As we know there are many ways to consume weed. This really depends on personal preference and I wouldn’t necessarily say that one is better than another. It’s entirely up to how you prefer to experience your high. The two most polarising methods are the classic smoking and the slightly less common edible. The reason you’re getting high will also likely alter the way in which you want to consume weed. For example, recreational users are probably more likely to smoke whereas medicinal users might want to go for the slightly healthier option of consuming an edible. Not only are the ingestion methods different but the high is significantly different. This has to do with the different ways that the body processes the weed. So, without further ado, let’s have a look at smoking vs edibles and see which one suits you best. 

Edibles

Though smoking is considered the classic it is certainly not the oldest method of ingesting weed. Cannabis was around for an extremely long time before tobacco which really saw the start of modern weed smoking. Eating weed, however, is thought to have originated in the stone age. It is thought that the first cannabis eaten that actually got people high was the sticky resinous flowers that grew on the wild plants. 

Move on to India and Persia in around 1100 CE where hash-filled confections were all the rage. People would roll the hash in spices and sweeteners before ingesting it. For the sake of time let’s skip forward to the 1900s when edibles first became a worldwide phenomenon due to a cookbook. Brownie Mary, was inspired by a recipe in the ‘Alice B. Toklas Cookbook’. In 1970 she used a classic Majoun (or hashish fudge) recipe to create the first pot brownies. As an activist, Mary Rathburn sold these brownies all around San Francisco and evaded the cops until 1992. 

Anyway, again moving on, edibles are definitely one of the oldest ways to ingest weed, and these days there are hundreds of edible options. You’ve got sweet, savoury, classic brownies, gummies, varying strengths, and phenotypes. But why would people choose to eat their weed over smoking it? 

There are a lot of positive aspects to ingesting edibles rather than smoking, a big one being health. Of course, we know that smoking is pretty damn bad for you. Many of us smoke our weed with tobacco which only makes it worse, but inhaling anything isn’t great for the old lungs. This is why most medicinal users prefer to go for edibles over smoking. This isn’t the only positive to edibles though. 

Let’s have a quick look at how edibles work. When we ingest cannabis it’s absorbed into the bloodstream after heading into the stomach. The liver then converts the THC into a stronger form that then binds with the remaining THC from the original edible. This means the high is usually more intense even though it takes a good deal longer to kick in. Usually an edible will take up to 2 hours to kick in, but usually, you will start to feel it in around 30 minutes. I cannot stress this enough, if you don’t feel anything at that time please don’t take another one. This is a classic mistake that people make all the time. They think the edibles aren’t strong enough, take another and within two hours they are a puddle on the ground that thinks it’s surrounded by horse ghosts. Not that that happened to me once or anything. Once the edible hits, it can last a lot longer than a normal smoking high which can not only make things a bit easier if you’re on the move but it’s also a fair bit cheaper. 

So if you are concerned for your health, and want a slower come-up that lasts for longer and probably a much stronger high then you might want to get your hands on some edibles. 

Smoking

So smoking is still definitely one of the most popular ways to ingest cannabis. Smoking has been around since about 500 BC and was usually used as part of religious rituals. Smoking recreationally didn’t come in until a good deal later. It was then primarily used as a form of medication or still in a lot of religious rituals. In fact, most older religions have cannabis rituals, especially Hinduism. There are a good deal of cannabis based festivals, usually for goddesses such as Shive and even Freya. 

It wasn’t until the 1900s that cannabis was widely used recreationally, but this definitely started around the bringing of tobacco to Asia where cannabis was already in use in a variety of different ways. As we move through time classic smoking and smoking with tobacco are certainly becoming less popular than the healthier alternatives. 

Smoking weed works by inhaling the smoke which goes into your lungs and delivers the THC directly into your bloodstream. So it goes through a lot less nonsense to get into your bloodstream but doesn’t have the extra jump from the liver. This means you get the effects almost immediately which means it can be much easier to monitor how high you are getting. But obviously, smoking irritates your lungs and can cause a wide variety of negative long-term health effects. For general recreational use, the speed and ability to monitor the high can make smoking much more attractive to most stoners. There are also other ways to smoke that are potentially less dangerous such as vaping. However, the jury is still out on how much damage vaping actually does since in the grand scheme of cannabis use vaping is relatively new. 

Conclusion 

So basically edibles are great if you don’t smoke or are trying not to smoke, if you are using medicinally, or if you are patient but want a stronger hit. Smoking is good for recreational use if you want a quick high and you want to be careful about how high you are getting or simply want to monitor your intake. I reckon try both and see which you like better!

Written by Tasha Porritt

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