Honey oil extraction death

[Guest Wilderbud]

Source: http://www.medicalmarihuana.ca/death.html

 

Sunday, November 2, 2003

by James Gordon

from The Ottawa Citizen

 

A local Canadian activist has died. Don Appleby was legally allowed to smoke marijuana to help with his AIDS. He apparently blew himself up while attempting to extract THC with butane.

 

Don Appleby died of his injuries suffered in an Oct. 12 explosion while he was trying to make a concentrated oil using marijuana and butane.

 

Don Appleby's fight against the aids virus that was sapping him was made more difficult by a tragic paradox. While the Ottawa man was one of the few Canadians who could legally smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes, he could rarely afford it due to his minuscule disability pension.

 

In the end, he was killed in the struggle to produce the drug that was helping him survive.

 

On Oct. 12, Mr. Appleby was in the bathroom of his Blake Boulevard apartment, trying a dangerous method to get some use out of the non-smokable parts of his marijuana plants.

 

By injecting butane into a plastic container with the plant in it, he hoped to make a concentrated oil he could use. Friends suspect he then tried to light a joint, igniting an explosion that blew the bathroom door off its hinges.

 

Residents of the apartment above his heard the explosion, and rushed him to the Ottawa Hospital's General campus. It's where he remained in intensive care since the incident, and where he died Thursday morning.

 

Ron Whelan was Mr. Appleby's close friend, and was living under the same circumstances. He said yesterday that Mr. Appleby never should have died the way he did.

 

Both 44, they received about $900 a month on disability, not nearly enough to pay for both marijuana and food. While the government would pay for the $1,500-$2,000 of aids medication Mr. Appleby needed, they wouldn't pick up the cost of the marijuana. Nausea was a side-effect of the pills, and without the drug, he couldn't keep them down.

 

Forced to buy marijuana himself and pay rent, his friends say Mr. Appleby was reduced to scrounging through dumpsters to find the food he could no longer afford. He would go searching behind restaurants late at night so nobody would see him. At the same time, he wasn't shy about asking people with marijuana gardens to help him.

 

"You do what you have to do to survive, whether it's beg, borrow or steal," Mr. Whelan said. If one had a bag of dry macaroni from the food bank, he would often go to the other's place to share.

 

Mr. Appleby decided to try and save some money by growing his own marijuana, and after two failed gardens, things were starting to work out for him. Still, the cost to grow was still high.

 

With no other source of medicine, he resorted to the butane method. He never recovered from the burns that covered 75 per cent of his body and his scorched lungs.

 

Mr. Whelan said although Mr. Appleby experienced difficult times in the past, he really blossomed after meeting people similar to him. He loved participating in marijuana rallies, and helping others.

 

"The world needs more people like Donny," he said. "He was there for the underdog, and it's a terrible loss for everyone who knew him."

 

Mr. Whelan said he doesn't blame the government for what happened to his friend, but said it should take more responsibility and provide for people like him.

[99waystofuckyou]

The original article is here, it seems the other site copied it word for word.

 

I like how this article is in a mainstream media source, and it shows the guy in a sympathetic light. An australian newspaper would never do that even if the victim -was- already dying of AIDS.

 

It's a bit heavy on the emotives though.

[Rattdogg]

Nice article, i have no sympathy for any moron who uses naked flame while using butane extraction, not real hard to understand that loose butane gas + flame = bingo boingo !!!!

[Guest Wilderbud]

Nice article, i have no sympathy for any moron who uses naked flame while using butane extraction, not real hard to understand that loose butane gas + flame = bingo boingo !!!!

Indoors too - this guy will no doubt be nominated for the Darwin Award.

[walter_cego]

leave the poor cunt alone, he was dieing painfully anyway so I can understand why he didn't give a shit, just trying to get another dose of meds while preparing meds.

He was eating shit living like shit for chrissakes, and at least something he loved killed him and not aids.

[Black_one]

He loved gas?

[white_cluster]

At least he smoking a joint or about to when he died man, i bet he was pretty stoned when he died too.

When I die I want it to be because I'm crushed under the weight of one of my buds.

[Rattdogg]

leave the poor cunt alone, he was dieing painfully anyway so I can understand why he didn't give a shit, just trying to get another dose of meds while preparing meds.

He was eating shit living like shit for chrissakes, and at least something he loved killed him and not aids.

Just because your poor and dying doesnt exempt you from being called an idiot, and it's not exacly like he's gonna be reading this thread, is it now ????

[RobbieGanjaSeed]

I've never tried butaine extraction, because while I was in the railways, we had several explosions in the fuel room. It turned out that siphoning fuel through a garden hose was causing friction, and whoopha!.

 

Ever since then, I've been vaery warry what I put flamables through, especially at the speed that butaine leaves a can.

 

But I have cut through a 240 power cable while it was live (running a new set of lights), and similar assorted weird things, because of being on opiates (pain killers0, and grass simutaenously.

 

I imagne it's getting prety cold in Canada right now, and the level of accomadtion this guy had would have been pretty scabby, so maybe the ventalation in his house, while trying to keep it warm was sad?

 

I'm not saying it wasn't stupid to do it, just maybe circumstances mad eit easier for him to fuck up.

 

I know that with my sickness, and it isn't anything like aids I suppose, I have days of brain death. Like I just can't get the old grey matter turning over quiet right.

 

I reckon the bloke was living ina dump, too cold to ventilate, no backyard that was secure enough to take his equipment, and half watsed on pain killers. Definately a silly thing to do, but sad just the same.

 

A whole string of things there shouldn't have happened. From a person in this day and age scabbing food from rubbish bins through to the circumstances that caused the explosion.

 

I hope things never get that farked here.

 

Hey WC, an old bloke I worked with once told me he wanted to die at 90 odd years old, from a bullet wound, fired at him by the jealous husband of a beautiful 21 year old blonde. Reckoned it would prove his virility right up to the end.

 

but somehow...Ilike the huge bud thing.

 

cheers

rob

[Spurious]

@ Black One.