After using a bong, bowl, or another glass piece for a while, you probably start to notice your glass turning from clear and translucent to dark and opaque (building up cannabis resin). This is normal, but you shouldn’t let your glass stay this way for long. There is a way to remove everything that has built up in your bong. But what should you do with it? Should you smoke it? No, and I’ll tell you why.
To clear any confusion, this post is about cannabis resin, not rosin. Rosin is another form of cannabis, one that is much more desirable and should be smoked. Resin is what you don’t want, rosin is what you do want.
Click Here To Learn More About Cannabis Rosin
What Is Resin?
Cannabis residue, or simply resin, is what builds up in bongs, pipes and other smokers. Though it is a byproduct of cannabis, it should not be treated like cannabis. Resin is what burning cannabis leaves behind. Some THC does remain in the resin, but not enough to make a significant. Certainly not worth the risks to your health.
Resin is mainly made up of ash, carbon and tar. No matter where the tar is made from, tar in general is harmful to your lungs. Now, there are no major immediate dangers of smoking half a gram of resin. However, long-term continuous use of resin may result in negative side effects.
The look of resin alone makes it seem very unappealing.
While there is a small trace of THC left behind in the resin, it is not enough to make an impact. You would have to smoke much more resin than you would regular cannabis to get the same high. In order to get high from resin, you may need to smoke more than you think, resulting in more tar and ash in your lungs.
Desperate stoners have been known to smoke resin when they have no weed, but I do not recommend doing this. Do so at your own risk. After all, if you have no weed you should just go get some more instead of scraping and collecting resin. It’s only like $10 a gram anyway (depending on where you live). You could also just grow your own. Learning is not that difficult and it can start here at Reefer Post!
Related: How To Grow Cannabis Indoors For Beginners
Do Not Smoke It
Of course, you may want to remove the resin from your bong. That is fine, and we’ll talk more about that below. However, once you remove the resin, do not smoke it. The tar that makes up a majority of the resin is better off out of your lungs than in them.
When cannabis is smoked, it releases chemical byproducts that are harmful to one’s health. Some of these byproducts do get inhaled with the smoke. Most, however, stick back and form the resin. What does get inhaled the first time is not as bad as what would be inhaled if you had decided to smoke that resin.
You can reduce the number of chemical byproducts (including tar and ash) that get inhaled by using water filtration when you smoke. Water can filter most (but not all) out of the smoke. The most common way to use water filtration is through a bong or bubbler.
Related Post: More About Water Filtration and Smoke
A majority of the THC in the smoke will also pass through, but a small amount will stay behind. As discussed above, this small amount is not even worth it. You need to smoke a lot of resin to get high, and you may not even be able to. This is because the taste of resin is, well, not the same as the weed you first smoked. In my opinion, it tastes horrible and can make those with a weak stomach vomit.
The smoke from the resin would also be very harsh. When the weed was first smoked, all of the flavorful and soothing terpenes went along with the smoke and left behind tar and other nasty stuff. Trying to get high from resin will not be very fun. Instead, find out what you should do with it once you remove it from your bong.
Where To Put It Instead
There’s really only one thing out there to do with resin. Do this one thing with all your resin and you’ll be on the right track. That one thing to do with resin is to dispose of it properly. Throw it away. Put it in the trash. Just get rid of it.
When you are removing resin, use something disposable such as a paper towel to collect it. Once you collect enough of it, you will probably start to smell an odd, unpleasant smell coming from it. That is what you would taste if you had smoked the resin. Leave it on the paper towel, wrap it up, and toss it in the garbage.
As for how to remove the resin, there are a few tricks to doing so. First off, you should regularly clean your glass pieces so that resin cannot build up. Learn how to do that below:
Related: How To Clean Any Glass Piece
Some glass piece designs make it very difficult to remove 100% of all resin buildup. In some very complex pieces, removing all of it is nearly impossible! Even by washing it every week, you may not be able to remove all of the resin. Salt and alcohol may not do the trick, but you shouldn’t give up there.
One way that I have found to work is by getting a small metal object, such as a paperclip, and using it to dig the resin out. Use a napkin or paper towel to clean off the paperclip after each dig. In my bong, smoke is filtered through water, but my bowl is not. The bowl collects so much resin that washing it did little to nothing. Now I scrape resin out with a paperclip in order to clean my bowl.
Can smoking resin hurt you?
Yes, the smoking resin can hurt you as it contains tar, ash, carbon, and other harmful byproducts that can irritate your throat and lungs, making it difficult to breathe, and can also cause headaches and sore throats.
Bottom Line
The bottom line is… don’t smoke resin. It’s honestly not worth it. Buy some mid-shelf or even low-quality weed before you smoke resin. Scrape kief before you scrape resin. That’s all for this post, hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading!
