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Does weed really need to be decarboxylated

That response is totally irrelevant to my question. I removed from my original post the statement that non-decarboxylated cannabinoids are water soluble because this question is not about solubility and its relationship to bioavailability. This question is about: is it really true that raw weed has a piss poor bioavailability.

Also, there are ways more professional than milk to emulsify a weed preparation. -> Water Insoluble Drug Formulation (Rong Liu, 2008)
 
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Heat, time, & enzymes in the plant catalyse THC decarboxylation. I seem to recall most "fresh" plant matter is very high in carboxylates, 90% or more of the cannabinoids being tied up. This explains why people smoke, vapourise, or heat it in butter... (and why drying/aging doesn't hurt)

is it really true that raw weed has a piss poor bioavailability.
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Munch on down on a raw half-gram of herb flower and tell me how you feel. The answer is, in almost all cases, yes. (Though, I think OldHippie noted you *can* get effects from plain oral cannabis if you decarboxylate it first. Marinol caps work because they have THC and not THC-COOH in them.)

non-decarboxylated cannabinoids are water soluble
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They're actually not, as the carboxylate group just isn't enough to make them polar.
 
I was going by the countyourculture article. Don't shoot the messenger. I was dubious of that statement as well.


BY "raw weed" I did not mean in-tact buds. Aren't cannabinoids packed into tough fibrous plant matter? That would present a huge bioavailability issue, mechanical in nature. What I meant was some type of solution made from freshly picked buds...
 
What I meant was some type of solution made from freshly picked buds...
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Ethanol tincture?

Wiki said:
Despite the ready decarboxylation by drying or heating ex vivo, conversion of THCA to THC in vivo appears to be very limited, giving it only very slight efficacy as a prodrug for THC.[8] Consequently it is believed to be important in less-psychoactive preparations of cannabis used for medical use, such as cannabis tea.[9]
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Wiki - tetrahydrocannabinolic acid

Wikipedia seems to suggest the answer is still: no, if you ingest mostly THC-COOH, it's not going to be as effective as decarb'd stuff. Of course, plants will still have *some* free THC even when fresh, so it might get you a little buzzed.

It is worth your while to decarboxylate your stuff or at least dry it well if you are going to consume herb orally.

Trivia: There are also corresponding plant acids for CBD and the other cannabinoids, too.
 
funny, i think i've posted a couple cannabis tincture threads on BL, and i'd been meaning to post another. here's my experience:
*tincture attempt #1: allow ground up bud to soak in 75% ethanol in the freezer for a month. filter out plant matter. very little effect, probably not entirely placebo, but maybe.
*tincture attempt #2: grind up bud finely, leave in a thin layer on a baking dish in the oven for an hour just below the boiling point of THC (assuming wiki has the right boiling point and my oven's temperature control is reasonably accurate). soak in isopropanol, filter, allow isopropanol to evaporate, redissolve crude hash oil in 75% ethanol. noticeably better than attempt #1, but still not quite there. i had some trouble redissolving (which i think people here suggested was because the iso extracted things that the EtOH couldn't redissolve). effect-wise, it was definitely active, but not as psychedelic as smoking or vaporizing or eating traditional edibles (in which the bud or hash is simmered for a while in the oil to be used in cooking).
*tincture attempt #3: grind bud, soak in heated propylene glycol, filter off plant matter. my thinking here was that propylene glycol is safe for consumption, and has desirable physical properties of both alcohol and cooking oil/fat. that is, cannabanoids are soluble in it, it makes a good medium for sublingual dosing, and it's much less volatile/flammable than ethanol (good if you've got a gas stove). so i figured i could decarboxylate the THC in the propylene glycol as i assume is happening when you cook with cannabis by simmering it in oil. this worked pretty well. still too biased towards the sedative side as opposed to the psychedelic side (and i say that as someone who prefers the stereotypical indica type high). but on the right track.
*tincture attempt #4: same as #3, but with pre-extracted hash oil (from a cannabis club, presumably obtained by butane extraction). about the same level of success as #3, but worked much better in an e-cig since there was less unwanted junk from the plant in the mixture.

so overall, i'd say i'm on the right track, but my current guess is that i'm not letting the cannabanoids simmer for long enough in the heated PG. i think i got impatient and only let it simmer for 15 or 20 minutes, whereas if i were making brownies or something, i'd probably simmer for more like 45 to 60 minutes.

TL;DR: yeah, you probably need to decarboxylate first. depending on what consumption method you're going for, you might want to consider propylene glycol as a solvent. also, last i checked, the state of tincture recipes and advice on the internet (surprisingly) fucking sucked. reinforces all sorts of stereotypes about stoners (people talk shit on PG because it's not "natural", took me forever to find out decarboxylation was even necessary, etc).

for attempt #5, i will be using hash oil, PG, and a longer simmering time. with any luck, i'll have something i'm actually happy with. i'm excited about the possibility of a legitimately working tincture that can be used either sublingually or in an e-cig.

also, for what it's worth, some paper from the company that makes sativex (an oral THC spray) mentioned that they use a mixture of propylene glycol and ethanol as their solvent. i have a feeling that this aids absorption: anecdotally, i noticed (both in myself and others) that absorption of the PG-only tincture was inconsistent. sometimes you'd spray a little in your mouth or swallow a couple drops, and it wouldn't hit for hours. but it was more reliable if mixed into coffee or taken sublingually.

i'm basically interested in tincture because it would allow for very discreet carrying and dosing.

advice and corrections on any of the above would be much appreciated. i was going to post asking if i was barking up the wrong tree with my decarboxylating in PG approach.
 
