Weed Drinks
If you’re familiar with edibles, odds are you’ve eaten one made by a friend. Sure it’s easy to grab a cookie from a dispensary in many states now, but there was nothing quite like that old roll of the dice. Did they make it too strong? Not strong enough? Will I ever feel this? OHMYGOD can I make it work tomorrow? While legalization should have standardized milligram dose of THC, cannabis’s psychoactive component, unfortunately, that’s not the case. However, there’s a new(ish) trend in cannabis that seems to have a uniform dosing method: infused weed drinks.
Most dispensaries you walk into now have a refrigerated section to store these drinks and the possibilities are nearly as varied as the edibles. Strawberry lemonades and hibiscus teas litter the shelves, but how are cannabis drinks different than the standard edibles you’re used to?
Why do people claim they feel different than eating cannabis?
First, the reason the weed drinks tend to be more consistent than food is that there are two different things going on chemically. Cannabis edibles are typically made with oil-based infusions, while beverages use water-soluble THC that has been emulsified.
Basically this means all the flavonoids, terpenes, etc are stripped away so that the only thing left is the THC. This isolates the cannabinoids in a pure form that is equal across however many drops you make. Once the drops have been extracted from the plant matter, they work similar to liquid food colouring, dispersing throughout the liquid without affecting its taste. Using emulsification instead of standard oil techniques in edibles makes the final product more consistent across the board.
That inconsistency you might find in your local dispensaries chocolate bar for example, could be because the oil wasn’t evenly made or distributed throughout the product. Bite one end and you feel nothing, bite the other and you’re thinking about calling the doctor, or at least taking a twelve-hour nap. Some users report that marijuana-infused weed drinks start to work sooner than edibles too.
As you might expect, corporations have noticed the trend and are eager to jump on it. Some analysts have even speculated that the cannabis beverage market could be worth up to $600 million in just a couple of years. According to Eater, in addition to the dozens of weed beverage companies already in existence, such as rapper The Game’s THC-infused lemonade, it appears the market is only going to grow. As they report, Constellation Brands, the owner of Corona beer, invested $4 billion in the blossoming Canadian weed economy, they were shortly followed by a similar move from Molson Coors Marijuana edibles and drinks aren’t legal in Canada as of this writing, but the country’s government has said it plans to legalize them by the end of this year.
While I can’t speak to the science, I do know the one time I tried a cannabis lemonade it made me think about my lawn grooming habits for four hours…..and I only drank half.
Conclusion
It’s always nice to try new product delivery. After all, one of the best parts about marijuana is testing! Just do it responsibly, please 🙂 Learn more about weed and the difference between smoking weed vs ingesting weed + a lot more other in-depth guides.
