Cannabis 101
What the plant is, what the formats on a menu actually are, and how long each one takes to do anything. That last part is where most first bad experiences come from.
Nothing here is medical advice. For anything health related, ask a doctor rather than a budtender or a website.
What is on a menu
Flower is the dried plant, sold by weight and either smoked or vaporised. Prerolls are the same thing, rolled.
Edibles and beverages are cannabis infused into something you swallow, dosed in milligrams. Concentrates and extracts strip the plant down to its resin and are sold in grams at much higher potency. Cartridges are extract in a vape. Topicals go on the skin. Tinctures are dosed by dropper.
How potency is reported
Flower, extract and cartridges carry a THC percentage, because you are buying a weight of plant matter or resin and the percentage tells you how much of that weight is cannabinoid.
Edibles, beverages and tinctures carry milligrams instead, because you are buying a dose rather than a weight. A 10 mg gummy and a 30% eighth are not on the same scale, and comparing the two numbers directly is meaningless.
Onset and duration
Inhaled cannabis arrives within minutes and tails off within a couple of hours, which is why it is the format where you can tell quickly whether you have had enough.
Swallowed cannabis is the opposite. It can take a long while to arrive and lasts considerably longer, and the gap between the two is where people take a second dose too early. Start low, wait longer than feels necessary, and do not stack doses on a hunch.
Topicals are applied to the skin rather than swallowed or inhaled.
Reading a label
Every legal product in California carries a label with its cannabinoid content, its batch, and the licence of who made it. Testing is required before anything reaches a shelf.
If a number on a menu and a number on a package disagree, the package wins. Bring it back to us.
