Cannabis consumers face a bewildering menu of options. You can smoke it. Vaporize it. Eat it. Drink it. Dab it. Squeeze drops of tincture under your tongue. You can even put it up your tooter. Isn’t human ingenuity astonishing?
Most Californians who use cannabis smoke it. You trust the high, you’re holding the real plant and it’s self-titrating.
Two puffs, “We’ve got so much to say.” Four, “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.” Six, “I need to step out on the porch and talk to Jesus.” Joints are portable, sharable; they don’t require an owner’s manual, and all you need is fire. The ritual can be as meaningful as the high itself: grinding flower, rolling the joint, and the puff-puff-pass clockwise circle is a bonding ritual that is thousands of years deep. Smoking remains the benchmark cannabis experience, but a noticeable shift is happening.
Sage Journal studies show that unlicensed, non-dispensary, black market weed accounts for 60% of the ganja Californians consume. Put black market and licensed market consumers together, over 55% of Californians report that smoking is their primary method of consumption (Whitney Economics: 2023 Cannabis Consumer Study).
DIFFERENT TOKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS
Some insist nothing can replace the ritual and flavor of smoking flower.
I have a friend who considers it sacrilegious to vaporize flower. “That is like a Roman Catholic microwaving the Eucharist.” But more Californians are using dry-herb vaporizers. The vaporizers we discuss here are not the oil concentrate vape pens, examined in our first Altered States column: “Are Vape Pens Safe?” goodtimes.sc/safe-cannabis-vape-pen.
Vaporizers heat dry flower into an aerosol with tiny liquid droplets in the air that contain the plant’s full-spectrum cannabinoids. You do not inhale smoke byproducts like tar and carbon monoxide because vaporizing relies on controlled heat to boil compounds off the flower. Compared to smoke, the vapor is much closer to the raw chemical profile of the plant (PubMed Central).
I do both. My wife Julie, who refers to us as Weedo and Wino, was alarmed by the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) warning that secondhand cannabis smoke is harmful. Me and my pot smoke got kicked out of the house. Then Julie heard me talking about how much less phlegm I expectorate when I vaporize flower rather than burn it, and for my birthday she sprung for the $300 Ditanium Vaporizer, from Planet of the Vapes. Me and my vapors have been allowed back in the house.
CALL ME THE PHLEGM MASTER
Julie is not being unreasonable about the smoke; my allergist Dr. Alan Goldsobel doesn’t like me burning flower either.
“Richard, you have low-grade emphysema.”
“Hmm. Julie just bought me a state-of-the-art Ditanium Vaporizer. I inhale vapor, no smoke. I phlegm way less, doctor.”
“You are still using your lungs as a filtration system.”
Damn. My doctor has this radical notion that lungs should contain mostly air.
THE GOOD NEWS/BAD
I described my doctor visit to Sam Laforti, Cannabis Licensing Manager for Santa Cruz County. Sam said, “When you’re putting it in the vaporizer, it’s not burning the plant material. Carbon gets very small atomically when it’s burned and settles in your lungs, causing emphysema.”
“Vaporization heats plant material or concentrates to release cannabinoids without creating the tar and toxic combustion byproducts produced by smoking,” finds the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Chest CT imaging studies indicate that smoking cannabis is associated with airway inflammation, bronchial thickening, and higher rates of paraseptal emphysema,” a pulmonary emphysema that affects the outer, peripheral parts of the lung lobules next to the pleura (American Lung Association).
Vaporization appears to be healthier but remains in the distinct minority; surveys by the NIH find that about 15% of cannabis consumers vaporize flower. It’s clunky, takes time to heat up and is expensive. Outlets like the online seller Planet of the Vapes have portable, handheld vaporizers, but I find them a hassle to use and prone to malfunction. But hey, they might work for you; I’ve heard there are portable flower vaporizers with a return policy. The gold standard for tabletop vaporizers is the classic Volcano; it literally fills a balloon with cannabis vapor, and you suck it out of the balloon. Think of it as a bong designed by NASA. A Johns Hopkins study found that vaporized cannabis flower produced higher blood THC concentrations and stronger effects than smoking.
Across California, longtime cannabis smokers are quietly migrating to dry-herb vaporizers. If smoking works for you, you can pass it to me on the left-hand side anytime. But if coughing and phlegm bother you, you might try vaporizing dry flower. Either way, lung health is a negotiation between your pleasures and your pulmonologist.
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