Her 420 Wayy

There are many ways you can consume cannabis; you can inhale it (or smoke it), ingest it (by eating edibles, drinking infused drinks, or taking infused capsules), place it under your tongue for oral absorption, and use topical applications such as lotions, balms/salves, or transdermal patches. The “best” method depends solely on you and your needs, as each method has its own effects, which differ greatly from the next, and their own duration. I personally prefer to inhale THC/THCA products through smoking the flower or concentrates (wax or dab pens), but on occasion I will splurge for edibles- mostly gummies, but I will try any kind of edible! In the next paragraphs, I will break down all the different consumption methods for THC products.

Inhalation: (smoking)

There are three different ways you can inhale, or smoke, THC products. You can do what everyone knows about when they think about marijuana- you can smoke the flower in a joint, a blunt, or through pipes and bongs/bubblers. The easiest way to consume THC! The next option you have for smoking the product would be through vaping; dab cartridges have become mainstream since the early to mid-2010s and the launch of products like the O-Pen. They started out strictly for medicinal use, then slowly became used for recreational purposes as well. Dab cartridges are simply a more liquified version of the wax concentrate, making it easier to smoke without the need for a torch lighter or a dab rig/nectar collector. Finally, the dabbing method would be dabbing the wax concentrate version of THC/THCA products. To do this, you simply grab your dab puck (the container that holds your concentrate), a torch lighter (trust me, you won’t look like a crackhead- it’s just way easier with a torch than a regular lighter because of how hot the dab rig needs to be to vaporize the wax), and your dab rig or nectar collector to smoke. If it’s a rig with a nail and a banger, then you’ll simply drop at least a pea sized dab into the rig after heating it up, and if you’ve got a necto, the way you can smoke with it can either be like the rig- by placing a bit of dab on a heat-resistant surface to smoke, or you can place the tip of the necto directly into the wax itself and smoke it that way. Now, through years of practice, I have learned that the different types of wax all require one way or the other to conserve your product and not melt it away all at once. For instance, “sugar” waxes are very grainy (go figure), so it helps to separate a bit of wax from the rest, so you don’t melt it all down right when you first get it- buddars are similar in consistency. Waxes like shatter or something more solid, you can dip the tip of your nectar collector in without worrying an awful lot about wasting your dab. Either way, if you get hot enough and lightly tap on whatever dab you have, it will go a long way.

Ingestion: (eating, drinking, taking capsules/pills)

These methods involve consuming cannabis orally; when done in this manner, the liver will convert the THC to a more potent form, leading to a delayed but longer-lasting effect. There are three ways you can orally consume cannabis, with the most obvious option being through edibles that you eat. Things like gummies, brownies, or other cake-like items, seasonings, and even regular everyday foods like ice cream and chicken wings can be turned into edibles. Essentially, anything food-wise that can be infused is what you would consider edibles; simple enough to remember, ha-ha. The next option is to drink cannabis infused drinks like tea (or in your more southern places-moonshine) or the infused soda from a dispensary. These options aren’t as strong as edibles, but if you are in a pinch and haven’t consumed cannabis in a while, these infused drink options are surely the way to go if you’re looking for a quick relax sesh. The last oral option would be capsules or pills; all these consist of a highly concentrated extract or THC powder that is then placed in a capsule or pressed into a pill form for human consumption. THC pills and capsules produce a strong and long-lasting effect just like edibles; however, they differ in consistency, onset time, and duration. The way your body metabolizes the THC when you ingest it orally (by converting it to a more potent form called 11-Hydroxy-THC in the liver) causes the strong and lasting high associated with both edibles and pills/capsules.

Oral Absorption: (tinctures and oral sprays)

These specific methods allow your body to absorb cannabis orally through your mucous membranes. There are only two different methods of oral absorption, and they are through tinctures, which are liquid extracts (often alcohol or MCT oil-based) that are held under the tongue; the next method would be through a cannabis oral spray that delivers cannabinoids directly into the mouth- kind of like a sore-throat spray when you are sick. Both THC tinctures and oral sprays vary widely in potency depending on the product’s concentration as well as the manner they are consumed. While both can be highly potent and are often stronger than smoking flower or vaping wax concentrate, tinctures are typically considered more potent per unit than oral sprays. Tincture bottles will typically list the total THC content/amount in milligrams; some tinctures can contain up to 1,000 mg of THC or more in a single bottle, making them very potent. Tincture bottles come with a dropper, allowing for a more precise dosage, ranging from a microdose all the way to a high dose of THC. Oral sprays, on the other hand, offer a range of around 2.5 mg to 10 mg per spray, making them the perfect product for microdosing THC.

Topical Application: (lotions, balms/salves, and transdermal patches)

These particular methods involve applying cannabis to the skin for localized effects, minus the psychoactive properties of inhaled or ingested cannabis. These products would be perfect for someone who doesn’t like to smoke/can’t handle smoking (due to psychoactive properties), or someone who has never tried cannabis but has been told they would benefit greatly from its use. These methods allow their users to maintain physical pain and still function as if they weren’t using anything other than their typical analgesic. While both lotions/balms/salves and transdermal patches provide pain relief without the “getting high” part of the deal, they both affect your body a bit differently. THC lotions and balms/salves will target whatever location you apply these products to, so if you apply them to just your back, then your back will get relief, but if you apply them to, say, your back and your shoulders, then both will receive the relief. With transdermal patches, however, you can apply them anywhere on your skin, just about, and get whole-body pain relief. The best uses for the lotions and balms/salves would be for muscle soreness and tension, joint pains from conditions like arthritis, and localized inflammatory diseases such as eczema or psoriasis. Patches work best for chronic, widespread conditions like fibromyalgia, sustained, consistent pain management for chronic conditions, and full-body relaxation and pain relief.

These are all the different ways you can currently consume cannabis. Now, that’s not to say that in the next five to ten years we won’t have an additional handful of new ways and methods, but for now, this is what we have! If you think about it, considering where we started off at when marijuana was first mainstream all the way until today, we have advanced quite a bit that now just about anyone can use cannabis related products- whether they like to smoke it, eat or drink it, put it under their tongue or apply it to their skin- there’s a method for everyone.