Many of you are probably too young to know about … Back in those days consumption was strictly about smoking (and the occasional ambitious friend who attempted to bake brownies that came out awful). But as cannabis legalization heats up across the nation, we’re not exclusively limited to smoking anymore.
Tinctures
A quicker way to feel the buzz than with edibles, tinctures are either oil or alcohol-based extracts that are administered sublingually (under the tongue). Sublingual administration will be slower to hit you than just smoking would, but the effects are typically far more intense. Additionally, the effects last longer than a smoking session, just like edibles might.
Tinctures are incredibly useful for medical users who want a long-lasting, fast dose of cannabinoids. They’re popular because of how fast they get absorbed into the bloodstream and how little a dose you must consume before feeling the effects. Just a drop or two can have those with a lower tolerance wanting to take a nap for a few hours.
While it can seem intimidating with just how little you need to feel something, the opposite is typically the case. On the contrary, because of the ease in consumption method, tinctures make it easy to regulate and measure each dose. For those who don’t want to dive straight into edibles but want to stray away from smoking, tinctures pose as a viable option.
Sprays
Much like tinctures, sprays are delivered orally, typically sublingually, as an alcohol or oil-based product that delivers a fast-acting dose into the bloodstream. Sprays will have a variety of strengths and ratios, so some may be CBD-heavy rather than THC-heavy, the same as tinctures. Sprays are popular for beginners and experienced cannabis users alike for the sheer range of options available. Between different flavors and a wide selection of strengths, anyone trying to stray away from smoking can find interest in a cannabis spray.
Canna-butter or Canna-oil
If you want to dip into the world of without diving in head first, rationing off doses of canna-butter or canna-oil is a potential option. Instead of a daunting 1,000mg THC brownie waiting for you, you can use canna-butter or canna-oil a little bit at a time with each meal you want to experiment with. Discover your favorite edible combinations and find out what strength is the best dosage for you with this method.
Infused Drinks
If you live in a legal state, you know how popular cannabis-infused drinks are. Between cannabis-infused juices, sodas, coffees, and countless other beverages, the market for cannabis drinks is clearly booming. Though drinking cannabis isn’t new, and probably not the most common way to consume it, it is an alternative to smoking that can often lead to a much more intense, longer euphoric experience.
In states where it’s recreational, you can purchase canna-infused coffees that contain enough THC to get you stoned, and the buzz mixed with the caffeine from the coffee offers an interesting experience that you wouldn’t encounter through smoking. There are, however, plenty of CBD teas and other CBD beverages that provide all the medicinal benefits without the psychoactive effects that come with THC.
The more popular cannabis-infused drinks become, the more the type increases in variation. Infused lemonades and canna-sodas are running rampant across legal states, all the way up to canna cocktails and margaritas for a toasty cross-fade you can’t get anywhere else. Whatever your need might be for consuming the plant, there are infused drinks that can make it far easier to take in than smoking or even forcing down edibles.
Chewing Gum
Primarily used for CBD, there are also some variations of THC gum that can provide an inviting buzz discretely and effectively. Gum is a popular option among medical patients that suffer through chronic pain conditions, such as IBS or fibromyalgia. Gum is more effective than regular edibles as the cannabinoids are absorbed in the mouth through the mucous membranes instead of in the digestive system. This makes gum deliver the effects of CBD and/or THC faster, more effectively, and for longer.
Vaping
While vaping is certainly similar to smoking, there are some added benefits that some consider makes this method superior. Vaping is more convenient than having to clean out a cashed bowl and load it every time. In fact, if you get a vape that you can put raw bud in, you can use the already vaped bud for edibles, to smoke, or for a variety of other purposes, so it gets reused instead of simply put in the ash tray.
Vaping also reduces the health risk of smoking cannabis. Instead of holding in smoke and possibly tobacco if you’re smoking out of a blunt, vaping helps to reduce the risk of ingesting toxins that you otherwise would through the smoke. This is because vaping heats the cannabis without combustion, though this is also what decreases the smell. Especially if you’re using a THC or CBD cartridge instead of raw leaf cannabis, the smell with vaping is almost non-existent.
Finally, the amount of THC or CBD extracted into a vape cartridge or extracted through raw bud from the vape is typically much stronger than the amount you’d smoke. For example, a typical THC cartridge can contain anywhere between 60% and 99% THC. Raw cannabis that’s to be smoked, on the other hand, contains 15% to 30%, on average. In short, you’ll get a much more intense buzz by vaping rather than smoking.
Whether you’ve decided to just stick with smoking or you’re going to branch out to discover new favorite ways to consume your bud, we hope this guide helped you figure it out. Through these different consumption methods, your eyes have now been opened to the wide range of ways we can consume marijuana and feel its effects.