What Is 710? The Cannabis Oil Holiday, Explained

July 10 Is the One Day a Year People Ask Me About My Job

Most of the year, nobody wants to hear about extraction. I'm the guy who talks about wash temperatures and micron bags at parties, and I can watch people's eyes go somewhere else in real time. Then July 10 rolls around, the whole industry starts posting about oil, and suddenly I'm interesting for about 24 hours.

I'm Nick. I run extraction and hardware at Halara, which means 710 is technically my holiday, and it's also the one I have the most complicated feelings about. The thing being celebrated (concentrated cannabis oil) is genuinely one of the more remarkable things this plant can do, and the way it gets celebrated is mostly a discount code.

So here's the honest version of what 710 is, where it came from (nobody actually knows, and I'll show you why), and what I think the day is supposed to be about.

What Is 710?

710 is July 10, an unofficial cannabis holiday dedicated to concentrates rather than flower. The name comes from the number itself: write 710 down, turn the page upside down, and it reads as OIL. It's the concentrate world's answer to 420, celebrated with dabs, vapes, and a lot of dispensary promotions.

That's the whole mechanic. There's no hidden meaning, no historical event, no police radio code. Somebody noticed that a three-digit number looks like a word when you rotate it, and an entire product category built a holiday on top of the coincidence.

If you want the map of what "oil" actually covers before we go further, we wrote a full breakdown of the types of cannabis concentrates that sorts the whole case, from distillate to live rosin to diamonds. This piece is about the day, not the taxonomy.

Why the 710 Origin Story Is Murkier Than 420's

Here's where most 710 articles quietly lie to you.

420 has a real, documented history: a specific group of teenagers, a specific meeting time, a specific town in Marin County, and decades of paper trail behind all of it. When someone tells you the 420 origin story, they're mostly telling you something verifiable.

710 has nothing like that. Leafly, covering the holiday directly, calls it a recent phenomenon with "debatably vague origins" and dates the first noted 710 celebrations to around 2012, with the caveat that they may have happened earlier. Weedmaps, in its own explainer, puts it more plainly: the origins are "a little hazy", pointing to online cannabis forums picking the term up around 2011 and to the rapper TaskRok as a figure who helped popularize it. By 2013 the first 710 Cup ran in Denver and the thing had a commercial life of its own.

Notice what's missing from all of that: a moment. There's no founding scene. There's a term that appeared in a few corners of the internet, a musician who used it, some forum threads, and then an industry that found the idea useful. Depending on who you ask, you'll also hear that it traces to the Grateful Dead's house at 710 Ashbury in San Francisco, which was a real address at the center of real hash-oil-adjacent history, but nobody has produced evidence that anyone there ever used "710" to mean oil. It's a nice story that doesn't survive contact with a source request.

I like that the origin is a mess, honestly. It's the more accurate reflection of how cannabis culture actually works: things get named sideways, the name spreads faster than the story, and the story gets reverse-engineered later by people selling something. If a brand tells you the definitive history of 710 with total confidence, that's a brand that made it up.

Why Cannabis Needed an Oil Holiday at All

The reasonable objection to 710 is that 420 already exists and already covers weed, so why does oil get its own day.

The answer is that concentrates weren't really a consumer category when 420 became a thing. Hash has been around for centuries, but the modern concentrate world (fresh-frozen input, hydrocarbon and solventless extraction, dab rigs, and eventually the vape hardware that let normal people use it without a torch) is recent, and it arrived fast enough to feel like its own event. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, concentrates commonly test in the 60-90% THC range, versus roughly 15-25% for flower, and that gap is big enough that it changes the product, the ritual, and the audience.

But potency isn't the interesting part of what concentrates represent, and this is the part 710 usually gets wrong about itself. The interesting part is terpene preservation. Cannabis terpenes start degrading the second a plant is cut, and the entire fresh-frozen category exists to stop that clock. When you dab a properly made live rosin, you're not primarily experiencing "more THC." You're experiencing what the plant actually smelled like when it was alive, which is something almost nobody who only smokes cured flower has ever tasted.

