It’s rare these days to drive into work with a permanent smile on your face. In fact, some would claim it’s an impossible task.
That statement doesn’t carry weight when meeting Tyson McGrath, Laboratory Technician at Wasatch Extraction, located in Salt Lake City. Wasatch Extraction is one out of 14 medical cannabis Processors awarded licenses by the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) to create extracts such as tinctures, capsules, vaporizer cartridges, Hash, Shatter, Wax, and other dababble oils.
After walking into a warehouse in the city’s westside industrial area, it’s apparent to any ‘weed head’ why McGrath is working his dream job. The towering redhead is quite literally surrounded by dozens of bags, which collectively contain thousands of pounds of cannabis biomass. That, and the surrounding smell, could be why a grin is eternally plastered to his face. He claims; however, that it’s just the experience of working with the plant that makes his labor feel like play.
“I never thought a job like this could exist in Utah,” McGrath said during an interview inside the medical cannabis processing facility. “It still hasn’t hit me yet and I’m not sure if it ever will.”
At his previous job, McGrath was surrounded by industrial metal while working at Mueller Copper Tube West Co. in Cedar City. There, the 30-year-old spent his time creating critical components of mechanical applications, ranging from potable water distribution to automotive drive trains, household appliances, and even radar defense systems.
Although he is still surrounded by metal and mechanical applications, the critical high-THC components he creates today are used to elevate Utah’s growing medical cannabis population.
Related Article: Utah’s First Woman Cannabis Cultivator: Britney Hunter
Whether you’ve been using cannabis for decades or you’re just now diving into the topic, you might be asking yourself “what does a laboratory technician at an extract facility do, exactly?”
In the simplest terms, a cannabis extraction technician is an employee with the skills to safely separate the oily, cannabinoid-rich trichomes from cannabis flower. This job requires technical knowledge of the sophisticated and potentially dangerous equipment that is used to extract unique compounds from cannabis plant matter. This is why McGrath is perfect for the position.
“I’ve worked on different machines my whole life and this type of work comes fairly easy to me,” McGrath said. “I love every aspect of it.”
Processors in Utah are also responsible for drying, curing, extracting, refining, formulating packaging, and labeling state medical cannabis products. Plant cultivators are reliant on these companies to get cannabis from the farm to state pharmacies.
Using ethanol and CO2 extraction methods, McGrath and Wasatch Extraction have been producing the Fruit of Life cartridge line, which are available at most Utah medical cannabis pharmacies. Nearly all of the flower biomass used for these products is coming from Tryke of Utah, McGrath confirms.
Legal cannabis is in full bloom around the country – and a modern market, where we no longer have to settle for grass alone, has been born. Taking up one-third of many of the dispensary menus in other legal states, extracts can offer the best of cannabis’ effects and flavors, without the plant matter – allowing patients to get the same impact with a fraction of smoke or no smoke at all.
According to McGrath, until Utah’s eight licensed cultivators start producing more cannabis biomass, it will be difficult to expand extract production to the other products customers are used to in other markets. “I get asked all the time what’s coming next,” McGrath said with a smile on his face. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
Published in Salt Baked City Print Magazine – Spring 2021
