Pelican state patients are lucky to be able to get their Louisiana Marijuana Card and to have a variety of dosing options at their local dispensaries. Not every medical marijuana program is that permissive.
One of the dosing methods available at your local dispensary that is often overlooked is vaping. Vaping seems to get passed over a lot due to the popularity of more commonly known dosing methods like smoking or edibles, which is a shame, because this method of medicating has many advantages.
Let’s take a look now at smoking’s less popular - but more healthy cousin, vaping.
First Thing’s First: What Is Vaping?
According to WebMD, vaping uses electronic devices to heat a liquid solution of marijuana, creating an aerosol that can be inhaled to deliver the medication. Often, these liquids are flavored, to make the inhaling less harsh than smoking.
To many people, smoking and vaping might seem almost identical. In both cases, users inhale medicine and then exhale it as either smoke or vapor.
But the reality is that vaping involves an entirely different chemical process than smoking, one that is better for you, more cost effective, and less likely to produce the strong odors often associated with smoking marijuana.
Vaping Medical Marijuana Is Generally Seen as Safer Than Smoking
People have been smoking marijuana for thousands of years, but tradition is one of the few advantages smoking offers over vaping. When you weigh the pros and cons, vaping offers many more benefits than smoking.
Most importantly, medical experts generally agree that vaping is healthier than smoking. According to Forbes, “Smoking cannabis, in a joint, pipe or other device incinerates the plant material, which inefficiently releases the activated cannabinoids, changes the structure of some components, and produces tars and other unwanted byproducts. … Vaping flower, on the other hand, involves heating the cannabis to a temperature where the active compounds in the flower boil and are converted into vapor, which is then inhaled [which] preserves more of the beneficial cannabinoids…”
Vaporizers heat up substances until they create an aerosol, but they do not actually cause the substances to combust. So, when you vaporize an oil containing medical marijuana or raw cannabis flower, you get an aerosol that is easier on the lungs than smoking and is more medicinal with far less tar and carcinogens.
Unfortunately, most of the studies that have demonstrated that vaping is healthier than smoking have compared nicotine consumption via cigarettes and vaporizers, so it isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison to extend those studies to medical marijuana.
Still, researchers have found that the chemical process of vaping leaves behind more medicine and less toxic byproducts than the process of smoking.
Vaping Offers Users Multiple Delivery Options
While vaping always involves heating a substance to create an aerosol, there are multiple ways to do that.
For example, you can purchase a vaporizer to use with raw cannabis flower. These devices have a chamber where users insert the flower, then as the device is heated, the chemical compounds in the flower are converted to a concentrated vapor.
The medicine is only heated to the point that it does not burn, which minimizes tar and other carcinogens often associated with smoking. Furthermore, many flower vaporizers also have setting controls, so that patients can control the amount of product they inhale.
Instead of adding dry herb to the vaporizer, an oil concentrate that is extracted from the cannabis plant is added to the oil pen. During the oil extraction process, the cannabis oil is often cut with other carrier oils, such as hemp oil. As a result, vaporized oil is typically less potent than wax but more potent than vaporized herb.
Oil pens are another vaping delivery option. They’re often more popular than vaporizing dry flower, because they’re neater and more convenient.
You can select a single-use, disposable “pen” that heats and delivers medicine in oil form, or get a reusable vaporizer that uses cartridges loaded with oil. A single oil cartridge can last several weeks, and there are varieties of flavors and strains from which to choose.
Finally, and similar to oil pens, patients who are interested in vaping might choose to try wax pens. In these devices, the medicine is in the form of a semi-solid wax that has high concentrations of active cannabis compounds.
Because cannabis in an oil solution contains some filler liquids just to deliver the medicine, wax pens tend to be much more potent than oil (or even flower for that matter).
The wax itself is purchased separately and used with an atomizer device. The wax is heated with a coil until vaporized. The wax can be costly, but the medicine is potent, so that some users find that they need to dose less often. For those patients, wax pens can be a more cost-efficient method of dosing than other vaporizer options.
Vaping Medical Marijuana Is More Cost-Effective Than Smoking
Because vaporizing so thoroughly extracts medicine from the oil or flower being smoked, less of your medicine goes to waste. Furthermore, dosing is more consistent with vaporizing than it is with smoking. Each “hit” from a vaporizer offers roughly the same amount of medicine, whereas smoking “hits” are more inconsistent and harder to keep track of.
Furthermore, vaporizing produces the same effects with less product, so the cost of a vaporizer is offset by stretching your supply of medicine.
You can stretch your dollar even farther by vaping raw flower. Wax and oil-based vape cartridges are pricier than flower because of the added cost of production, but you can vape the flower itself and stretch the value of your medicine in the process.
According to Forbes, when vaping, “a little flower goes a long way.”
And a Louisiana Marijuana Card Goes a Long Way Towards Keeping You Healthy!
Vaping is only one of the many ways you can get relief with a Louisiana Marijuana Card. Why wait any longer to find out what medical marijuana can do for you, and what your options are for using it here in the Pelican State?
Schedule an evaluation online today with one of our compassionate, knowledgeable doctors. Not only will you discuss your condition and options during a virtual appointment in the safety of your own home, but if you reserve an appointment online today, you’ll also save $25 off the cost of the appointment!
Doctors Who Care.
Relief You Can Trust.
At Louisiana Marijuana Card, our mission is helping everyone achieve wellness safely and conveniently through increased access to medical marijuana. Our focus on education, inclusion, and acceptance will reduce the stigma for our patients by providing equal access to timely information and compassionate care.
Call us at (833) 253-2943, or simply book a medical marijuana evaluation to start getting relief you can trust today!
Check out Louisiana Marijuana Card’s Blog to keep up to date on the latest medical marijuana news, tips, and information. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to join the medical marijuana conversation in Louisiana!