One thing which is not talked about nearly enough is how the cannabis is ingested. Those 510 vape cartridges get you blasted, but they do so in an interesting

One thing which is not talked about nearly enough is how the cannabis is ingested. Those 510 vape cartridges get you blasted, but they do so in an interesting way. Whereas smoking the leaf contains a weaker concentration of THC, it also contains other compounds which act as adjuvants. In effect, if you smoke the leaf itself, you get more subjective effect per mg of THC. Vape cartridges overcome the disadvantage of not having adjuvants by simply providing more THC. That stuff is like ~89% pure THC, whereas you'd be looking at only about 20% THC in your typical blunt. In other words, they compensate for being less efficient at getting you high by being more efficient at delivering high doses of THC. The net impact is that you get a subjectively higher high, but get there by way of a disproportionate increase in the amount of THC it took to get you there. This matters, because THC concentration is directly linked to the frequency of side effects, as well as the degree of tolerance you develop for the drug. Vape cartridges not only make you sort of immune to getting high from smoking (in effect, addicting cannabis smokers to harder stuff,) but also deal more damage (or stochastically speaking, lead to terrible outcomes more often.) Worse, from a UX perspective, they are a brilliant dark pattern, disguising how much you've consumed (the drawdown in vape fluid for a vaping session is often fractions of a milliliter) while also making the experience 'smoother' (cf. menthol tobacco cigarettes.) Compare this with a blunt, which (a) often has to be rolled, providing a nice little speed bump on the process, and (b) is often unpleasant to overconsume (cough! cough!) and (c) must often be consumed outdoors (lest you hotbox your home) and (d) provides a vivid, visible, compelling measure of how much you've consumed. This is all quite serious; at higher regular doses, weed more frequently causes all sorts of horrible effects, which can range from depression to emotional volatility (yes, really -- you wind up being dependent on it to stay emotionally level) all the way up to psychosis, as someone else here was pointing out. Here in Canada, legalization, I think, has been terrible for a lot of vulnerable people. The correct approach would have been decriminalization without legalization.