I respect the attempt to accurately create a report on vape cartridges, however I'd like to note a couple important inaccuracies. My source for this is myself -- I worked in the cannabis industry for about 4 years (worked in California for 2 years, then in Massachussetts for 2 years - up until about a year ago).
The first inaccuracy I noted was the $ amount per gram extract and the 10x markup remark (they REALLY don't make sense, where do you get these numbers?). Also related, in most states, a company would actually lose money if they were to process their flower for vape cartridges. Vape cartridges are often only worth the investment because the byproducts of plant trimming and packaging aren't sellable otherwise.
The second inaccuracy is in regards to cartridge filling; forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you were talking directly to the people marketing the vape-cartridge filling machines? The reason I say this is because it's very difficult to machine-fill extract in carts due to how highly variable the viscosity can be from batch to batch (trim from different strains is enough to create the inconsistent viscosity). This makes it incredibly difficult to fill without the injectors getting clogged; a manual employee process is often needed. Personally, it sounds a lot like someone was trying to get some free advertising from you.
Outside of that, there were some minor issues or discrepencies, but I won't harp on them as the article does seem to make an honest effort at giving an unbiased report.
To add to iaw's response, it's worth noting that a large amount of value flower has is in relation to it's presentation and appearance. Trimming of flower is done to both remove excess plant material as well as create a more favorable product for consumers.
Because this process of trimming is necessary for the sale of flower, any vertically integrated business that both grows and sells their own flower will inevitably create this excess of trim byproduct.
There are non-negligible amounts of THC is the trimmings of the flower even though they aren't comparable to the actual flower. These used to be a waste product sold/given away but now it is turned into distillates/oils.
> Even though the intended use for these devices is a 2-5 second draw at no more than 2 draws before the device must be rested so as to not overheat, not every consumer uses the devices in this way or knows this technique.
> users should not be taking more than three draws per hour on average
--------
Even in fully legal store (up in canada) I have never seen either of those warnings.
Pot smokers routinely go way way way over that limit. Is this a limit because THC levels will be supposedly deadly or because of something else (technical etc).
Public health / medicine has just gone off the rails. I believe pot smoking is bad for you, but where do they even come up with these recommendation.
The amount of THC you would have to ingest to overdose is more than you could feasibly consume. In lab rats with zero existing tolerance to THC, the LD50 of THC is 36-40 mg/kg in a single dose [1]. For a 100kg individual with no tolerance, that means a single dose of 3600-4000 mg of pure THC inhaled continuously until consumed would result in death 50% of the time. That is an absurd amount.
Edit: And that 40mg/kg is the inhalation LD50 dose. For edibles / intragastric, the LD50 is 800-1200 mg/kg. So a 100kg individual who consumes 80000mg of THC-laced edibles. A standard gummy bear dose is 10mg, so a 100kg individual with no tolerance would have to eat 8000 of those to have a 50% chance of death.
Edit 2: FYI, the standard THC vape cartridges that are 1g of ~75-90% pure THC oil, which is good for 200-300 pulls of 3-5 seconds each.
From my understanding the concern about vapes is super heating the chemicals inside the vape (or the vape itself). Also potentially over-heating the filament in the cartridge, or the metal conducting parts of the battery.
My guess is the restriction is based on those things.
I have a flavour-only vape that I got just to check out what were all the kid going crazy over these days - and never heard that kind of warning either
I think this is just a mistake or miscalculation on the author's part. I use one of these devices every day and anyone who's familiar with the operation would easily be able to tell when it's overheating; the vapor becomes uncomfortably hot and smells different. This will happen when you heat the element for maybe than 7-10s, the frequency per hour has never made any difference in my experience.
I used to smoke regular weed but in recent years have totally converted over to using vape cartridges. The benefits are too great:
- No odor.
- More consistent dosing.
- More control over the exact CBD:THC ratio.
- Lower cost per dose.
- Less paraphernalia lying around/more discreet.
In fact, it's actually significantly reduced my intake. I now take 1-2 puffs of a 10:1 CBD:THC mixture before bed some nights of the week. I get the calm without paranoia or disorientation. If I want to "feel high", I can take a few extra puffs, or try the 5:1, or even 1:1. I don't even touch the "Max THC" stuff clocking in at 80% THC by weight anymore, whereas in a past life that would have been my go-to. It really changes things when a "bowl" of "sour skunk" is no longer the minimum unit of dosage.
