How Is Marijuana Used?

Marijuana can be used in many different ways. The delivery methods are important considerations for medical marijuana users as well as people using it recreationally, whether legally or not.

For example, smoking and vaping are popular ways to use marijuana recreationally while consuming edibles as well as using topicals or tinctures are more commonly used for medical marijuana. 

Make sure to check the marijuana laws in your state before using it. 

This article will go over how marijuana can be used, including which form of consuming marijuana produces the fastest high. 

Smoking

A common method of using marijuana is to roll it into a cigarette (joint) using tobacco rolling papers and then smoke it. It can also be smoked in a pipe or a filtration device that uses water (bong).

Marijuana can also be smoked in a blunt, a cigar that has been hollowed out to replace tobacco with marijuana, or a mixture of tobacco and marijuana.

Marijuana in bubblers are mini-bongs about the size of a pipe. One of the oldest methods of smoking marijuana—as well as hash, tobacco, and other substances—is with a hookah. Some marijuana users make bongs and pipes out of soda bottles or cans, corn cobs, and even pieces of fruit.

Like tobacco smoke, marijuana smoke can harm the lungs and may release cancer-causing (carcinogenic) substances. Therefore, the American Lung Association has called for more research on the effects of marijuana use on lung health.

If you are talking to your provider about using marijuana medicinally, they will go over the options for how to use it. If you have lung problems (like asthma or emphysema), they may recommend you not smoke medical marijuana and use another route instead. 

Gravity Bongs

Another way to smoke marijuana using common household items is with a gravity bong, sometimes called a bucket or waterfall bong. Gravity bongs can be made from plastic bottles, milk jugs, buckets, and two-liter soda bottles.

As the name suggests, homemade gravity bongs use gravity to pull smoke into the chamber using water or another liquid (like beer or wine).

Vaping

A newer way to consume marijuana is vaporization or “vaping.” Vaporizers heat the marijuana to a point just below the point of combustion. The active ingredients can be inhaled as vapor rather than smoke.

People may use vaporizers because:

• They get a better high when they vape.
• Vaporizers produce less marijuana smell than smoking.
• Vaporizers are usually small and easier to conceal.

Vaping marijuana can also refer to using a vaporizer and dry flower. Dry flower vaporizing systems have been commercially available for over 20 years. They are less harsh and irritating to the lungs than smoking dry flowers or vaping oil. This type of vaping is different than using an e-cig with cannabis oil.

What Are the Risks?

Similar to the risks associated with smoking cigarettes, research suggests that smoking marijuana may carry the same risks and possible side effects.

For example, people who smoke marijuana may develop respiratory problems like a chronic cough. Over the long term, marijuana smoking might negatively affect a person’s lung health.

Other studies suggest that using marijuana in the long term may affect memory and mental health, and could also be linked to health problems like bouts of severe vomiting (cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome).

Over time, some people who use marijuana may find that they need to use more of it or need to use it more often to get the effect they want. They may not feel that they can stop using marijuana, even if they want to.

Vaping is a newer way to use marijuana but research suggests that it can have similar negative effects on the lungs and the rest of the body as using other kinds of e-cigarettes. Some studies have suggested that vaping cannabis might be more risky than vaping nicotine, but more research is needed.

Dabbing

This method of using marijuana is similar to vaping, but it uses tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) resins extracted from the marijuana plant.

THC is the ingredient in marijuana that produces a high. It comes in oil form (hash oil or honey oil), a soft solid form (wax or budder), or a hard solid (shatter). Dabbing can also apply to cannabinoids like CBD, where CBD is extracted from the plant, and available in different forms to dab.

A glass pipe or bong is heated with a blowtorch. When the resin extract is put in the pipe, it creates vapor almost immediately. Dabbing is thought to produce a greater high than smoking marijuana.

While you can legally buy tools like dab pens online, you may not be able to legally use them depending on where you live.

Compared to other marijuana consumption methods, dabbing delivers one of the quickest highs. It also tends to produce a stronger high, since the THC is more concentrated. That said, how fast a person gets high from weed also depends on the type of marijuana they're using and individual factors like tolerance.

What Are The Risks?

Some people who dab marijuana feel anxious or panicky. Some studies suggest that dabbing may carry a risk of more serious mental health side effects like psychosis.

