The e-cigarette is said to be the safest way to use medical cannabis. It avoids the harmful effects of combustion and is more effective than taking tablets.
Consume therapeutic cannabis without the harmful effects of tobacco. This is what researchers from the Center Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Lausanne are proposing by replacing tobacco and tablets containing THC with electronic cigarettes. Their work is published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The problem of combustion
Swiss researchers are interested in “cannavaping”, the name given to the fact of vaping substances enriched in cannabinoids. It allows people who consume cannabis for therapeutic purposes to avoid the harmful effects of tobacco. Indeed, smoking a joint exposes people to the combustion products of cannabis but also rolling paper and tobacco. The gases produced have no therapeutic value, so this method is far from being profitable from a medical point of view. Taking cannabis in the form of tablets poses problems of relatively low THC concentration, which makes their action less effective.
Avoid any toxic compounds
For their work, the Swiss scientists themselves developed an e-cigarette for inhaling cannabis and another machine used to simulate a puff of vape and to analyze the contents of the vapor. They also created Butane Hashish Oil (BHO), an oil highly concentrated in cannabinoids, the best known of which is THC, to then mix it in low doses with a classic e-liquid. But according to Dr. Varlet, who led this project, the mixture developed contained a maximum of only 10% BHO. Beyond this concentration, the concentrate is in fact no longer soluble in the liquid. To feel the pain relieving effect of an entire joint, you need to vape between 80 and 100 puffs, the scientists calculated.
This method of consumption is, according to the researchers, more efficient because their liquid is free of a large part of the toxic products and the amount of THC released is better controlled. It also has the advantage of allowing better absorption of cannabinoids compared to the oral ingestion method.
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