However, I am very thankful I now live in a legal state. When grey market cartridges first started becoming available I did a lot of research into them. Definitely there is a greater risk smoking a black or grey market THC cart than smoking black or grey market marijuana (see all the vitamin E stuff). When they first came out, I smoked them with no ill effects. But I didn't even know the risk I was taking, and today I would not touch the stuff. See r/fakecartridges, r/cleancarts, for other people who actually care about how shady some of this stuff is.
Today I only buy cartridges from reputable brands from licensed dispensaries, that have lab reports FROM THE SAME BATCH included on the packaging, that test for above and beyond what is legally required. Is this confirmed to keep me safe...no. There is always a risk with untested and understudied products like this. However it's a lot different than grey market carts or vaping nicotine, where you might take 300 puffs/day, versus 1-2. I have to imagine if there are heavy metals, the former is resulting in far more concentrated doses of it. It's a risk I'm willing to take for something I enjoy and that I feel improves my life.
I honestly hope for even stricter regulation. The price per dose is still incredibly cheap even with the taxes and overhead from compliance. I would gladly pay $100/1G for something that lasts months and has a heavily scrutinized chain of custody, that's cheaper than a single nice dinner or a weekend or two of drinks.
The major problem with cartridges is, beyond the very real risk of effectively having a pipe bomb in your hand pointed at your face, is that those in charge of formulas are assholes. They're desperately trying to duplicate the experience of smoking weed, including intentionally adding propylene glycol and other irritants for the effect of throat irritation to make you cough. They're failing and ruining the experience. This is asinine. The tastes are horrible and lean towards chemically, synthetic tastes.
The other problem is the massive, absurdly huge, selection. Choices are great, but they went absolutely nuts (and the same is true of flower selections), and I would assume it is a stoner in charge of all this crap. Bad idea.
The high from cartridges is very one dimensional, just not as potent as decent flower.
Also, you're out of your mind if you think cartridges are cheaper than flower. It isn't even close, cost is on the order of 300% more expensive for cartridges.
If all this could be fixed, if the makers would stop assuming what consumers want and just produce an honest product without the bullshit, carts might become superior.
Totally agree about the nonsense marketing of effectively identical cartridges (and everything else weed related). I pretty much ignore everything said by dispensaries directly and just go with whatever manufacturer has the most transparent info about their production processes. I find there is a real lack of professionalism in the industry, I would honestly prefer to buy my shit from the dispensary equivalent of an accounting firm if I could.
I was curious about your 300% figure and checked out my local dispensary. Looking at the cheapest ounces, it's like $120. Let's say .1g is a dose for me, and so I get 280 doses from that. That's around 40c a dose. Comparing to an "expensive" cart at $70, let's make the conservative estimate I only get 100 doses from that. That's 70c a dose. That's 175% different, with the most favorable possible comparison to flower.
More realistically I would say that smoking < .2g at a time is almost impractical. That limits the amount of doses you get from flower. And realistically, I would get closer to 150 doses from a high THC 1G cart. So now carts are actually more favorable!
The article specifically mentions that THC cartridges - at least the ones they reviewed - don't use propylene glycol. Your second problem is, as you say, not unique to cartridges. I kind of agree with your third point. Not sure what the solve is there. Yes they're more expensive. The only way to have the most competitive market with the best product is federal legalization.
> They're desperately trying to duplicate the experience of smoking weed, including intentionally adding propylene glycol and other irritants for the effect of throat irritation to make you cough.
Is THAT what it is? I've only taken to vapes recently and inhaling too hard has me coughing so hard I start sweating. Nothing else I've ever smoked kicked the hell out of me like that.
> The other problem is the massive, absurdly huge, selection. Choices are great, but they went absolutely nuts (and the same is true of flower selections), and I would assume it is a stoner in charge of all this crap. Bad idea.
Is the craft brew industry also a mistake? For medicinal marijuana I can see users wanting a well regulated, simple commodity. For most recreational marijuana users though, they treat the smoking as an experience. The pot heads I know are always sharing new strains they found or developed and seem really excited when another pothead brings by something novel.
Investing in a quality dry herb vaporizer is even more cost effective. I don’t even smoke very often but have the coveted Volcano and it is incredible.
