Vaporizing Cannabinoids

The civilized alternative to combusting Cannabis flowers
by Maxwell Jones I’ve noticed that when most Alaskans think of vaporizing their Cannabis, they’re thinking of dabbing concentrates. But there’s a whole subculture based around vaporizing herbs, and quite a variety of both portable and plug-in vaporizing devices are available. In this article I will go over some of the many benefits of vaporizing, and discuss the devices themselves. As a bit of background, I combusted for many years. I favored joints, one-hitters and bongs, for the most part. I later evolved into a full-time ‘vaper’, even before I was using medically.

Vaporizing is different from smoking. When you smoke you are burning your precious flowers, to be able to inhale their Cannabinoid particles from the resulting smoke. The main benefits are convenience, and instant effects. With vapor, the effects are still instantaneous but what you're inhaling is more of the particles you're actually after, suspended in water vapor. Basically the material is heated to its boiling point, and the vapor is released. It's a cleaner experience. There’s other benefits. For the health conscious, or medical users, vaporizing bypasses many of the toxic by-products of combustion, like benzine and carbon monoxide; there are many others, but these are two dangerous carcinogens. As we all know, secondhand smoke is objectionable to many human beings. Water vapor is much less objectionable than smoke for them. Vaporizing is best for medical patients, not only because of the reduced harshness to your lungs, but because of the precise dosage control that’s available. This can also help with economy of use, as it’s possible for those with lowered tolerance to “microdose”. You can also control what type of Cannabinoids you want to consume, by varying the temperature of your vaporizer. For example if it’s early in the day you might want to go with a cooler vaping temperature, as these temperatures typically just grab the terpenes, trichomes and some of the THC to lift your mood. Then come back later at night with a higher temperature, to get the sedating CBD/CBN out of those same flowers and into your receptors.

Some vaporizers have actual temperature adjustments, some just let you vary the power, and with many others you can control the temperature by varying the force of your inhalation, or draw speed. Then there’s the flame-powered models, which are the most “manual”. Finally, there’s the taste. If you really want to appreciate the subtleties of various strain flavors, you’ll want to refrain from lighting them on fire first. It’s the connoisseur's difference! There’s a lot of Cannabis-orientated vaporizers available, and the number of available models is always growing. Most vaporizers are electric, and they are divided between portable and plug-in ‘desktop’ models. Two of the original desktop stalwarts are still popular: 7th Floor’s Silver Surfer, and Storz & Bickel’s Volcano. These two vapes are very different in actual use however. As a quick sidenote, there’s two ways to vaporize for the most part. The first is with conductive heat, which transfers heat directly to the material. This is how one cooks on a stovetop, or how concentrates are typically vaporized. The other way is with convective heat, where heated air is forced through the material. This is usually preferred for taste and Cannabinoid control. There are a couple of supposed inductive vaporizers available, but they are out of the mainstream. There’s also quite a few vaporizers that utilize both conductive and convective heat.