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^why don't you just make hash oil and consume it orally with an oral syringe? works for me and it doesn't taste bad. Strong high for 2 hours or so and quite a bit of fun, no messing around with pg/ethanol, tho i've done that as well, it didn't make a difference for me.
 
RobotRipping said:
^why don't you just make hash oil and consume it orally with an oral syringe? works for me and it doesn't taste bad. Strong high for 2 hours or so and quite a bit of fun, no messing around with pg/ethanol, tho i've done that as well, it didn't make a difference for me.
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in my few encounters with it, i've found hash oil to be incredibly inconvenient to work with. very gummy, very sticky, stains and adheres to anything it touches. my last iteration was essentially hash oil dissolved in PG, but that felt like it needed more decarboxylation compared with the more traditional edibles i've had. and with the texture i'm imagining, hash oil in an e-cig (as opposed to a more specialized vaporizer) wouldn't really be feasible (or at least, i imagine the heating element likely wouldn't be strong enough to vaporize it in that form).
 
Thanks, sekio.

Do you guys think the cannabis market would fervor isolated THC as well as a mixture of THC and CBD -- sold on the black market.

Also, would soaking marijuana in an acidic solution decarboxylate it -- going off the principal of "like dissolves like."
 
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I never understood this: if fresh cannabis is mostly inactive orally because of the cannabinoid acids, why is hash active orally? What about the way it is made decarboxylates it? Aeration?
 
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Sekio, since you know your chem, I'm guessing that a carboxyl COOH group has most of its electron density pulled away by the electronegative oxygen atoms, leaving less for the covalent C-C bond, so that it is more easily broken? Would it also be correct to guess that dehumidification would speed the process by getting polar H2O molecules away from the oxygens, whose presence would decrease the amount of C-C bonding electron density pulled away by the Oxygens? All of which would indeed reinforce heat and low humidity being useful for decarboxylation?
 
why is hash active orally? What about the way it is made decarboxylates it? Aeration?
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Growing conditions, ageing of the source cannabis material, aeration and heating during processing, ageing in storage, & time.
Also, some strains hasve more free THC than others.

Would it also be correct to guess that dehumidification would speed the process by getting polar H2O molecules away from the oxygens,
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No, that's not how it works. AFAIK it's just an equilibrium reaction, and when THC-COOH decomposes to THC and CO2, the CO2 leaves by offgassing.
 
sekio, maybe you missed this question: Also, would soaking marijuana in an acidic solution decarboxylate it -- going off the principal of "like dissolves like."
 
hollywood_cole said:
in my few encounters with it, i've found hash oil to be incredibly inconvenient to work with. very gummy, very sticky, stains and adheres to anything it touches. my last iteration was essentially hash oil dissolved in PG, but that felt like it needed more decarboxylation compared with the more traditional edibles i've had. and with the texture i'm imagining, hash oil in an e-cig (as opposed to a more specialized vaporizer) wouldn't really be feasible (or at least, i imagine the heating element likely wouldn't be strong enough to vaporize it in that form).
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what kind of hash oil are you getting? is it black sticky and tarry? or amber and like liquid? there's a big difference in quality between the two. If you are looking for that more 'decarboxlyation' then i'd go for a butane extract or really QWISO.
 
RobotRipping said:
what kind of hash oil are you getting? is it black sticky and tarry? or amber and like liquid? there's a big difference in quality between the two. If you are looking for that more 'decarboxlyation' then i'd go for a butane extract or really QWISO.
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it's translucent amber, but very sticky, with the consistency of putty (at room temp). like honey, but way more viscous. i guess i sort of inadvertently did the QWISO thing with my second attempt, since i did the extraction using ISO. i found that crude hash paste similarly difficult to work with (had to scrape it off the dish with a razor, and off the razor with a second razor).

with the stuff i've got now, i find that it's easy enough to get out of the container by dipping in a small metal screwdriver or something similar, but it's a bitch to get off the screwdriver. on my fourth attempt (with hash oil and PG), i just dipped the screwdriver into the warm PG, stirred, and let it go into solution. but whenever i try to (say) put the stuff into a bowl or a vaporizer, i'm quickly reminded why i don't do that as a regular thing.
 
Also, would soaking marijuana in an acidic solution decarboxylate it -- going off the principal of "like dissolves like."
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That's not how it works. Like dissolves like goes for *polarity* and *presence of hydrogen bonding*, not much else.

Also, for handling hash oil, wrap it into sausages with 2 layers of rolling paper, & you can conveniently trim off doses that are so much easier to handle than plain oil.
 
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