> Societal evils aside, this could be a very precise drug-delivery system that can be cheaply mass-produced.
It’s not really that precise at all because it’s up to the user to control how long to inhale.
The only reason vape users can dose somewhat precisely is that the drug had a short and obvious feedback loop (how they feel) and they dose many times over the life of a cartridge, allowing them to learn how to dose properly. THC is also very forgiving in overdose, which isn’t a feature shared by most drugs.
I have a little pen called a dosist that stops atomizing the thc once you receive a "dose". It also vibrates to make it more obvious. I love it. I'm able to regulate the amount I use and know the effects I feel from x amount of doses.
To be fair most thc vapes are just a battery putting out fixed voltage and a button. The fancy ones are nice ofc but nothing more than a samsung 18650 battery and a variable voltage controller, maybe microusb charging instead of screw on too.
That's a great and positive way to look at vaping. Every time I hear about "medical marijuana" I think about the probable link to schizophrenia, which will likely dwarf the pot economy in both direct and indirect costs.
-- edited to add citations --
Spent about 10 seconds finding these using Brave search. For folks who can't resist snarky comments, you have to admit it's strange that this is not at least acknowledged amidst a state-by-state push for legalization.
>> "There is now reasonable evidence from longitudinal studies that regular cannabis use predicts an increased risk of schizophrenia and of reporting psychotic symptoms. These relationships have persisted after controlling for confounding variables such as personal characteristics and other drug use. The relationships did not seem to be explained by cannabis being used to self-medicate symptoms of psychosis."
>> "The results from these longitudinal analyses show the proportion of cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use disorder has increased 3- to 4-fold during the past 2 decades, which is expected given previously described increases in the use and potency of cannabis."
So where's the schizophrenia epidemic among pot-smoking hippies? It's had like 50 years to surface, man.
In all seriousness, there are a number of cohorts where this should be showing up with some regularity. Can you point me towards any of them?
All the hippies I know are still out there hippie-ing and living their lives, going to Dead shows, and so on. And, from my experience, they seem to be an unusually vigorous group for being so old.
> Every time I hear about "medical marijuana" I think about the probable link to schizophrenia
Have you considered that perhaps schizophrenics seek out drugs? Something like 70-90% of schizophrenics smoke cigarettes. Do cigarettes cause schizophrenia, or do schizophrenics seek out cigarettes?
I have found that the industry for the production of extracts that go in these cartridges is very widespread, sometimes operating in plain site.
For example, I bought a very large (15 gallon) vacuum chamber system directly from a US-based vendor. My use-case was to off-gas various slurries and compounds I use for my hobbies, such as casting molten aluminum. Although it was not directly mentioned on their e-commerce site, after a few follow-up marketing emails, I quickly realized they were geared towards solutions for businesses performing high-yield CBD extraction processes.
Ignoring all the politics of the related industries, I thought it was pretty interesting to find such a business by accident and that anyone with the right circumstances could potentially perform these processes with equipment available to general consumers - though I imagine there may be some chemicals that require a permit at the necessary concentrations.
It was the same deal with buying any sort of hydroponics or aquaponics systems. I was a hobby gardener in a city apartment so had to do sealed systems for growing plants and I always got the oddest looks when the employees at various stores realized that when I was discussing growing my "peas" and "tomatoes" that I actually meant peas and tomatoes.
Its a plant with no novel mechanical or chemical properties as far as I am aware when it comes to processing, so there's no real way for the government to block the marketing of the tools without hitting many other industries
Butane isn't generally a preferred solvent, i suspect people use it because it's easily available in relatively pure form. I'm far from an expert but brands typically advertise something more like a supercritical CO2 based extraction process.
Which i guess is to say, I think they blew up their apartment because their goverenment doesn't allow commercial chemistry to be applied at relevant scales to marijuana, users are then jumping into suboptimal home-made solutions.
One of the more interesting innovations that I've seen in this kind of technology is atomizing it using a piezoelectric ultrasound emitter which vibrates it into a vapour instead of using any combustion at all.
Combustion is required to decarboxylate the THC (which is why eating raw bud will not get you high). Obviously the workaround would have the juice decarbed but I think that it would be difficult to find that in the wild.