The Volcano uses this combination of conduction and convection, and a unique delivery method that fills balloons, or bags with vapor, then you inhale the vapor from them. It’s not cheap and it’s hard to microdose, but it will extract every bit of your goodies into every bag reliably. Storz & Bickel also makes a direct-draw plug-in vaporizer called the Plenty, that’s excellent. It also uses combination heat, and can be adapted for S&B’s dosing capsules like the Volcano can. The Silver Surfer is a convection device where you inhale through a hose, but all the parts that touch the herb are glass except for the screens. You can also run that hose into a waterpipe to cool your vapor before inhalation. 7th Floor has also come out with some variations on the SS: there’s a budget version called Da Buddha, a hand-held version called Light Saber, and they even have a Super Surfer now, that can blow up balloons (kind of) like the Volcano. Other, newer desktop vapes of note include Vape Exhale’s Evo, and the Herbalizer. Newvape is another manufacturer grabbing a lot of marketshare with its modular Flowerpot system, which lets you combine an e-nail concentrate experience with the densest flower vapor available. While there’s many other desktop vaporizers available, the ones I mentioned above represent the best quality and are the most proven, in my humble opinion. But there’s many other opinions out there; I would say that fuckcombustion.com (sorry!) and reddit’s r/vaporents are the best forums for users to compare notes on various vaporizers, and vaporizing issues. As far as portables go, one of my favorite entry-level units is Dynavap’s Vapcap. It’s the perfect device for converting from ‘dugout/one-hitter’ use, as it has the exact same form factor, uses a lighter for power, and Dynavap sells the same type of wooden stash to re-make the kit. The Vapcap M is a great entry-level conduction vaporizer, and it can be found for $50 - $60. If you want a portable flame-powered convection vaporizer, Sticky Brick Lab’s offerings have been quite popular. I’ve tried one of their predecessor’s units, called the Daisy, and it’s a surprisingly civilized experience once you get past the whole using a torch thing. There’s some other flame-powered portables, notably Vapor Genie’s pipes and the Lotus system. Most portable vapes use electricity, meaning batteries. Storz & Bickel make two called Crafty and Mighty. The Crafty uses one powerful battery and the Mighty uses two. I say powerful because these are the batteries typically used in e-cig ‘mods’. These vapes are like desktops they’re so powerful, and there’s more difference than just the battery even if they vape the same. The Crafty uses Bluetooth, which some like but many users don’t want their inhale count and other usage information on the internet, available for harvest. The Mighty has also proven to be more reliable than the crafty. They use S&B’s dosing capsules without an adapter. There’s many other portable vapes. Arizer makes some good entry-level units, based on their proven Solo technology. While they’re not heavy hitters, they have been proven reliable over the years. 7th Floor makes a battery-powered portable unit that I wouldn’t recommend, but they also have a flame-powered portable called the ELEV8R that’s been garnering rave reviews. There’s a whole bunch of what I call Chinese ‘commodity’ vaporizers. For the most part, they seem to be getting better. While they’re more affordable, they can also be less reliable, and contacting many of these makers for help or repairs if anything goes wrong can be an exercise in frustration. But the main reason I don’t recommend most of them is they can be unsafe to use. The plastic can offgas if it’s substandard, or in the vapor path, or both. There’s other hazards if corners are cut. Sometimes there's even counterfeits of the major brand name units, with even less standards and obviously no warranty coverage. But there are some decent brands, if you want to check them out look for Haze and Boundless. There’s also one by Healthy Rips called the Fury, that seems to be the hot commodity portable vape of the moment. The last major category of portable vapes are the craft units. Some of them are modular, and attach to the aforementioned e-cig battery ‘mod boxes’ for power. They are for hobbyists for the most part, and usually have a waiting list, but there’s one coming to the mass market soon. It’s made by a company called RastaBuddhaTao, and it’s called the Splinter. I managed to get a hold of a beta unit and love it. It will screw onto any mod box that uses ‘510’ threading. These battery mod boxes can also power a variety of mass-produced concentrate atomizers, or ‘coils’ like a wax pen would use. That’s why it’s called modular, they adapt to varied use. RastaBuddhaTao also makes the other kind of craft vaporizer, the self-contained wooden type. He’s got one for sale called the Milaana, it’s a manual pure convection unit that’s on it’s second major iteration. I think it’s actually called the Milaana II now. They’ve been around for a few years now, and you can find models made out of exotic wood for something special. If you go to the internet forums mentioned above, there’s plenty of other craft-type vapes out there, where you get to interact with the maker and sometimes need to pay in advance. I don’t recommend starting out with this but you can get some artistic, functional gems this way. A good vaporizer can cost a fair bit of $, but Cannabis isn’t a cheap activity. A growing body of stoners and medical users are finding the investment to be worth it, for many of the same reasons. It’s the civilized, connoisseur's alternative to combusting those precious herbs.

Until Cannabis is regulated like carrots, Max’s dreams will remain sleeping.