Unlike edibles, you don’t actually swallow sublingual forms of cannabis, which include things like tinctures, films, and dissolvable tablets. These are usually lumped together with edibles, but they’re not quite the same. You also have an endless variety to choose from, with everything from gummies to baked goods to cannabutter.

The upside is that the effects also hang around longer. The downside for some is that edibles take longer to kick in because they need to clear your digestive system before getting into your bloodstream. Unlike smoking and vaping, ingesting cannabis won’t harm your lung health. The good news? There are plenty of other ways to consume it. The bad news? There’s no safe way to smoke cannabis. This means a higher chance of overdoing it, or greening out, when vaping.

People who vape cannabis report experiencing stronger effects - regardless of the amount of THC in the product - than they do when smoking. Lung health aside, there’s also a matter of potency. Still, research on vaping cannabis is pretty limited. A 2006 study suggests that vaping actual cannabis, not concentrate, is less harmful to your respiratory system than smoking. However, this risk seems to apply only to vaping concentrates, not flower. The additive has been linked to thousands of cases of e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Much of the concern comes from inhaling vitamin E acetate, a chemical additive found in many vaping products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. There’s mounting evidence that vaping can have serious health effects.

The dangers of smoke inhalation are well known, so it’s not surprising that a lot of folks assume vaping is the healthier alternative to smoking.

Ways to smoke without pipe or paper