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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

I know a cannabis entrepreneur who makes high-quality gummies standardized to 150 mg THC which is, I think, too much. As a cannabis experienced user I find these make me feel hosed for six hours or so. It may or may not be a good time, but I'm certainly not going to do more than lay on my ass.

If I take half of one of those (75 mg) it is a strong intoxication, pretty consistently a good time, and I can go for a walk, do the dishes and otherwise be able to do most things.

The local health department had complained about very strong products being for sale and I've talked with this guy a few times about it. He'd say that people can always cut them in half but I'd say that a lot of people don't know what they are doing, will take the whole thing, and probably have a bad time when they could have had a good time and become repeat customers.

Despite the unit economics being worse he's recently come out with a 75 mg product.

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I live in Colorado and they limit edibles to 10mg per piece/100mg per pack max. 150mg for a single gummy is a bit nuts though.

As someone who smokes a good amount of weed, my recommendation to people it to always stick to just flower. I've tried it all, vaping, vaporizers (different than vaping, you're superheating flower rather than using an extract), edibles, and regular pot.

From my personal experience, edibles last the longest but don't hit right away, takes about an hour for it to pass through to your liver and from there I noticed that it was a "low grade" high for a few hours.

Vaping is the polar opposite, the stuff hits you almost instantly. You also have to be careful and not puff to much, a monster hit will send you to another universe. I've also noticed that because of the high THC content (sometimes 90-100%) and virtually no CBD content, this is the easiest way to have a bad high. This also gives you the shortest high, seems to wear off quickest.

Finally you have good ol' flower. This is what I usually smoke because it slots somewhere between vaping and edibles in terms of how high you get. I almost always smoke flower because I get consistent results. If I vape I might have a panic attack, if I have an edible it might last too long, but with plain weed I know how long I'm going to be up, what the experience will be, etc.

Also this is complete pseudoscience but there's something that makes me feel better about smoking flower vs the other stuff. Vaping and all that other stuff is cool, but there's a certain safety in knowing the only modification a flower had was trimming the leaves away, no lab equipment, extractions, chemicals or any of that.

Personally I find edibles ideal. I love the 1-2 hour come up. I love knowing exactly how much I'm taking and what I'm getting myself into.

With any form of smoking or vaping I have no idea how high I'm going to get. I hate the smoke, the coughing, the throat burning and just about everything else. I also hate going from sober to high in less that a minute, the come up is my favorite part.

I'm not trying to discount your opinion at all. I just found it fascinating to have such polar opposite experiences with the same thing. I also assumed smoking was so popular just because it was the only convenient way to use when it was illegal. Now that it's legal I just assumed most have formed a habit they haven't really considered or realized.

EDIT: Also just for context, my range varies from 3mg - 15mg depending on if I'm going for a little buzz or completely stoned

I always recommend vaping dry herb with vaporizers over smoking because you avoid most of the negative health effects of combustion. Obviously inhaling hot air is probably not good for your throat and tongue.

I don't think it's very good for the lungs either.

And getting it directly from the flower means that I can cut it with high CBD flower depending on what experience I'm looking for.

A lot of the concentrates used in edibles and vapes cut nearly everything but the THC, which may be part of the observed difference between those and flower. "Full spectrum" extracts that keep many of the other chemicals seem to hit very different for me—I don't get the stereotypical giggly-high effect on pure THC or THC+CBD, mostly just sleepy (which is often exactly what I want, so that's fine), but I do on full spectrum gummies. Could be psychosomatic, but the effect feels pretty different to me.

> Also this is complete pseudoscience but there's something that makes me feel better about smoking flower vs the other stuff. Vaping and all that other stuff is cool, but there's a certain safety in knowing the only modification a flower had was trimming the leaves away, no lab equipment, extractions, chemicals or any of that.

Honestly, that is common sense not pseudoscience. There has been way too much shady shit going on especially in vaping [1].

[1] https://www.vox.com/2019/10/28/20936888/vaping-lung-illness-...

Smoking flower has a bigger entourage effect than hitting a vape because whatever in the vape is a concentrated, processed version of the flower which has lost some cannabinoid or terpene content in the process.

I also have found vapes to have other adverse effects - some psychosis, and worsened short-term memory loss (compared to flower). Flower hits different.

I don't know how people could regularly consume edibles that strong. Absolutely ridiculous.

Edibles in low doses are great, but flower seems to be the most natural and safe way to consume it in a predictably moderate dose (vs. a huge dose from edibles, or wax, etc.)

As an aside, I tried vapes again recently and they did almost nothing for me. Compared to a year ago when I tried one and got put on my ass quickly.

Easy — amateurs are burning out many of the lower temperature compounds during their extraction or cooking procedure.

Your 10mg is not the same as my 10mg.

I feel like you are omitting the fact that smoking causes cancer.

