Edibles and Dosing

Edibles and Dosing Conversions
For Cooking With Hemp and Cannabis

As patients, when it comes to edibles and dosing, a little basic math can help us figure out how many milligrams of THC/CBD are in our medicated meals, drinks, and treats.

We start with this knowledge – each gram of dry cannabis is equivalent to 1000mg. Since we know this, we can find out how many milligrams of THC or CBD is in a gram of cannabis by multiplying the % of THC or CBD by 1000.

Let’s try it out with a quick example!

*This method can be used to determine the mg of other cannabinoids too. Just replace the % of THC with the % of the other cannabinoid and calculate the same way.

How To Find The % of Cannabinoids in Your Oil, Butter, or Tincture:

1. First, choose the amount of dry cannabis or hemp you are using.
   (ex 7grams)
2. Next, multiply that amount by 1000.
   (ex 7g X 1000 + 7000)
3. Then, find out the THC or CBD % for the strain you are using.
   (Blue Dream = about 18% THC)
   *You can look at your product packaging from the dispensary to see how many total mg your chosen strain contains. It will be listed there along with other cannabinoids and terpenes.
   
   If you are not able to determine the total amount from the packaging, you can estimate based on the strain’s approximate % (try checking the dispensary websites or maybe Leafly’s website to compare strain potency).
4. Finally, multiply the number from step 2 by the percentage in step 3. (ex 7000 X 18% = 1,260mg)

In this example, the tincture, butter, or oil will contain about 1260 milligrams of THC in total.

To Find Out How Many Milligrams Are In Each Serving of Your Finished Edibles:

Ok, now you know the total amount in the base oil, tincture, or butter. Next, you’ll need to determine the amount of THC/CBD in each serving of your finished edibles by doing one final calculation. Let’s say we used the conversion above and made a half-cup of infused butter for a dozen large chocolate chip cookies as an example.

1. Divide the total amount from step 4 above by the # of equal servings or pieces you will have in the end *in our example, how many cookies.
   (ex 1260mg / 12 cookies = 105mg of THC per cookie)

Great! Now you know the approximate amount of THC that will be in each individual cookie.

A Word of Advice

This method of calculation can give you a pretty good estimate of edible potency, but of course, it is not 100% accurate. You may have to experiment a bit to find out where your range of potency needs to be. Use this conversion only as a guide for measuring your personal edibles and adjust the amount of cannabis you use as necessary.

It’s a plus to have non-medicated snacks on hand in case you get the munchies. That way you don’t take in more THC than intended. Remember to go low and slow when dosing edibles, especially if you are not used to consuming them or maybe trying new strains.

Edibles can take up to 2 hours to fully hit your senses. If you don’t want to create a potentially awful experience, wait an hour or so to see how it’s going before having more.

That way you stay in more control of the potency and your personal experience.