Marijuana Dispensaries and Marijuana Edibles: Buyer Beware
April 6, 2010One CommentDisease Treatment
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As medical director of Medical Cannabis of Southern California (www.mcsocal.com) I am often asked about the therapeutic value of edibles. Many patients assume that you have to smoke cannabis and want to see if there is an alternative. So the obvious question is “do edibles affect you the same way?”
In theory, edibles seem like the obvious method of medicating for those patients who do not want to smoke. Unfortunately there are many pitfalls to eating your medicine. For one, it is very difficult to predict how potent an edible is going to be. You may need a certain dose to feel just right and eat half of a piece of cookie. Unfortunately a half a piece of cookie may be 10x the dose you need or 1/10th the dose you need. Either scenario is not good. Either you are laid out for an entire day or feel nothing at all. So the dose is difficult to titrate.
Secondly it can take a long time for the medicine to be absorbed into your blood stream. It may take 20 minutes or it may take 2.5 hours. Depending on whether you have a full or empty stomach in addition to the overall health of your digestive tract, the absorption times will very drastically.
Lastly, there is NO QUALITY CONTROL in this industry yet. Typically edibles are NOT made in any certified kitchen that is being monitored by the health department. When you go into a dispensary and they have a refrig full of edibles you have NO IDEA who made them, if they washed their hands, if it was sitting out for three days etc. I have seen edibles crawling with fungus, mold, bacteria and even fecal material. When tested all of the above are discovered.
So it is truly BUYER BEWARE when using edibles unless you are making them yourself. if you know the correct strain and have a consistent method for making them you will be able to predict with more certainty how they affect you.
Lastly, for those patients who DONT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO DO AFTER READING THIS, please read up on digital VAPORIZATION. It is a SMOKE FREE way to medicate. NO SMOKE NO SMELL!!!!
Hi Dr., nice article and so true! I’m starting a product line,more of a savory line with a few sweets mixed in. We plan on doing everything the right way, commercial kitchen, FDA regulations all that. I have a food background and the people in my collective have been in the food production bizz for the past 20 years, working with a lot of the chefs from food network. We plan to be the pioneers in the industry. What I’m hung up on is the dose, everyone metabolizes it differently, is there any insight you have on that topic. I would love to hear your thoughts and maybe you can take a look at our product, I love our packaging, we have a Rosemary Thyme Bread stick that’s yummy.I hope we can stay in touch Thanks Paul