2y ago

Confused 2nd timer - does heat break down THC?

Hi there, have a question (coming from a legal municipality):

Recently picked up a 1g preroll of cannabis from the dispensary and left it in my car for a week (ambient temps around 41°). When I went to smoke it, it smelled the same and looked the same (was in a sealed plastic container) but it had no effect whatsoever. Does THC degrade at high ambient temps?

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So when dry vaporizing we are basically doing the same thing...... except much hotter - we're talking closer to 150c and hotter to release the vapor from the herb.
In fact, we use different temperatures (between 150c and 220C) to release different medical benefits from the flower (low temps around 150C for more uplifting cerebral effects, and high temps over 200C for more pain relief and sedation).
Recently picked up a 1g preroll of cannabis from the dispensary and left it in my car for a week (ambient temps around 41°). When I went to smoke it, it smelled the same and looked the same (was in a sealed plastic container) but it had no effect whatsoever. Does THC degrade at high ambient temps?
Yes something will start to degrade at 40c, but what you experienced is not that......
Fun story for you:
I had a similar experience in Las Vegas. While attending a CHAMPS trade show (420 industry b2b event) in Las Vegas, the different recreational dispensaries were giving away free pre-rolls and large discounts to any customer who had a CHAMPS badge from the show. Since I don't combust (dry vaporizing only), I took the free pre-roll from one dispensary and emptied the shake. Then I cooked it in my dry herbal vaporizer.
Except I got literally zero vapor!!!! I honestly thought my vaporizer was broken. Until I reloaded the device with some fresh top-shelf flower and boom, I got a ton of vapor. As it turns out, the dispensary I visited was extracting all concentrate from the herb to sell wax concentrate to customers. The leftover shake from that process was put into pre-rolls and sold as cheap 1g smokes despite the fact that they contained essentially zero active compounds.
To the average smoker, its cheap and it produces smoke (plus the combustion creates a toxic cocktail of carcinogenics and carbon monoxide can yield temporary euphoric and sedative affects which fools many ents). But with my dry herbal vaporizer I immediately noticed the problem.
So to answer your question, no I highly doubt that leaving a pre-roll in a car at 40c would cook off ALL active compounds. Maybe some low-temp terps, but not everything.
Does that dispensary also sell concentrates? It's very likely they are trying to double-dip by selling both the concentrates and the trash shake as pre-rolls so they can increase profits. And I'm sure the local government doesn't care that they're misleading customers - because they're still earning tax revenue and all that jazz.
If you don't believe me, it would be really easy to test with a dry herbal vaporizer - put some of that pre-roll into a dry vaporizer set to 200C and start cooking - do you see much vapor production? Or does the device produce practically zero vapor? That'd be because there are no active compounds left to extract at those temps.
Just my $0.02
- I've had this exact same experience multiple times, also in Vegas but in California, Oregon, Massachusetts. The simple fact of the matter seems to be that a majority of prerolls are made from low quality shake and many times sifted flower. I feel like the only prerolled joints worth getting are if they have a lot of oil on it for less than $10.
  This is the same case for some herb as well, you just get flower and it vapes for all of 3 minutes before it stops producing vapor. Tasty enough for the beginning but it just speeds by.
  
  Interesting! But it doesn't surprise me
  > This is the same case for some herb as well, you just get flower and it vapes for all of 3 minutes before it stops producing vapor. Tasty enough for the beginning but it just speeds by.
  Yep, this is where I get all sciency and use my Arizer XQ2 to measure the quality of new strains (as well as determine if they are indeed a sativa leaning or indica leaning hybrid based on the temps and vapor production). Basically I'll preheat the device at a desired temp for 20+ minutes, load the device with a measured dose of herb using my Mighty Scoop-n-tamp and then set fan speed to low and slowly fill a balloon. I then hold the herb up to the light and view the opacity of the vapor cloud in the bag.
  The more opaque, the higher the concentration of active compounds at that temp and thus the higher quality of the herb.
  Low grade strains might produce minimal vapor or a mildly opaque balloon, while some top tier strains will fill the bag completely opaque with milky vapor on a single scoop of herb.
  Like I said, I also test at different temps with fresh loads of herb to test the strain and see how much vapor it produces at lower temps verses higher temps (if it's there's minimal vapor at lower temps but significantly more at higher temps, than it's likely an indica or cbd leaning strain)
- I hope you reported this company. Selling or distributing flower to consumers that has gone through the hydrocarbon extraction process is both disturbingly unethical and also super dangerous. I've seen some wild shit over the years, but if I knew someone in the recreational market was doing this I would report them immediately. Seriously, fuck those people.
  
  I should have, but this was also shortly after recreational was made legal in Vegas. I haven't returned to confirm it wasn't just a fluke.
  But I totally agree
Yes and no.
Your THC is always degrading into other minor cannabinoids, but it happens very slowly at room temperature. Heating it up will speed that reaction up, though not by a ton until it gets pretty dang hot (this is why bud that's already been vaped tends to be very heavy in CBN). A week in a hot car probably didn't do wonders for your preroll, but depending on where it was (direct sunlight or shade, in the glove box or on the floor, etc), the amount of actual heat that the preroll was exposed to could vary quite a bit (my center console stays weirdly cool, for instance, but the glovebox gets very hot), so I can't say for sure if being left in the car degraded the THC.
That said, terpenes are quite volatile, and tend to influence the entourage effect of the weed, so you also could have lost enough terps to potentially dull some of the week's expected effects as well.
Yes
- no
It does, and that same thing happens with direct sunlight even when cold. Unlike what some people say it's not evaporating it's simply degrading into a non psychoactive cannabinoid cbn. Sorry you had to learn this way lol, but it happens
Heat is one factor, being in a hot car could have affected it somewhat but on its own that wouldnt be enough to completely degrade all cannabanoids. If they were all degraded then all the THC would have turned to cbd and CBN which would have made you very sleepy. Ground flower looses freshness very quickly since there's more surface area to react with oxygen/the air. You also probably just got sold some garbage bud like a REALLY low grade shake or even maybe already extracted leftovers like D3 suggested. Car temps generally don't exceed 110f unless you're car camping in death valley. The lowest cannabanoids and terps will start to vaporize is around 200-300f.
Always buy bud flowers intact and roll your own joints. If you don't want to learn how to make a joint from papers and filters I recommend cones which are already preassembled and come with packing stick. Or just get a cheap bong or pipe.
Keeping the bud intact until your ready to grind and smoke will preserve its freshness and flavor.
With Good bud flowers you can visually inspect them they should be covered in crystals and small colorful hairs. Dispensaries can make this hard since all bud is prepackaged in non clear containers but most flower worth is smoke will at the very least have a moderate amount of crystals and hairs.
Sorry your experience was shitty and money was wasted, prerolls aren't worth the $ IMO.
If you decide to keep smokibg and want cheap bud in bulk to mix in with the good stuff you can buy Delta 8 flower from online hemp flower sellers like industrialhempfarms which let's you buy big 1 pound bags for 400-700$ depending on flower. It won't be one hit wonder flower since thc9 has to be below .3% and the thc8 is about 5% through industrialhempfarms but my god it will last you months and months and will get you a little high.
I don't think the preroll decarbed in your car. What's more likely is that it was type 3 or type 2 flower, maybe even sugar leaf, and you didn't get high from it.
If it still smelled and tasted like herb when you smoked it then the terpenes weren't cooked off which means any cannabinoids were still present.

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