions. A 99% pure product would be more impressive and I doubt anyone is offering any.

One way not to make Ac2O is from ketene. Making and/or using chlorine is preferable to the even worse ketene.

Which brings us back to THC acetate. One part of the ad is accurate.

Furthermore, Stephens noted that smoking the molecule in a vape cartridge invites another host of questions, since combustion can activate other chemical processes. “We just don’t know [what happens], but you can’t run around saying any of this stuff is safe,” he told Leafly.

You may recall that vitamin E acetate caused some problems, perhaps due to pyrolytic ketene formation from the acetate part, shown by experiment to occur:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1920925117

THC acetate is really not much different - expect the same result.

 

[armedoldhippy]

CBD stores here are selling it alongside the Delta-8 THC. have not tried it myself yet, but am going to unless i find a reason not to. girls behind the counter say it is rapidly becoming the best selling product they have available.

 

[CosmicGiggle]

Don't bother aoh, unless you like being 'hit on the back of the head by a 2 x 4 and bed-spins. I tried the oral capsules and just wanted to go to bed and sleep it off.

Luckily it was almost bedtime, and I did sleep like the dead, feeling really spacey/groggy the next morning and into the day.

 

[SpaceshipNelson]

As of yet I have not encountered any on the lower portion of the west coast, but have encountered D-8 & D-10 packaged for consumption (so far inhalation). . They are both junk in my (professional)opinion. . Keep the underground growers market strong. . . . Support the black market (and know your grower)

edit: (this opinion derived from years of watching the legal market fail at the expense of the end consumer).

 

[G.O. Joe]

What I was saying at the end of my last post is now published:

Vaping Cannabinoid Acetates Leads to Ketene Formation

Delta-8 THC acetate is a relatively new psychoactive cannabis product that is available online and in vape shops across the US since it is currently unregulated. Because it contains a similar substructure to vitamin E acetate, which has been shown to form the poison gas ketene during vaping, we...

chemrxiv.org

 

[Gray Wolf]

Maybe a better cleanup procedure would help. d9 acetate with sulfuric acid is quite unlikely as I've said before.

I'm all ears. Perhaps you could share with us the "correct" way to make D-9 Acetate??

A rose by any other name? Whatever it was, I certainly liked it, as did all the students that went through our Alchemy classes.

It also clearly smelled and tasted like an acetate as well, as opposed to a phenolic cannabinoid taste.

What do you think it was instead of D-9 Acetate??

Interesting paper and concerning. Suggestions on how to access their method to see if they were combusting or vaporizing?

PS: When I ran it through our gas chromatograph, the THC-O-A (?) peak was to the left of the THC peakl

 

[Swamp Thang]

With organically grown cannabis now selectively bred to yield THC levels exceeding 30%, I simply cannot fathom the rationale for this arms race to extract, purify and modify cannabis' active ingredient in the quest to raise that THC level even higher.

When one considers the residues of butane and other highly carcinogenic chemicals that remain in the "finished product" of these dodgy back-alley chem lab procedures, I cannot for the life of me see a reason to try any of those THC-on-steroids derivatives and synthesized analogs that people ingest without a care in the world.

 

[CannaRed]

I made a few "Thai sticks" using the THC-O oil. I coated the sticks in oil to make sticky and then rolled them in kief. 2 people complained when they came back, saying it made them immediately sleepy. I said I would buy back whatever they had leftover (trying to be a good plug ). But they said it was all gone. Must've not been too disappointed.
In my opinion I didn't notice any difference between the high, it didn't make me tired. But thought it was weird that more than one person said it did.

 

[G.O. Joe]

What do you think it was instead of D-9 Acetate??