That's the thing worth having a holiday about. Concentrates are the craft end of this industry, the place where the difference between someone who cares and someone who doesn't is immediately obvious on the exhale.

What People Actually Do on 710 (Including the Deal Blitz)

The honest inventory of a modern 710: most people dab something they wouldn't normally buy, because it's on sale. Dispensaries run their deepest concentrate promotions of the year, brands drop limited-run jars and glass collabs, and there are events in most legal markets, ranging from genuine hash-maker gatherings to a table in a parking lot with a banner on it. A good chunk of the day happens on the internet, where the concentrate community posts photos of jars and argues about terp content.

And the day is commercialized, deeply, which I'm not going to pretend otherwise about from inside a cannabis company that participates in it. 710 is a sales holiday for the concentrate category the way 420 is for the whole industry. If that bothers you, I'd point out that a heavily discounted concentrate day is also the cheapest on-ramp of the year for anyone who's been curious about rosin and couldn't justify $70 a gram.

The trap is the same one that shows up on 420, so I'll say the short version and leave the full deal-trap breakdown where we already wrote it: the deepest discount is usually on the product that wasn't moving. Buy a discount on something you already know you like, and spend the savings on something you've never tried.

What I Think 710 Should Be About: The Number Is a Lie, the Craft Is the Truth

Every year on 710 I watch the same content cycle: percentage screenshots, biggest-dab videos, someone's COA with a 99% THCA number circled in red.

I make this stuff for a living, and I'll tell you flatly that the number on the jar is the least informative thing about it. A 99% THCA reading converts to roughly 87% actual THC once heat decarboxylates it, which is a chemistry detail most of the people posting those screenshots don't know. More to the point, the highest-testing concentrate on the shelf is usually the one with the least left of the plant in it. Strip everything out and the THC number goes up, because there's nothing else in the jar competing for the percentage.

Meanwhile the rosin I'm proudest of pressing tests in the seventies and tastes like the wash room smelled at four in the morning.

The stuff that actually determines whether a concentrate is any good doesn't fit on a label: whether the flower was frozen within hours of the chop, whether the cultivar washes clean enough to be worth pressing at all (a lot of strains simply don't cooperate in ice water, no matter how well they grow), how gently the hash was dried, what temperature the plates were at. None of that is a number a customer can shop with, which is exactly why the industry defaults to shopping on THC percentage. It's the only spec that's easy.

So if you want my version of 710, it's this: on the one day a year that cannabis celebrates oil, celebrate the part of oil that's hard to do. Buy the thing that tastes like a plant instead of the thing that tests the highest. The number is a lie. The craft is the truth.

How to Get Into Concentrates on 710 Without a Rig or a Torch

The biggest barrier to 710 for most people isn't interest, it's equipment. Dab rigs involve a torch, a timer, a temperature you have to learn by feel, and a real chance your first experience is a mouthful of something that tastes like a struck match. That's a rough introduction to a category built on flavor.

You don't need any of it. The whole reason vape hardware got good is that concentrate is worth having without the rig.

Start with a solventless rosin AIO or cart. Same oil a hash maker would hand you off a dab tool, sealed in hardware that heats it correctly every time. No torch, no rig, no guessing at temperature. We broke down the dab vs. cart vs. AIO decision in full, including what each format actually costs, if you want to think it through properly.
Buy single-strain, not "blend." Real solventless is strain-specific. An unnamed "rosin blend" is usually a signal that something got cut or combined to hit a price.
Check the ingredients, not the potency. For rosin, the list should be one item long. Anything else on it (added terpenes, thinning agents) means you're not buying what the front of the box says.
Take a smaller pull than you think. Concentrate at 70-85% is roughly three to four times what you're used to from flower. The first-time 710 story that goes badly is almost always a dosing story, not a product story.
Then, if you like it, go find a rig. Dabs still deliver the truest version. Get there second, once you already know what you're chasing.

If you want the mechanism behind why solventless tastes the way it does, our live rosin explainer covers the ice water wash and the press in detail.

