Using medical marijuana is most difficult when it comes to dosing properly. You have multiple ways to administer the drug and even then you have to figure out how to do it accurately. Let’s take a look at the different types you can purchase and what can help provide the most relief for you.
This post is the third in Lifehacker’s Green Week, a series where we’ll be discussing medical marijuana, its benefits, drawbacks, and everything you need to know. Keep in mind, we’re not doctors, so you should check with yours before trying it, and similarly, obey the laws and regulations in your area regarding the procurement and use of medical marijuana.
What Different Types of Medical Marijuana Can I Get?
Medical marijuana literally comes in all sorts of different shapes, forms, colors, and styles. If you smoke or vape it you will have a greater selection of different strains and you can learn how each one affects you. Vaporizing, at least so far as we currently know, poses a significantly lower risk than smoking, which I personally wouldn’t recommend. If you want to choose an exact strain responsibly, go buy a quality vaporizer and skip the joints. If you want to avoid any potentially unknown risks of vaporizing, you can purchase sprays and tinctures for equally simple dosing. Marijuana products also come in the form of topical waxes, food, and drinks. Let’s discuss your seriously insane number of options.
Vaporizers: You can get a cheap vape pen at pretty much any dispensary or smoke shop for about $15-20 and it’ll do the trick. You can also buy a high quality vaporizer if you see a real benefit in spending around 10 times more. With a vaporizer you insert a cartridge, press a button, suck in the marijuana vapor, and blow it right out. Unlike smoking, you do not need to hold the vapor in your mouth. Suck it in, push it out, and you’re done.
How do you know how much of the drug you just got with one “hit” (a puff on the vaporizer, basically)? The cartridge you inserted will say how many hits you can get from it and how much marijuana it contains (usually 150mg, 200mg, or 300mg). With some easy math you’ll find that you probably got between 1.5mg and 3mg per hit. We’ll discuss this later on when cover dosing practices, but you’ll probably want to try no more than 4-6mg your first time (whereas a person with a moderate tolerance would take 10-20mg for a dose). Vaporizing/vaping offers the advantage of a quick onset of effects (5-30 minutes) and easy and accurate dosing.Tinctures and Sprays: Tinctures are bottles of liquid that you suck up with an eye dropper and administer each dose sublingually (under your tongue). You administer sprays sublingually as well, however you just push the cap like any spray bottle and out comes the medicine. Both supposedly take effect very quickly (5-30 minutes) like vaporizing, although in my experience it took closer to 45-60 minutes (half of the time of an edible). Neither the sprays or tinctures taste particularly good, but sprays often come with a burning sensation whereas tinctures do not. Still, I prefer sprays because they are very portable, discreet, and simple.
Edibles: I prefer edibles over any other form of medical marijuana because although they can provide a dosing challenge, you have a variety of cost-effective (and fun) options. You also don’t have to waste your time figuring out a specific dose because you can just buy a specific dose with your edible.
A company called Kiva makes my favorite option—chocolate bars with segments containing a specific amount of the medicine, and even better, a tin of chocolate covered blueberries (or espresso beans, if you prefer) that contain 5mg of THC and make dosing straightforward and predictable. Cheeba, another company I like, makes taffy chews that also offer easy dosing. When looking for a combination of CBD and THC, or even solely CBD, Cheeba has a very good, simple set of taffy options. They do not, however, taste good.
If you don’t have access to these or prefer something else, don’t fret. If a food exists in the world, you can probably find a version of it infused with marijuana. Despite how much I prefer edibles, they take longer than anything else to work. You’ll have to wait two hours to know how they’ll affect you and you absolutely should not ingest more until those two hours are up. Most people find the intensity of edibles to be much greater than any other form of marijuana. In my case, edibles provided more pain relief long after the “high” went away. I could use them before bedtime, sleep well, and wake up pain free without the any high whatsoever. Smaller doses also tend to be more effective, which is in turn more cost effective. Finally, edibles don’t always provide a consistent experience. Some companies, like the ones I mentioned, do their best to ensure that you get the amount of medicine specified on the package. Many edibles get it wrong, either providing more or less than advertised. You can usually guess by the quality of the packaging which edibles you can trust, but trial and error is the only way to know for certain.Pills: If you don’t want to taste marijuana, or anything at all, you can purchase pills containing marijuana oil to swallow instead. They often look like vitamin E supplements and are pretty discreet. They work similarly to edibles in that they take time to work. Additionally, pills usually cost much more than their edible equivalents. On the upside, the amount of medicine in each pill tends to be more accurate.
Topical Wax (Balms): Do not confuse topical wax with wax (something we’re going to ignore in this article because it’s not relevant.) Topical wax is a balm that you rub on your skin. You would consider using topical wax or other marijuana balms if you have pain in a specific area. It takes around an hour to work and it smells strongly like—you guessed it—marijuana. Most people won’t find this worthwhile, but some people suffering from skin conditions that cause pain, soreness, and migraines appreciate its somewhat localized effects. If the topical wax contains THC, it will still get you high.
While edibles worked best for me, something else might work best for you. The only way you’ll ever know for sure is to try your options, and try them multiple times. Different edibles, vaporizer cartridges, sprays, and tinctures work differently than their counterparts. In some cases, you may find the exact same product works differently because a dose was a little off for one reason or another. Remember, none of these are pharmaceutical-grade products, and they all lack that level of consistency—even the good ones. Just as I recommend giving a new television show a few episodes before you judge it fully, you should give any medical marijuana product a few tries as well. Just make sure you don’t have anywhere to be for the next 4-16 hours. Until you know how the drug will affect you, don’t make plans you might not be able to keep.
How Do I Actually Go Buy Medical Marijuana?
