UBCO researchers determine how many tokes from a joint equal a bong hit
Seven years after Canada legalized cannabis there is still no reliable way for aspiring stoners to find out the effects of different methods for getting high, and University of British Columbia Okanagan scientists are trying to fix that.
Researchers Michelle St. Pierre and Zach Walsh have created an Index of Cannabis Equivalence to help people understand how bong hits, edibles, pipes, joints and other ways of getting high compare to each other.
“Most everybody knows five ounces of wine is equivalent to 12 ounces of beer is equivalent to one and a half ounces of spirit,” St. Pierre told iNFOnews.ca. “So in the same way, we have proposed that two puffs on a joint is equivalent to a quarter of a dab, is equivalent to one bong toke, is equivalent to a five milligram edible.”
Those who are envisioning bean bag chairs, lava lamps and Cheetos for test subjects might be disappointed to know the study was conducted online.
The study surveyed 1,300 cannabis users, aged 18 to 93, from all walks of life who described themselves as low-tolerance users and asked about their use and experience. The data collected was then used to determine the equivalencies.
St. Pierre said a study like this is overdue.
“No one has done it yet, and it feels like something that is definitely warranted and needed, given that cannabis has been legal now for nearly seven years,” she said. “The Government of Canada, their public health guidelines will say ‘start low, go slow.’ So reducing harms with cannabis have a low dose. Well, what is a low dose?”
She said the next step would be to do a study in a lab setting to get a deeper understanding.
“Each sort of study you're finding is like a brick in the wall of science, and so I think this is a brick, but there's a whole bunch more to do here for sure,” she said.
“I wish I could tell you that we just had like a bunch of bongs out and edibles and people were just like trying stuff and telling us what was equivalent... The next step for the Index of Cannabis Equivalency would be to run a lab-based study where we would have people try different doses and rate if it is the same in terms of psychoactivity or different.”
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Since the study surveyed low tolerance users it might not apply exactly to everyone who uses cannabis frequently.
St. Pierre said focusing on people who have a low tolerance was important for several reasons.
Infrequent, low tolerance users are the ones who would benefit most from a better understanding of cannabis doses across different methods and weed tolerance has a more complex relationship with the psychoactive effect of the drug than alcohol tolerance.
“The tolerance is still a factor with alcohol, but more or less, a certain amount of alcohol intoxicates just about anybody, whereas that's not the case with cannabis,” she said. “A joint for an experienced user may feel like a low dose, although that would have to be quite the experienced user, whereas two puffs for an infrequent user would be low.”
There is still a lot that needs to be studied about cannabis and its psychoactive effects, but St. Pierre said the effect of terpenes, chemical compounds in weed that affect the brain aside from THC, is one of the biggest knowledge gaps that needs to be addressed.
“The different cannabinoids, the different terpenoids or terpenes that we're just starting to realize actually have quite an influence on the psychoactive effects of cannabis. Up until now, THC has really been the star. But I think that that perhaps is a bit misguided and we're going to learn a lot more about these other cool compounds in the next decade,” she said.
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