No! Tinctures are not made to be smoked, and can be harmful to the lungs if vaped or smoked.
Is it a cannabis tincture? Dont vape it.
Is it a CBDA or CBD tincture? Dont smoke it.
Article Highlights
- If your product is a cannabis tincture, do not try to smoke or vape CBD tincture
- Smoke from a CBD tincture or THC tincture can cause lung damage
- Look for safe vape juice mixtures such as propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin
- Tinctures should be ingested only
Can you vape any type of tincture?
No.
Well you can, but the heat creates chemicals that can damage your lungs.
Most CBD tinctures, and cannabis tinctures in general, are made by combining the cannabinoid oil from the cannabis extract with MCT oil or hemp seed oil. Tinctures made with these oils are specifically formulated for ingestion, and vaping cannabis tinctures with MCT oil or hemp seed oil can cause lung damage.
CBDA or CBD oil, like TCH oil, is very hydrophobic, meaning it dissolves well in almost any carrier oil. However, the kind of carrier oil used will determine whether the mixture should be ingested as a CBD tincture, or vaping CBD oil.
What vape oil to look for
Purified cannabis oil, such as full spectrum CBD, THC, or delta 8 oils, will normally be mixed with vape juice that is specifically designed to be smoked. Commonly, these are propylene glycol (PG), vegetable glycerin (VG), and sometimes squalane and squalene oil (this should be avoided).
Currently, the least damaging vape diluent are propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin.
What vape oil to avoid
Do not use any squalane or squalene oil based vape juice products. While these naturally occurring terpenes extracted from olives have beneficial properties when applied topically or ingested, they break down into harmful chemicals when heated. These have recently been identified as having high potential to cause lung injury by the State of Oregon.
Vape products products that contain vitamin E acetate, also termed tocopherols, should be avoided. These have been linked to pulmonary damage, and were commonly used to change the viscosity of the vape juice.
Potential side effects of vaping tinctures
While a THC tincture may be good for you, trying to smoke tinctures with MCT coconut oil or hemp seed oil can cause significant damage to the lungs. Most legitimate vape companies selling vape CBD oil will use propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin to create an appropriate CBD vape cartridges.
Many illicit THC vape cartridges have been found to use MCT or mineral oil, which when ingested can be beneficial, but when heated break down into highly reactive aldehyde and other oxidizing chemicals. These reactive species can cause significant lung inflammation and damage, and should be avoided.
Vaping CBD tincture that is not formulated for vape pens should be avoided.
Why do people vape CBD?
The cannabis flower has many therapeutic benefits derived from the terpenes and cannabinoids found in the plant matter. Smoking the flower directly has been used for centuries, but new technology allowed for concentrated CBD oil, which increases the amount of CBD you can administer.
CBD helps boost the endocannabinoid system, which helps regulate many physiological functions, such as mood, inflammation, blood pressure, and stress. Vaping CBD is one of the fastest ways to consume cannabis since the cannabinoids get absorbed within a few minutes.
THC and CBD products are often used to help with anxiety, stress, chronic pain, or inflammation, and vaping cannabis can be an easy method to the beneficial cannabinoids in your body.
What about THC vape?
Cannabis flower high in THCA/THC is used to create a full spectrum THC oil for vape pens. These oils are often mixed with either propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin to make the vape juice have less viscosity. Avoid illicit THC vape pens since they often are mixed with improper diluents like MCT oil or squalene oils.
How to identify good vape juice
Good CBD vape juice will have a high amount of full spectrum CBD, which contains all the different cannabinoids and terpenes from the plant matter. If you get drug tested, or do not want THC in your vape, check out broad spectrum CBD oils which don't have THC but still have other minor cannabinoids.
For THC vapes, look for similar oil based mixtures, propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin.
Smoking cannabis concentrates
Some people prefer to smoke cannabis concentrates, which are purified THC or CBD oils. This can come in multiple forms, such as shatter, crumble, live resin, or viscous oil. While it's difficult to vape high purity cannabinoids because they are not liquid at room temperature, you can still smoke them using direct heat. The benefits being that you are inhaling smoke without oil additives, and these concentrates usually contain high amounts of natural terpenes.What is a cannabis tincture?
The cannabis plant extracts that are purified into high quality THC and CBD oils are used as the base for THC or CBD oil tinctures. These are then mixed with fractionated coconut oil (MCT), hemp seed oil, or sometimes olive oil to create a final THC or CBD oil tincture.
Carrier oils mentioned above are needed to mix with the high purity cannabinoids since alone they have the consistency of honey at cold temperatures.
A good CBD product will include other minor cannabinoids, and should come with a certificate of analysis (CoA). It should also contain a lot of CBD, since it takes a relatively high dose to get good medicinal benefits.
See our CoA guide on how to interpret the test results.
We recommend Natural Spectrum CBDA tinctures, which contains all the acidic cannabinoid precursors. These are the naturally occurring hemp cannabinoids, and have over 500% more absorption than CBD.
How to use or take cannabis tinctures?
A lot of cannabis consumption nation wide is through tincture drops. The best way to take oil based tinctures is through sublingual administration, and is probably the most among all the consumption methods. In fact, tincture sublingually administered will have better absorption than if swallowed due to the close proximity of blood vessels under the tongue.
THC or CBD tinctures can take from 30-45 minutes for maximum absorption, so its important to take ahead of time if using for sleep. If taking for chronic pain, users typically report taking 20-40mg, 3-4 times a day. However, this can get expensive as many THC and CBD tinctures have only 10-20mg doses.
Natural Spectrum CBDA tinctures, the CBD alternative
The precursor to CBD is CBDA (cannabidiolic acid), and these acidic cannabinoids are what are naturally found in all the cannabis plants. There are over 100 different acidic cannabinoids that the hemp and marijuana plants produce.
Up until recently, the difficulty of isolating acidic cannabinoids has been a major hurdle in the cannabis tincture space. Natural Dos has developed a new technology that unlocks the health benefits of CBDA and other cannabinoids in the acidic form.
Benefits of using cannabis tinctures
Tinctures have been around since the 1800s in apothecaries and dispensaries, as they are believed to be the healthiest way a patient consumes cannabis. This was one of the first medicinal options the cannabis world developed for administering cannabinoids, and still remains one of the primary products.
There has been a lot of research on the potential health benefits of CBDA, CBD, THC among many other minor cannabinoids. While the list of conditions these different compounds can help with continues to grow, the role of cannabis products tends to surround the health of the endocannabinoid system (ECS).
Cannabinoids and the endocannabinoid system
The ECS helps regulate a lot critical physiological properties, such as inflammation, pain, mood, blood pressure, and in some cases heart rate. Endocannabinoid receptors (CB1 and CB2 receptors) are located on many cells throughout the body, such as immune and nerve cells, and are the primary mechanism by which cannabinoids exert their beneficial actions.Each of the cannabinoids has slightly different interactions with these receptors, such as THC primarily activating CB1, and CBD acting as an allosteric regulator of CB2. The high absorption of acidic cannabinoids, like CBDA and THCA, allows these class of cannabinoids to better get into the body, and interact with these cannabinoid receptors.
If you are on multiple medications, or have a history of liver complications, please talk with your physician before trying CBD tinctures.
In summary, new developments in cannabis research is opening up novel therapeutic potentials for many health conditions.