by Dharma Clement

It is fair to say the most well known type of cannabis oil amongst the afficionados in the cannabis world is Rick Simpson’s Oil, its acronym RSO, is an alcohol distillation and evaporation process producing a highly concentrated cannabis oil that has been generally recommended for cancer treatments. In the cannabis industry, this is considered crude grade oil. Great medicinal properties with maybe a bit too much of the herbal medicinal taste.

The name Rick Simpson is from the man who educated on and advocated for the extraction process to help people with their healthcare issues. It all started in 2003, when he was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer and said he cured his skin cancer by using RSO topically, but it can be taken orally to address internal cancers as well.

The basic steps of extraction requires a prepping of the flower buds and a machine to extract the cannabinoids and terpenes from the flower. There are a multiple types of machine to use, each relying on extraction through an alcohol base, through pressure and heat.

There are two main distinct extraction processes: the solventless method, which use low heat and pressure to break off or melt the cannabinoid trichomes from the cannabis flower and the solvent base extraction methods use a volatile chemical to dissolve the trichomes from the rest of the cannabis plant matter to produce a potent cannabis oil.

Our preference for high potency cannabis oil is derived from the solventless Co2 extraction method. This extraction methodis a combination of the critical temperature of carbon dioxide at 87.8* F combined with the high pressure of 1070 psi within a stainless steel vessel. This process helps preserve more of the plant’s fragile oils, such as minor cannabinoids and temperature sensitive terpenes which are damages and often lost entirely when extracted with solvents..

In the solvent based extraction world there are multiple approaches. The majority of cannabis oil is derived from the hydrocarbon method, involving the use of either butane or propane. Butane is the industry’s favorite extraction method because of its capacity to extract the most cannabinoids and terpenes from the flower medium in the most efficient processing time. However it does require diligence and vigilance for the final cannabis oil to be free of any remaining solvents. Being so, we prefer the hands-on craft approach and make little use of this type of cannabis oil.

Today, we have a new wave of products derived from what the industry calls “fresh frozen” , meaning to frozen right at the point of harvest, which entails stripping the water leaves, branches and stems and then vacuum sealing the flowers in 1 -2lbs bags and then placing them in a freezer at -38c . Some cultivators go one step further and add dry ice into the freezer.

This “fresh frozen” procedure does the best job of preserving the cannabinoids, terpenes and flavonoids that the particular cannabis varietal produced during its flowering cycle. From fresh frozen flower extractors can produce a high quality cannabis oil, with a broad spectrum of cannabinoids and a majority of the original terpenes.

At Synergy Wellness, we use this high quality Co2 Oil to make quite a few of our products. We incorporate the oils into all of our topical products, including the sensual oil, they are the only ingredients in our cartridges, and we use a combination of 2 to create our suppositories and a few of the blended tinctures.