Eating raw cannabis will absolutely get you high, and heating it doesn't noticeably affect the potency.
"Decarboxylation" or the removal of a carboxyl group, where it's usually released as CO2, is a common reaction in chemistry, and it doesn't tend to require a lot of activation energy. Every amino acid is decarboxylated after you consume it. Carbonic acid in soda decarboxylates itself at standard atmospheric temperature.
And in the case of your stomach, the HCl will decarboxylate the weed you eat just fine.
I don't consider that to be a comparable technology based pretty much on what goes in it to be vaporized. These are a lot closer to things like ultrasonic nebulizers for athsma/COPD medication.
What gets me is the carrier substance. I think I heard propelyne glycol and vegetable glycerin in the lungs may have metabolic effects. Wonder what alternatives exist or are already being used in medicine now.
These cartridges are sketchy as fuck; I don't trust any of them and I don't think anybody else should either. Do yourself a favor and buy a vape you can pack ground herb into.
All of the cartridges I buy have a breakdown of THC, THCa, CBD, CBDa, and eight different turpenes. I trust their analysis and quality control more than most consumable products.
The concerning element is not the marijuana extracts but the additives they are suspended in, which are generally unregulated and undisclosed (the cannibinoid analysis is there because it is legally mandated, and is the basis for tax assessment). Unfortunately, this recent Chicago Sun Times investigation[1] also demonstrated that even our very strict testing protocols in Illinois are apparently ineffective, with almost none of the tested products matching the lab results printed on the package.
What is your basis for this trust? If it's a general faith in the good nature of other people, then I respect and envy that. But lacking that faith, I see a system where federal oversight is nonexistent and state oversight is probably some combination of incompetent or corrupt. If I had to guess, I think most companies in this industry are probably on the level. But a commercial incentive for doctoring lab reports clearly exists (even for independent labs) and at least a few companies have been busted for it.
Federal legalization and FDA/USDA oversight can't come soon enough.
I know some black market producers and they just fake the breakdowns. Local dispensaries have no qualms about buying these black market counterfeit carts. I have seen the backroom deals. Your trust is unfounded.
The article is about how the cart itself is the potential issue, and none of the tests results take in to account real life - or potential (mis) use of the cart.
The article is about the cartridges themselves. They heat things with a metal heating element that can be damaged and release metal ions at operational temperatures.
The marijuana testing lab industry is rife with fraud, it doesn't give me much confidence. (Flower could be compromised too, but I think the less processing done before purchase, the less chance there is for something to go wrong.)
DIY extracts seems like a good alternative. But vaping ground flower is very straight forward and low effort, so it seems like the obvious choice to me.
Neither of those options fix this issue. Cartridge metals can seep into the vape material over time or after elements have been heated up a few times; testing won't catch that. Making your own distillate, similarly, won't protect you against heavy metals in the cartridge.
The irony is not lost on my that at the same time on HN Homepage JUUL is being banned and benefits of THC Carts is being discussed. Exciting, and rather confusing times.
The devices themselves are closely related, but the marketing and sales are worlds apart. Most THC carts are marketed to adults as cannabis delivery systems. JUUL were targeted at children as harmless tasty fun and JUUL was deceptive about the amount of nicotine in the product. What took JUUL down was the reaction they generated to protect children from a habit forming product with documented harmful characteristics.
Readit News
The first inaccuracy I noted was the $ amount per gram extract and the 10x markup remark (they REALLY don't make sense, where do you get these numbers?). Also related, in most states, a company would actually lose money if they were to process their flower for vape cartridges. Vape cartridges are often only worth the investment because the byproducts of plant trimming and packaging aren't sellable otherwise.
The second inaccuracy is in regards to cartridge filling; forgive me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you were talking directly to the people marketing the vape-cartridge filling machines? The reason I say this is because it's very difficult to machine-fill extract in carts due to how highly variable the viscosity can be from batch to batch (trim from different strains is enough to create the inconsistent viscosity). This makes it incredibly difficult to fill without the injectors getting clogged; a manual employee process is often needed. Personally, it sounds a lot like someone was trying to get some free advertising from you.
Outside of that, there were some minor issues or discrepencies, but I won't harp on them as the article does seem to make an honest effort at giving an unbiased report.
Interesting. Can you say what those byproducts are exactly? Is it stems, seeds and a bit of resin then?
