Parents, ask your teens: “Have you ever heard of ‘dabbing’?” This increasingly popular way to get high uses butane passed through a steel or glass tube containing bits of marijuana to yield a high concentrate of the active substance in the drug, THC, that can be dangerous in more ways than one, warns a new letter published in the journal Pediatrics, nbcnews.com reports.

According to the report, written by two top American drug abuse professors, dabbing is “exploding onto the drug-use scene” among teens and young adults. The butane hash oil produced from the process creates crystallized resins with an almost 80 percent concentration of THC. The resin is commonly called “shatter,” “earwax” or “honeycomb” in street lingo.
 
What’s more, this do-it-yourself process, known as “blasting,” is extremely dangerous because it uses butane, a gas that’s highly flammable and volatile. There’s been a number of fires and explosions caused by “blasting,” and kids all over the country have sustained severe burns from episodes of this at-home dabbing.
 
In the letter, researchers cited several studies that show smoking even small amounts of marijuana can have bad effects on the still-developing adolescent brain.

The American Academy of Pediatrics officially opposes kids using pot for non-medical reasons.

For more information about the pros and cons of medical marijuana, click here.