Smoke spliffs

In the UK, most people mix it with tobacco and roll it into a cannabis cigarette known as a spliff or joint. Some people don’t use tobacco at all and make weed-only spliffs – either because they prefer it that way or to avoid becoming dependent on nictotine.

Smoke bongs

Users do this mix by mixing the drug with tobacco and putting it in a pipe, lighting it, and then inhaling the smoke through water out of a large tube. There are many types of bongs, and not everyone uses tobacco. Like with joints, using tobacco in bongs increases the risk of nicotine dependence.

Edibles you can eat or drink

People do this by mixing it into cakes (hash brownies), tea, yoghurt or sweets (gummies/lollipops). The amount of cannabis in these products can vary greatly and sometimes—especially in sweets—other harmful drugs (particularly synthetic cannabinoids) are added or used instead. The effects of consuming edibles are unpredictable and it can be very easy to accidentally take a larger dose than you wanted to.

Vaping and e-cigarettes

This method has become more popular in recent years. Most people use a vaporizer which heats the cannabis rather than burning it. Very little is known about the health impact of vaping cannabis. Ready-made vapes and vape juices, like nicotine ones but claiming to contain cannabis chemicals like CBD (legal) and THC (not legal), are also available but illegal vapes might contain synthetic cannabinoids instead.

Smoking cannabis with tobacco increases the risk of becoming dependent on nicotine. To avoid this, don’t use tobacco in bongs and spliffs.

The effects of cannabis can vary massively. Some people say feeling ‘stoned’ makes them feel chilled out and happy in their own thoughts, while others say it makes them giggly and chatty. But it can also make people feel lethargic and unmotivated, and some people become paranoid, confused and anxious.

The sort of experience you have depends on a lot of things, like;

• the kind of person you are (e.g. outgoing or shy)
• the mood you’re in (if you’re feeling down, it will probably make you feel worse)
• the environment you’re in (you’re more likely to feel paranoid or anxious if you don’t feel comfortable where you are or if you’re with people you don’t trust)
• how much THC it has (the main psychoactive compound in cannabis)
• how much CBD it has (which is thought to make users less likely to feel anxious and paranoid)
• how much you take
• how often you take it

Cannabis changes how you think and some people say it gives them a different perspective on things. It does affect your judgement though and people often think conversations or thoughts they have (whether good or bad) are much more deep or important when they’re stoned than they would do normally.

It can also make you hungry, known as having ‘the munchies’, or make you feel sick, known as ‘a whitey’. It can make you feel drowsy or sleepy and can give you the sense that time is slowing down.

THC & CBD

The hallucinogenic effects of cannabis are mainly due to a compound in cannabis called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol).

The other important compound in cannabis is CBD (cannabidiol). Skunk and other forms of strong cannabis contain high levels of THC but very little, or no, CBD.

It’s thought that CBD can balance out some of the effects of THC and make users less likely to feel anxious and paranoid. You can’t tell from looking or smelling cannabis whether there’s a balance of CBD and THC in it, but in general, hash may have more CBD than skunk.

Cannabis can make some people giggly and chatty, and other people paranoid, confused, and anxious—it really depends on the type of person taking it and the circumstances they take it under.

Some people:

• Experience mild hallucinations if they take particularly strong cannabis.
• Become lethargic and unmotivated.
• Have problems concentrating and learning new information. This is because studies suggest that cannabis effects the part of the brain we use for learning and remembering things.
• Perform badly in exams. Because cannabis impacts the part of the brain we use for learning and remembering things, regular use by young people (whose brains are still developing) has been linked to poor exam results.