What We Make (Taste the Flower)

We don't make everything in the concentrate case, and we don't pretend to. Halara is a California vape brand mostly known for smooth, high-THC all-in-one vapes with anti-clog hardware at $25-29, which is a very different product from what 710 is about, so I'll leave that line out of this post.

On the oil side we make two things, both under Taste the Flower:

Live resin diamond sauce is fresh-frozen, hydrocarbon-extracted, then separated so the THCA crystallizes and the terpene-rich sauce pools around it. It's for people chasing the loudest flavor a cart can carry. Nick's process breakdown covers how those actually get built.

Solventless rosin is ice water, heat, and pressure, with no chemical anywhere in the process. The current lineup runs Gas Nana, Sour Gummiez, and The Cough, pressed in small batches, and we only run a strain through solventless if it washes clean enough to justify it. How I make a rosin cart explains why that filter exists and how much it costs us in strain selection.

Cannabis-derived terpenes only, no cutting agents, and a QR-linked COA on every batch of both.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is 710?

710 is July 10, an unofficial cannabis holiday dedicated to concentrates and oil rather than flower. The name comes from the number 710 read upside down, where it reads as the word OIL. It's the concentrate world's counterpart to 420, and it's celebrated with dabs, vapes, and a very large pile of dispensary discounts.

Why is 710 the weed oil holiday?

Because of a typographic accident. Write 710 on a page, flip it 180 degrees, and it reads as OIL. Cannabis oil (hash oil, live resin, rosin, and everything dabbable) got a date attached to that visual joke, and July 10 stuck. There's no deeper meaning to the number itself, which is part of why the holiday's history is so hard to pin down.

What's the difference between 420 and 710?

420 is the general cannabis holiday and it covers everything, flower included. 710 is specifically about concentrates and oil. 420 also has a far better documented origin (a group of San Rafael high schoolers in the 1970s), while 710's origins are genuinely hazy and trace back to online cannabis communities around 2010 to 2012. In practice, 420 is the block party and 710 is the tasting room.

Do I need a rig to dab on 710?

No. A dab rig and torch will get you the most direct version of a concentrate, but a solventless rosin cartridge or all-in-one vape delivers the same oil with no setup, no torch, and no learning curve. If you've never dabbed and don't want to buy hardware, a rosin AIO is the easiest way to try real concentrate on 710.

Is 710 the same as Dab Day?

Yes. 710, Oil Day, and Dab Day all refer to July 10 and the same celebration of cannabis concentrates. The names get used interchangeably depending on the brand, the dispensary, or the region. Nobody owns the term, which is why it has three names and no official definition.

Where can I buy cannabis concentrates for 710?

Any licensed dispensary with a concentrate case will have options, and most run their deepest concentrate promotions of the year on July 10. Halara's Resin Sauce and solventless rosin lines are stocked at 300+ licensed dispensaries across California, Washington, and New York, and our store locator will find the nearest one.

The Bottom Line on 710

710 is a holiday with a joke for a name and no verifiable birthday, invented by the internet and adopted by an industry that needed a second sales event on the calendar. All of that is true, and none of it is a reason to skip it.

What's underneath the marketing is real. Concentrates are the only place in cannabis where you can taste what the plant smelled like alive, and getting there requires a level of care that no percentage on a label will ever show you. That's worth a day.

Take the discount if there's a good one. Just spend it on the jar that tastes like something.

Nick

Sources

Happy 710! Celebrating OIL Day (Leafly). Leafly editorial on the holiday's vague origins and earliest noted celebrations.
Everything You Need to Know About 710 (Weedmaps Learn). Timeline of the term's spread through online cannabis communities and the first 710 Cup.
NIDA: Marijuana Concentrates DrugFacts. National Institute on Drug Abuse data on concentrate potency versus flower.
Types of Cannabis Concentrates. The full map of what "oil" covers.
Solventless Rosin Buying Guide. Dab vs. cart vs. AIO, with real prices.
Halara Lab Results. Batch-specific COAs for every Halara product.