Medical Marijuana Delivery Methods & When To Use Them | Discover Marijuana
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What’s the best marijuana delivery method? There are quite a few ways to consume or use cannabis. Here’s a brief tour.
We’ll start with a recommendation for every Medical Cannabis patient, from WholesomeCo Pharmacist-in-Charge Kylee Shumway.
Kylee recommends topicals, or Medical Cannabis products meant to be applied directly to the skin, for every patient. They’re especially useful for things like muscle pain, tennis elbow, carpal tunnel syndrome, and arthritis.
But Kylee’s favorite cannabis delivery method is the tincture. Tinctures are liquids containing herbal extracts (cannabis, in our case), and they’re administered “sublingually,” or swallowed.
Vape cartridges contain concentrated cannabinoids and terpenes in oil form. To use one, a cannabis user will connect the cartridge with a specialized battery device. The battery device heats the oil into vapor, which can then be inhaled.
Dry herb vaporizers work in a similar fashion, except they’re used with ground, raw cannabis flower instead of cartridges. The device heats the cannabis enough to release cannabinoids and terpenes in vapor form without actually burning the cannabis. Some dry herb vaporizers also work with marijuana concentrates like wax and shatter.
Marijuana edibles work great for long-lasting, all-day relief from conditions like chronic pain or frequent seizures, but they take longer than any other form of cannabis delivery to take effect.
Distillate syringes contain highly-concentrated cannabis oils which can be eaten in tiny doses. One dose, according to Kylee, is about the size of a half grain of rice.
Although suppositories are an accepted medical delivery method, we don’t have cannabis suppositories in Utah.
Tim, Blake, and Kylee also mentioned cannabis inhalers and cannabis nasal sprays as delivery methods they’d like to see become available for patients.
What’s your preferred cannabis delivery method? Let us know in the comments!
ABOUT US
Tim Pickett, PA-C is a Medical Cannabis expert and the founder of Utah Therapeutic Health Center. As a Qualified Medical Provider, Tim works directly with patients in need of Medical Marijuana recommendations and treatment plans. Salt Lake City Weekly readers voted Tim Utah’s Best Medical Cannabis Doctor (QMP) in its “2021 Best of Utah mind and body” edition.
Blake Smith is the Chief Science Officer at Zion Pharmaceuticals and an expert in the biochemistry of cannabis. Blake has a keen understanding of cannabinoid compounds and their effects on the human body’s endocannabinoid system (ECS).
Kylee Shumway is the Pharmacist in Charge at WholesomeCo, a Medical Cannabis pharmacy in Bountiful. Her interest in cannabis medicine also began in college, when an organic chemistry professor sometimes mentioned the compounds in marijuana.
For more information on getting a Utah Medical Marijuana card or Utah marijuana laws, visit https://utahmarijuana.org.
Learn more about cannabis strains available in Utah at https://zionmedicinal.com.
Find a Medical Cannabis pharmacy near you at https://utahmarijuana.org/dispensary