Because this process of trimming is necessary for the sale of flower, any vertically integrated business that both grows and sells their own flower will inevitably create this excess of trim byproduct.
There are non-negligible amounts of THC is the trimmings of the flower even though they aren't comparable to the actual flower. These used to be a waste product sold/given away but now it is turned into distillates/oils.
> users should not be taking more than three draws per hour on average
--------
Even in fully legal store (up in canada) I have never seen either of those warnings.
Pot smokers routinely go way way way over that limit. Is this a limit because THC levels will be supposedly deadly or because of something else (technical etc).
Public health / medicine has just gone off the rails. I believe pot smoking is bad for you, but where do they even come up with these recommendation.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004100...
Edit: And that 40mg/kg is the inhalation LD50 dose. For edibles / intragastric, the LD50 is 800-1200 mg/kg. So a 100kg individual who consumes 80000mg of THC-laced edibles. A standard gummy bear dose is 10mg, so a 100kg individual with no tolerance would have to eat 8000 of those to have a 50% chance of death.
Edit 2: FYI, the standard THC vape cartridges that are 1g of ~75-90% pure THC oil, which is good for 200-300 pulls of 3-5 seconds each.
My guess is the restriction is based on those things.
Deleted Comment
I recently switched to vaping from smoking, and I hope that's not the case for nic vapes, because then I'm seriously overdoing it.
- No odor.
- More consistent dosing.
- More control over the exact CBD:THC ratio.
- Lower cost per dose.
- Less paraphernalia lying around/more discreet.
In fact, it's actually significantly reduced my intake. I now take 1-2 puffs of a 10:1 CBD:THC mixture before bed some nights of the week. I get the calm without paranoia or disorientation. If I want to "feel high", I can take a few extra puffs, or try the 5:1, or even 1:1. I don't even touch the "Max THC" stuff clocking in at 80% THC by weight anymore, whereas in a past life that would have been my go-to. It really changes things when a "bowl" of "sour skunk" is no longer the minimum unit of dosage.
However, I am very thankful I now live in a legal state. When grey market cartridges first started becoming available I did a lot of research into them. Definitely there is a greater risk smoking a black or grey market THC cart than smoking black or grey market marijuana (see all the vitamin E stuff). When they first came out, I smoked them with no ill effects. But I didn't even know the risk I was taking, and today I would not touch the stuff. See r/fakecartridges, r/cleancarts, for other people who actually care about how shady some of this stuff is.
Today I only buy cartridges from reputable brands from licensed dispensaries, that have lab reports FROM THE SAME BATCH included on the packaging, that test for above and beyond what is legally required. Is this confirmed to keep me safe...no. There is always a risk with untested and understudied products like this. However it's a lot different than grey market carts or vaping nicotine, where you might take 300 puffs/day, versus 1-2. I have to imagine if there are heavy metals, the former is resulting in far more concentrated doses of it. It's a risk I'm willing to take for something I enjoy and that I feel improves my life.
I honestly hope for even stricter regulation. The price per dose is still incredibly cheap even with the taxes and overhead from compliance. I would gladly pay $100/1G for something that lasts months and has a heavily scrutinized chain of custody, that's cheaper than a single nice dinner or a weekend or two of drinks.
The other problem is the massive, absurdly huge, selection. Choices are great, but they went absolutely nuts (and the same is true of flower selections), and I would assume it is a stoner in charge of all this crap. Bad idea.
The high from cartridges is very one dimensional, just not as potent as decent flower.
Also, you're out of your mind if you think cartridges are cheaper than flower. It isn't even close, cost is on the order of 300% more expensive for cartridges.
If all this could be fixed, if the makers would stop assuming what consumers want and just produce an honest product without the bullshit, carts might become superior.
I was curious about your 300% figure and checked out my local dispensary. Looking at the cheapest ounces, it's like $120. Let's say .1g is a dose for me, and so I get 280 doses from that. That's around 40c a dose. Comparing to an "expensive" cart at $70, let's make the conservative estimate I only get 100 doses from that. That's 70c a dose. That's 175% different, with the most favorable possible comparison to flower.
More realistically I would say that smoking < .2g at a time is almost impractical. That limits the amount of doses you get from flower. And realistically, I would get closer to 150 doses from a high THC 1G cart. So now carts are actually more favorable!
