Oregon's hot hash oil market drives demand for marijuana 'trim'

As an industry grows, naturally things fall into their niche as efficiency and convenience work together. The budding marijuana industry is no different, and small details like only keeping the precious flower while throwing the rest of plant in the garbage kept certain businesses from reaching their potential. Companies like Cameron Yee's, Lunchbox Alchemy, have been throwing away parts of the plant called "trim" for too long before realizing the amount of products he could make with it. Fresh trim from quality strains of marijuana can be used to make the increasingly popular concentrates like oils and even edibles, but at a fraction of the price of using strictly buds. As Oregon's recreational market approches their first harvest and sales in October, the price of concentrates is sure to plummet while quality rises with the excess amount of trim that will be sold to third party companies like Cameron's.

The demand for trim mirrors the recent rise in hash oil's popularity. For years, growers viewed the leaves as a nuisance, tossing them into chippers or garbage compactors, said Jorge Cervantes, a renowned marijuana grower who has written extensively about the plant.

"This market was a sleeper market," said Cervantes, who is from Oregon and lives in California. "Until the market became developed and people wanted it, nobody was really paying attention."