One smokes flower on a much lower magnitude. If you were to compare it to smoking cigarettes it would be 1 cigarette a day vs one pack a day.

Second, stress causes cancer. If one is using just a little bit to wean off the stress that'd work out. Also pollution causes cancer. I don't see anyone banning cars, not even having some regulations for large diesel trucks which leave a humongous trail of smoke...

> Second, stress causes cancer.

That is quite a statement.

Stress › Inflammatory response › cancer

> The best quality studies have followed up many people for several years. They have found no evidence that those who are more stressed are more likely to get cancer.

> Some people wonder whether stress causes breast cancer. But overall, the evidence for this has been poor. And a large study of over 100,000 women in the UK in 2016 showed no consistent evidence between stress and breast cancer.

There are plenty of other articles around summarizing studies like this.

> no lab equipment, extractions, chemicals or any of that

Except for widespread pesticides when growing flower in many places, often without much regulation.

Is this in the US? What state? I've only seen menus in NJ, IL, and most edibles are like 5-10mg per piece and seem to top out at 25mg per piece, but those tend to be big pieces that look like they are meant to be broken apart (like a Hershey bar).

I think setting national standards around this would be just one benefit of legalizing recreational use at the federal level.

I know that michigan has a law that allows for private transactions between medical smokers and licensed "caretakers". These caretakers are basically unregulated, so they can have a huge greenhouse operation with just a couple patients. People in Chicago drive to michigan to get the caretakers "extra" product.

In Colorado I saw gummies and candies ranging from 5 to 25mg per piece. Chocolate bars with up to 100MG per bar (the size of a typical chocolate bar). Single serving granola packs with THC honey in 50 and 75mg types. IIRC nothing stronger than 100mg per item was allowed but I was only passing through the state.

You can get gummies like this in IL, but just not from the dispensaries. Plenty of people make the drive from Michigan to sell to their friends here.

Last time I went to the dispensary near me in Michigan, the budtender started off with the 100mg gummies when I said I was looking for edibles.

mmm yeah I've seen those in Washington Square in NYC

We don't have anything that high in California

also edibles are practically a different drug after being processed by the liver, we should study them completely separately

we should have high quality studies for specific use cases, just like corporate designer drugs that go through the FDA

but we currently have... whatever this is.

Sweet Christ. 150mg? Goddamn, I hope my tolerance never gets that bad. That'd be so expensive. 1/10 that at once is enough to get me fucked up enough that, if I had taken more, I'd just be asleep.

> Sweet Christ. 150mg? Goddamn, I hope my tolerance never gets that bad.

It's a nightmare. I'm a medical cannabis patient, so unfortunately, proper symptom management means my usage ends up being quite high. My tolerance got so high that I barely felt anything from 350mg+ in edibles or RSO[0]. Taking a tolerance break from that is an awful experience; my psychiatrist actually had to prescribe benzos (Klonopin) to make it doable.

[0] https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/what-is-rick-simpso...

Back before CA legalized marijuana, thus putting in the limits on edibles, you could get some super-strong ones if you had a medical card. I recall a friend of mine buying 1500mg edibles that would put down most experienced smokers for two or three days. Said friend was going through one of those edibles per day, but those edibles also cost less than a 100mg edible does these days.

150mg is crazy. Im a causal smoker who tokes just a little bit and that not every day. 150mg would send me to ER

Seriously. I accidentally ate 1/4 of a 100mg THC chocolate bar, but it was not the right hybrid to keep me asleep, so I was in and out for hours. 25 mg is more than twice my preferred THC dose.

150mg THC for a single edible is absolutely bonkers. If you only use ~1x per month, around 3mg is a common threshold dose, and 5mg can be rather strong. So that's 50x the naive threshhold dose!

> He'd say that people can always cut them in half

People who want a stronger buzz could always just take two..

The issue then becomes getting diabetes before getting high due to the crazy amounts of sugar in these edibles.

Is it really more than a can of coke?

I get a strong effect from 5mg already. I can’t imagine what 150mg would do to me

THC tolerance makes a big difference. 5-10 is all I need now. When I used to smoke a lot I could take much larger doses with similar effects.

I believe it metabolizes differently. Even as an daily smoker/vaper at one point who never ate edibles, 10mg would get me very high.

I have a friend who stopped eating gummies for the same reason. They found the chocolate bars easier to break into the smaller pieces since they are grooved that way.

Gummies, being more sugar than fat, metabolize so much faster...not always desirable (who wants overpowering effects for 30min if they're eating an edible?).

Meanwhile in Canada the stores only sell 10mg and I need to eat a dozen to feel a buzz.

Just give consumers choice

This is messed up. Non-tolerant person dose for “stoned” would be like 20-30mg. I take 5 or 10 on a day i need to chill and i can feel it already.

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