Is THAT what it is? I've only taken to vapes recently and inhaling too hard has me coughing so hard I start sweating. Nothing else I've ever smoked kicked the hell out of me like that.
Is the craft brew industry also a mistake? For medicinal marijuana I can see users wanting a well regulated, simple commodity. For most recreational marijuana users though, they treat the smoking as an experience. The pot heads I know are always sharing new strains they found or developed and seem really excited when another pothead brings by something novel.
The tech in these - high-power electronics, computer controlled heating profiles etc is quite sophisticated.
Societal evils aside, this could be a very precise drug-delivery system that can be cheaply mass-produced.
It’s not really that precise at all because it’s up to the user to control how long to inhale.
The only reason vape users can dose somewhat precisely is that the drug had a short and obvious feedback loop (how they feel) and they dose many times over the life of a cartridge, allowing them to learn how to dose properly. THC is also very forgiving in overdose, which isn’t a feature shared by most drugs.
edit: https://dosist.com/faq
It’s billions of dollars a year
-- edited to add citations --
Spent about 10 seconds finding these using Brave search. For folks who can't resist snarky comments, you have to admit it's strange that this is not at least acknowledged amidst a state-by-state push for legalization.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2424288/
>> "There is now reasonable evidence from longitudinal studies that regular cannabis use predicts an increased risk of schizophrenia and of reporting psychotic symptoms. These relationships have persisted after controlling for confounding variables such as personal characteristics and other drug use. The relationships did not seem to be explained by cannabis being used to self-medicate symptoms of psychosis."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abst...
>> "The results from these longitudinal analyses show the proportion of cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use disorder has increased 3- to 4-fold during the past 2 decades, which is expected given previously described increases in the use and potency of cannabis."
In all seriousness, there are a number of cohorts where this should be showing up with some regularity. Can you point me towards any of them?
All the hippies I know are still out there hippie-ing and living their lives, going to Dead shows, and so on. And, from my experience, they seem to be an unusually vigorous group for being so old.
Have you considered that perhaps schizophrenics seek out drugs? Something like 70-90% of schizophrenics smoke cigarettes. Do cigarettes cause schizophrenia, or do schizophrenics seek out cigarettes?
For example, I bought a very large (15 gallon) vacuum chamber system directly from a US-based vendor. My use-case was to off-gas various slurries and compounds I use for my hobbies, such as casting molten aluminum. Although it was not directly mentioned on their e-commerce site, after a few follow-up marketing emails, I quickly realized they were geared towards solutions for businesses performing high-yield CBD extraction processes.
Ignoring all the politics of the related industries, I thought it was pretty interesting to find such a business by accident and that anyone with the right circumstances could potentially perform these processes with equipment available to general consumers - though I imagine there may be some chemicals that require a permit at the necessary concentrations.
Its a plant with no novel mechanical or chemical properties as far as I am aware when it comes to processing, so there's no real way for the government to block the marketing of the tools without hitting many other industries
https://www.iltalehti.fi/kotimaa/a/5038092f-c43b-4051-9c24-3...
Which i guess is to say, I think they blew up their apartment because their goverenment doesn't allow commercial chemistry to be applied at relevant scales to marijuana, users are then jumping into suboptimal home-made solutions.
Dead Comment
Eating raw cannabis will absolutely get you high, and heating it doesn't noticeably affect the potency.
"Decarboxylation" or the removal of a carboxyl group, where it's usually released as CO2, is a common reaction in chemistry, and it doesn't tend to require a lot of activation energy. Every amino acid is decarboxylated after you consume it. Carbonic acid in soda decarboxylates itself at standard atmospheric temperature.
And in the case of your stomach, the HCl will decarboxylate the weed you eat just fine.
What gets me is the carrier substance. I think I heard propelyne glycol and vegetable glycerin in the lungs may have metabolic effects. Wonder what alternatives exist or are already being used in medicine now.
1. https://chicago.suntimes.com/cannabis/2021/12/10/22828340/le...
Federal legalization and FDA/USDA oversight can't come soon enough.
DIY extracts seems like a good alternative. But vaping ground flower is very straight forward and low effort, so it seems like the obvious choice to me.
I have tried but nothing else comes close for consuming extracts When outside my house.