Considering that a tiny bit of toluenesulfonic acid converts d9 to d8 just as well as it does CBD to d8, expect any acid capable of messing up CBD to do the same with d9. This includes the acetic acid from Ac2O, which is one reason why pyridine or sodium acetate are often used, to neutralize the acid. Note that the original article about d9 acetate potency, whence all the potency claims arise (people quoting people who quote people who quote people who quote people who quote this paper), used neat Ac2O at reflux for hours on raw hash extract distillate which must have been half CBD and whatnot, which was then separated into who knows what with column chromatography - acetic acid in alcohol gives all kinds of things with CBD, as do many other acidic substances.

 

[Gray Wolf]

Considering that a tiny bit of toluenesulfonic acid converts d9 to d8 just as well as it does CBD to d8, expect any acid capable of messing up CBD to do the same with d9. This includes the acetic acid from Ac2O, which is one reason why pyridine or sodium acetate are often used, to neutralize the acid. Note that the original article about d9 acetate potency, whence all the potency claims arise (people quoting people who quote people who quote people who quote people who quote this paper), used neat Ac2O at reflux for hours on raw hash extract distillate which must have been half CBD and whatnot, which was then separated into who knows what with column chromatography - acetic acid in alcohol gives all kinds of things with CBD, as do many other acidic substances.

Do I understand you are recommending toluenesulfonic acid instead of H2SO4? At what ratios and reflux for how long?

If our formula doesn't make THC-O-A, perhaps I should start a thread about how to make a mystery acetate that is really good shit?

You mentioned that stability was most likely a function of our cleaning process. How would you clean it up so that it is stable?

 

[Gray Wolf]

I notice that two of the ketene paper authors are local boys from Portland State University, so I infer they would be members of SAACS, which is who sponsored our lecture at PSU. I'll see if I can get more information from them on details like vaping temperature, et al.

 

[Gray Wolf]

Success, I found that Robert Strongin is actually a Professor of Chemistry at PSU, and sent him an email requesting more data. More when I receive it.

 

[G.O. Joe]

It's doubtful that it's even possible for an acetate to be more potent, because it's likely that the acetate has to be metabolized to a free phenol to have any activity.

Do I understand you are recommending toluenesulfonic acid instead of H2SO4?

No.

Acids rearrange cannabinoids. Don't mix them with acids unless you want them to rearrange to a mixture of unknown composition. A limited amount of published work on acid reaction with d9 exists, particularly with heat and without alcohol. The reaction with tosic acid is known, and tosic acid is comparable to sulfuric acid.

I'm unaware of any literature where an acid is added to acetic anhydride and a cannabinoid, and the only time I've seen a base not added since the 50's is when the Cannabis Alchemy procedure using neat Ac2O is sort of followed and sort of analyzed (Science & Justice 1996; 36: 195-197).

The result of mixing acid with a cannabinoid will vary with temperature, concentration, time, and solvent. Predictable results will only happen when a procedure's product is fully analyzed and repeated exactly!

d8 is a common end product because it's more stable. Cannabinoids also rearrange with strong bases. These aren't a reaction of cannabinoids really, it's a reaction of terpenes. d9 and CBD can be seen as substituted limonenes. These rearrangements are as easy and complex in cannabinoids as in terpenes.

How would you clean it up so that it is stable?

Better washing and drying is better. If you've mixed some of your Ac2O with water and shaken some, you've seen that it's not as reactive as it's made out to be. Takes a few minutes for the layer to disappear, depending on how much water is added. I'm not sure how much base treatment the ester can handle but in general I've noticed that esters have some resistance to hydrolysis with unheated base.

 

[troutman]

Do I understand you are recommending toluenesulfonic acid instead of H2SO4? At what ratios and reflux for how long?

Alcohol and sulfuric acid isomerizes only 50-60% of CBD to THC; p-TolueneSulfonic Acid (p-TSA) in petroleum ether
or other light, non-polar solvent will convert 90% of CBD to THC upon refluxing 1 hour at 130° F.

 

[troutman]

Ketene reacts with acetone to make acetic anhydride.

US2509877A - Process for preparing acetic anhydride - Google Patents