Today, July 10, is 7/10, better known as Dab Day. Dispensaries across legal states are marking the concentrate holiday with promotions. The reason is a visual pun: 710, turned upside down, spells OIL, and 7/10 lands on July 10 in the U.S. date format.[4] The holiday is 15 years old, and its origin story is stranger, and better documented, than most people assume.
420 became shorthand for cannabis in general. 710 became shorthand for oil culture: hash oil, wax, shatter, live resin, rosin and the vaporization hardware built to consume them.
A pun born in a chat room
The strongest documented origin points to TaskRok, a rapper and dab-tech figure associated with Highly Educated, an early maker of nails and dab accessories. In a 2015 investigation for The Leaf Online, journalist Mitchell Colbert traced the term to a TinyChat session with TaskRok, Healthstone and the BeeHive Oil crew around 2010.
"They suggested we make a new time to take dabs at as they didn't really resonate with 420 anymore," TaskRok told Colbert. "I was the one who suggested 710 because it clicked in my head that it spelled oil upside down."
Daniel De Sailles, owner of Top Shelf Extracts and a founder of The Secret Cup concentrate competition, backed the account: "Task came up with 710, period."
TaskRok never claimed to be the first person to flip the number. "I am not the first person to realize that 710 spells oil upside down," he said. His claim is narrower: turning the number into a dab-culture code and a date. He also declined ownership. "I don't want to try to own it though. It belongs to the community now."
The first reception was rough. TaskRok said early forum users on TokeCity dismissed the idea: "They thought it was stupid. I don't blame them though, it kind of was."
Cannabis activist Jae Benjamin summed up the ambiguity of firstness: "What was first, the chicken or the egg? 710 upside-down is OIL. Who flipped it 1st IS unknown."
2010
TaskRok suggests 710 as a dab time in a TinyChat session with Healthstone and the BeeHive Oil crew.
2011
Task and Linus release The Movement, with tracks 7:10 and Boil That Oil, on July 10. A TokeCity forum post announces the holiday.
2012
The follow-up album The Roil Holiday arrives, again on July 10, branding the date as an oil holiday.
2013
LA Weekly runs 710 is the new 420 as the term spreads through cannabis media.
The clearest cultural artifact is The Movement, an album TaskRok released with beatmaker Linus Stubbs on July 10, 2011. The title was a pun on moving the smoke session from 4:20 to 7:10.
The technology caught up with the joke
710 spread because concentrates were exploding at the same time. Cannabis extracts are not new. A review in Substance Abuse and Rehabilitation notes hash oil-style preparations in the U.S. as far back as the 1960s, including "smash" in 1967.[3]
What changed in the 2010s was scale and technique. Colorado and Washington legalization created retail markets where extraction labs could operate at commercial size. The same academic review describes the key safety split: regulated closed-loop extraction systems versus dangerous amateur "open blasting" with butane.[3]
Dabbing itself is vaporization, not smoking. A heated nail or banger vaporizes the extract, and the user inhales vapor rather than combusted plant material.[3] The hardware professionalized fast through the mid-2010s: domeless nails, quartz bangers, e-nails and carb caps made low-temperature dabs repeatable. Portable e-rigs later pushed the ritual away from blowtorches entirely, a shift we track in our guide to electric dab rigs. Rosin, a solventless method using only heat and pressure, went viral around 2015 and became the connoisseur lane.
Real money, but not 420 money
The retail data on 710 is mixed, and the framing depends on who is talking.
That golden pull of rosin is exactly why extract fans circle July 10 on their calendars.
Steven Jung, COO of vape maker Pax, told MJBizDaily that "7/10 tends to be the third-biggest sales period of the year, particularly as awareness around the day and interest in the concentrates category grows."[1] Headset data cited in the same coverage showed concentrate sales up 67.4% on July 10, 2021, with rosin up 213% versus the preceding four Saturdays.[1]
Analytics firm BDSA offers a more conservative read. In its analysis of 2023 sales across 15 tracked state markets, 710 was not one of the biggest overall cannabis sales days. Six other holidays generated higher daily incremental sales. Within the extract category, though, Dab Day ranked as the fifth-biggest holiday, with $5.8 million in daily extract sales.
Sales lift during the week of 7/10, 2023, vs. non-holiday July weeks
Source: BDSA
The likely reconciliation between the two framings: 710 can be a top event for extract and vape brands while remaining far smaller than 420 overall. For comparison, Headset reported that 4/20/2025 generated more than $50 million in sales and more than 3 million units across its U.S. and Canadian retail partners.
Who actually buys concentrates
Headset's category data for June 2025 through May 2026 describes concentrates as the connoisseur's corner of the market. It is the most male-skewed category, with men driving 73% of dollars, versus 68% for flower. Gen Z and Millennials combine for more than three-quarters of spend, while Baby Boomers sit at about 7%. The category ranks fifth in both the U.S. and Canada, and the average item costs about $18.
The category is also fragmented. Even the leading brand, 710 Labs, holds only low-single-digit share, a brand whose name itself shows how fully the number merged with commerce.
The Waldos test
The authenticity question hangs over every 710. 420's accepted origin traces to the Waldos, five San Rafael High School students who met at 4:20 p.m. in 1971 near a Louis Pasteur statue before searching for an abandoned cannabis crop.[2] That story had two decades of underground life before commercialization.
710 had almost none. It emerged during the legal-market buildout, and dispensaries adopted it within a few years. Modern 710 is heavily discount-driven: Headset data cited by Cannabis Business Times showed U.S. concentrate discounts jumping from 20% to 34.6% on 7/10/2022.
The case for 710's grassroots credentials rests on where it started: TinyChat rooms, TokeCity threads, Instagram melt shots and hash-maker circles, not boardrooms. Hash maker MortimerSays, co-founder of Dabbers Daily, recalled the origin spreading through Instagram, and early social-media voice Coral Reefer told Colbert her earliest references came from TaskRok. TaskRok himself kept his distance from the commerce: "I still don't try to lay claim to own it, but I do have a sense of pride behind it, so the least I could do is tell you my story. It's not every day you start a new stoner holiday."
What to watch
- Whether solventless keeps outrunning the broader extract category. BDSA's 27% lift for solventless during 710 week 2023, against a 1% price increase, suggests rosin buyers are not shopping on discount alone.
- Whether 710 climbs BDSA's holiday rankings in 2026 data, or stays a category event inside a fifth-place category.
- How the holiday's hardware keeps shifting. Each year, 710 looks less like torches and titanium and more like temperature-controlled e-rigs and vaporizers. Where the ritual goes, the retail follows.