If you live in a state where marijuana is legal—again, only on the state level, not federally—you can just go into any dispensary and buy some. At the time of this writing, that includes Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington. Other states have decriminalized marijuana use, meaning they won’t arrest or prosecute you on charges of possession (up to a certain amount), and have legalized marijuana for medical purposes. Every state has different rules and regulations as well as implementations of those rules and regulations. If you’re not sure how your state or region treats the issue, there’s a great rundown at Wikipedia here that’ll tell you.
If you are not in one of the four states where marijuana is more or less legal, you’ll need to be in a state where medical marijuana is, and you’ll need to get a card before you can buy it. Here’s how to obtain one:
Go to your primary care physician and obtain a prescription, or a diagnosis of a condition that medical marijuana can be used to treat. Here’s a helpful list of conditions that usually apply. Most medical prescriptions are handed out by medical marijuana doctors who don’t really give a crap what you’re going to do with your prescription. That said, they need to follow the rules and will not diagnose you with a condition.
Write down the contact information of your doctor and the condition you were diagnosed with. Then locate a medical marijuana prescription doctor. Leafly can help you find one.
Once you find a marijuana-prescribing doctor, schedule a visit (or walk in) and fill out some forms. You’ll need to supply your diagnosing doctor’s information for the marijuana-prescribing doctor’s records, and the visit itself will cost you anywhere from $25-200 for a visit.
Answer a few questions. The prescribing doctor will call you in, read your forms, ask you about your situation, and then give you a stamp of approval.
Get your card. You’ll go back into the waiting room to get your prescription (and marijuana card, if you wish to pay extra for that convenience) and they’ll send you on your way.
Once you have a medical marijuana card you can immediately visit a dispensary and shop. If you don’t know where to go, or have no idea where your closest dispensary is, visit WeedMaps and find one near you. Once you find one, new patients have a few more hoops to jump through:
Once you have a dispensary you’re considering, do your homework. Research specific products, choose which method (edible, vaporizer, tincture, etc) you want to try first, and look up the dispensary on Leafly or just via a web search for reviews.
Visit the dispensary and tell them you’re a new patient. This will require your state ID/driver’s license, your marijuana prescription, and your prescription card. The prescription card is not necessary but if you want to use it to get in with your government-issued ID later on you’ll need to give it to them for a photocopy. Regardless of the card, you still need to have your actual prescription with you every time you visit a new dispensary. They need to keep a copy of it on file.
Fill out a (lengthy) new patient form. You will need to supply a lot of information (normal stuff like your name and how to contact you,) but you’ll also need to explain what talents you can bring to the “collective.” That’s because you can’t actually just buy marijuana from someone who produces it. Instead, you’re enjoying the “free” work product of a collective to which you (will) belong. Most dispensaries will ask you how you can aid the collective, so just have literally any skill in mind. It can be web design or fertilizer research. No one really cares, but it’s always good to be up-front about it. Just put something down that you actually can do
Bring cash. You cannot pay for marijuana with a credit or debit card (in most places) for a lot of reasons, but the one that matters here is that you’re not actually buying marijuana, but rather donating money to your collective. Certain donations warrant gifts. Those gifts are medical marijuana. So instead of buying marijuana, you’re donating money and getting marijuana as a gift. It’s a game of semantics, kind of like donating to public radio—you give them money and they send you a gift, as opposed to you “buying” that tote bag or DVD set. Make sense?
Wait your turn. Most dispensaries only allow a certain number of people to enter the big marijuana room at one time. When you get there, you’ll probably have to wait a few minutes (at least) until you’re called and can go in. It helps to have some idea of what you want, so you don’t make everyone else wait while you choose. Ask any questions you have, but note that the people helping you here may or may not be qualified to answer them (but they’ll certainly have opinions.) Furthermore, even if you tell them you have no tolerance they’ll suggest a dose that’s too high. Be very careful with any recommendations you get from dispensary staff members, and err on the conservative side of any dosing or usage suggestions they offer (more on that in a moment.)
Let them know you’re new, and enjoy the free goodies. If you’re visiting any dispensary for the first time, or if it is your one year anniversary (they have to reprocess you after a year because most states require a prescription renewal), ask them what new patients get for free before you donate. You’ll often get a few free treats. If they give you something you don’t want (in my case, a joint), tell them you don’t want it and ask if they have anything else.
Find out if they have a mailing list or text messaging service to notify you of any discounts. They probably do, so sign up. You’ll save at least 10% every time you go.
Congratulations, you now have medical marijuana! We’ll go into how to use it responsibly shortly, but one more thing first: You need to learn how to store the drug so it doesn’t go bad. Some edibles require refrigeration. Some last forever, and some expire. Some products require specific temperatures (usually room temperature). Find out how to store what you purchased and what kind of shelf life you’re dealing with so you don’t waste it. The folks at the dispensary actually know about storage, so you can ask them about each product you buy. They won’t tell you, so make sure you do ask how to store your products and when/if they expire.
You can stock up on long-lasting products and get a few of the ones that expire if you want to make sure you always have medicine available. I’ve never enjoyed frequent trips to the dispensary, so I always kept enough pills, candies, and sprays around in case I ran out of the cheaper, expiring options. That way if you get a little lazy—which is not a possibility with marijuana but a guarantee—you’ll still have medicine until you get off your butt and purchase more.
As Green Week continues we’ll be learning about responsible medical marijuana use and making your own edibles, so stay tuned for more!
Images by ByEmo (Shutterstock), Oleg Baliuk (Shutterstock), Eric Broder Van Dyke (Shutterstock), and Sherry Yates Young (Shutterstock).
Adam Dachis is a Los Angeles-based writer and consultant. You’ll find him writing and making stuff over at Awkward Human, including his podcast the Awkward Human Survival Guide.