Dabbing could also have serious negative effects on heart health, but more studies are needed.

Oral Ingestion

Home-baked marijuana brownies have been around for decades, but now marijuana is baked or added to many types of food. Marijuana edibles are being produced and marketed where medical and recreational marijuana use is legal. 

Oils extracted from marijuana plants can be used in cooking, baking, or simply mixing with food to create products that can be ingested by mouth or taken in capsule form. Vendors in states where recreational marijuana is legal are selling cakes, cookies, gummy bears, cereal, granola bars, and even chewing gum made with marijuana.

Marijuana oil can also be added to many common beverages and is sold as teas, sodas, and even beer. Using marijuana leaves for brewing tea has been done throughout history—though tea made with marijuana today is more potent.

Epidiolex, the brand name for cannabidiol (CBD), is approved by the FDA for the treatment of certain seizures in children and adults. It comes in oral liquid form.

Sprays

Another relatively new method of using marijuana is infusing liquids with THC or cannabinol (CBD) to make sprays that can be taken under the tongue. 

This method is typically used by medical marijuana users who want to avoid the harmful effects of smoking and do not want to use (or cannot tolerate) edibles. 

Sprays tend to be popular in places where marijuana is still illegal because they are harder to detect than other forms. Some people use sprays when smoking marijuana by spraying the differently flavored spray on joints and blunts.

Marijuana Tinctures

Tinctures are liquids extracted from marijuana plants and then infused with alcohol or alcohol and water. 

To take it, a user places a few drops of the solution under their tongue where it is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream.

This form of marijuana is highly concentrated, highly potent, and fast-acting, so it is generally used for medical purposes. However, since it produces an intense high, it can also be misused.

There are CBD tinctures that are fast-acting and highly potent but do not produce an intense high. CBD in this dosage form is not as often misused; rather, it’s prescribed: 

• As an appetite stimulant for people who are at risk of malnourishment (e.g., because they have cancer and are having chemotherapy treatment)
• As a pain relief (analgesic) for certain conditions
• To help with insomnia
• To prevent seizures in a certain type of epilepsy

What Are The Risks?

Oral ingestion of marijuana, whether through baked treats, candy, tinctures, or sprays, can have side effects. For example, some people may have GI symptoms like nausea. 

Some people also find that the effects of marijuana take longer to come on when they eat edibles. If a person thinks the edible hasn’t “kicked in,” they might think they didn’t eat enough to feel the effects and may eat more, leading to a much more intense high than they wanted and worse side effects.

Topical Methods

Topical oils are extracts from marijuana plants that are thicker than the ones used in edibles. The oils are put on the skin and absorbed to help with muscle pain and soreness in your body.

For example, some studies have suggested that cannabis may help with back pain. Other studies have suggested it could also help with nerve pain.

Marijuana topicals do not produce a high, so they are usually used for medicinal purposes only.

What Are The Risks?

As with other products you put on your skin, it’s possible you could have a reaction to marijuana or CBD topicals. If you get products that have fragrances or other ingredients in them, you may have a sensitivity to those that could cause skin irritation like a rash, burning, itching, or dryness.

How Should I Use Marijuana?

The safest and most effective way for you to use marijuana might not be the same as what would work best for someone else, even if they have the same health condition you do.

You may need to try a few ways to figure out what works for you. You can also talk to your providers about their recommendations. For example, if you are nauseated from cancer treatment, you may not be able to stomach edibles but find that smoking medical marijuana helps. If you have a chronic lung condition like asthma, you may want to avoid vaping, bongs, and smoking and choose edibles or topicals instead.

There are a lot of factors you need to consider, like your overall health, your comfort with using marijuana products, familiarity with the tools, preferences, and the condition or symptom you're hoping marijuana could help you manage.

You may also decide that marijuana is not the best treatment for you. If you've tried more than one way to use it and don't find it's helping, you have side effects, or you're not comfortable with the risks involved, talk to your provider about other treatment options.

Summary

There are many ways to consume marijuana both for medical purposes and recreationally. Smoking, vaping, edibles, tinctures, and topicals are just a few examples of how people use marijuana. Each method has pros, cons, and risks to consider. 

Whether you use marijuana and how you use it will also depend on whether it’s legal where you live.

If your provider has recommended or prescribed medical marijuana for you, talk to them about the most effective and safest way to use it.