Vaping has become one of the most popular ways to consume cannabis. But there’s a little bit more to know than smoking – and there are many different vaping products on the market.
Vape pens with disposable cartridges and completely disposable vape pens are two relatively similar products that often cause a lot of confusion.
When comparing and contrasting the two, most people have a couple of key questions in mind. Firstly, how many hits – in a 500 mg THC vape pen or a disposable, for example.
Secondly, duration. How long will this kind of vape last? In short, is this a good investment for the way you like to consume cannabis?
Finally, is 500 mg of THC a lot? Is 300 mg? If you don’t know the facts, it can be difficult to make a decision. Here are those facts, all nicely laid out for you.
Why has vaping become so popular?
There are several important reasons why vaping has taken off in terms of popularity in recent years:
1) Better for you than smoking
Vaping might not be perfect, but it’s certainly far better for you than inhaling burning plant material and paper is. The comparative health benefits of vaping drive its success more than any other factor.
2) Discretion
People are so used to seeing nicotine vapes in use that cannabis vapes fly right under the radar in most circumstances. This discretion is good for users in all sorts of situations, particularly when you want to be polite when using cannabis in public.
3) Easy to use and functional
What’s more, vaping is – to borrow a phrase – essentially plug and play. All you need to do is press a button and inhale to consume the cannabis you want to. There’s no need to be good at rolling a joint or guess at how much cannabis you should put in it. Everything is pre-measured and adjusting the dose level usually only requires flipping a switch.
4) Measurable
That easy dose level setting is a big advantage. If you’re not sure how much cannabis will affect you because you haven’t tried it before, or you’re trying a new strain (using something like a K.I.N.D. Resin cart that’s strain-specific), and you’re not sure of its potency, knowing you can control your dose is really useful.
A vape makes this very simple indeed. Vapes with disposable cartridges are often adjustable, so you can edit your dose as required. Fully disposable pens usually come pre-set to a certain average level.
5) Portability
The final big plus that disposable cart pens and fully disposable THC vape pens offer over other methods of consuming cannabis is their portability.
If you like spending time outdoors or you want to consume cannabis to enhance your enjoyment of a gig or other event, having a device that’s so portable and easy to use is great.
How much is 500 mg of THC?
This is the million-dollar question when it comes to how long does a 500 mg THC cartridge last. Because how much is 500 mg of THC really anyway?
Obviously, it’s a set amount in terms of volume. But for each individual user, how much that set volume really counts for will vary quite a bit. This will be based on a few important factors:
1) Tolerance
If you use cannabis – and, most particularly, THC – regularly, you will likely start to develop a tolerance for it. This usually means that you need more of it to achieve the same effect. If you’re just starting out, this is great news. It means 500 mg of THC is probably going to go a much longer way for you.
Other factors affecting your tolerance levels will likely include whether you are male or female and your body fat levels.
2) Method of consumption
The way you consume cannabis has a big effect on what’s sometimes called its “bioavailability”. This essentially means how ready it is to be used by your body and may also relate to how fast after you consume it the effects can be felt.
For example, if you eat an edible product containing activated THC, you would need to wait for it to pass all the way through your digestive tract before it starts to affect you. This might take anywhere from half an hour to two full hours. Vaping has a pretty high level of bioavailability, as the THC reaches your bloodstream quickly through your lungs.
The consumption method you use may also be more or less wasteful. For instance, most people waste around 60% of the THC in a joint when they smoke it. A vape, by contrast, wastes around 45%.
This isn’t because smokers and vapers are careless. It’s because THC is stored in the cannabis plant in the form of THCA, a slightly different organic compound. In order to be “activated” – and thus be capable of creating the psychoactive effect cannabis is known for – THCA needs to be decarboxylated. This requires heat – supplied either vaporizing or burning here – and uses up some of the THC.
3) Style and manner of consumption
You might be the kind of person who takes huge drags, holds them (this has no benefit), and then releases. Then again, you might prefer smaller inhales on your vape.
Because you have a high tolerance or are looking for more powerful effects, you might need to inhale a few times to get the effects you’re looking for. If you have a lower tolerance or are looking for a milder effect, you might need only a single small inhale.
This will all affect how long any volume of THC you have in your vape cart or disposable vape pen will last.
4) Regularity of use
Are you a regular or even daily user of cannabis or THC? Or do you only use it on rare occasions?
The regularity with which you use your vape will play a major role in how long it lasts.
5) The strain of cannabis in your product
Some products labeled simply “THC cartridge 500 mg” may contain THC that has been extracted from any strain of cannabis and may be, in a sense, pure.
If your product is strain-specific though, it means a few things. First, it means you’re probably dealing with a higher quality of product. Second, the potency of your 500 mg vape THC will be based on a lot more than just how big the cartridge is.
Strain-specific products will almost certainly contain additional cannabinoids, terpenes, and other components of the original cannabis plant that can create something known as the entourage effect. This effect magnifies the potency of the THC.
THC content also varies a huge amount by individual strain.
What is a disposable THC vape cart?
Now that we understand a little about how THC works for individuals and different products, let’s consider the first of the two items we’re looking at – a 500 mg THC vape cart.
Vape cartridges like this are designed to fit into your vape pen. They are basically little reservoirs of oil in which any of a small range of types of cannabis concentrate (THC oil of 500 mg in this case) is suspended.
These carts are plugged into your vape pen a little like an old-school ink cartridge into a fountain pen. The pen itself is designed to be reused. It consists of a battery, heating element (sometimes called an atomizer), and mouthpiece, all of which – like the fountain pen – can be used again and again.
That 500 mg THC cart though is designed to be quickly swapped out and replaced whenever it runs out.
How long does a 500 mg disposable THC vape cart last?
How long will 500 mg of THC oil last? Based on what we now know about THC, habits, and tolerance, we can say that it’s hard to produce any hard and fast numbers for this. However, we can look into some facts and make some guesses based on them.
Most 500 mg cartridges are designed to last for around three minutes (that’s 150 seconds) of inhalation. So, how long does your own average inhale last? If you inhale for precisely one second and know that a good dose for you is two inhalations, then you can tell you can get 75 individual doses out of your 500 mg vape.
This could mean 75 days if you only use your vape once just before bed, for example. But the maths changes if, say, you take a more realistic average three-second inhalation each time. Then you have fifty days’ worth. If you were taking an average of three of these per day, you’d have two or three weeks’ worth of usage.
That’s the kind of thinking you need to do when judging how long a 500 mg disposable vape cart lasts. The situation changes again if you share your vape with friends. Or if you use your vape perhaps only once or twice at the weekend.
What is a disposable vape pen?
A disposable vape pen is like a disposable cart writ large. At the end of their usage, you dispose of the whole pen instead of just the cartridge.
Yet a disposable vape contains all of the same components as one designed to be reusable with a disposable cart. They also tend to be even more suitable for outside and social activities and even more portable than the standard.
Plus, disposable vape pens are a totally accessible way for a newcomer to approach trying out cannabis. That’s because they require zero knowledge to operate. They also tend to be cheaper than other options, making them attractive from a price perspective as well.
How long does a disposable THC vape pen last?
All the information that applies to a 500 mg disposable cartridge applies to a fully disposable 300 mg vape. So how long does a disposable THC vape pen last again?
Well first you have to answer these questions in order to determine how long will it last for you:
- How much do you use your vape?
- How heavily do you use it when you do?
It might be fair to say on average that a 300 mg disposable THC vape pen might last for three weeks or perhaps thirty days in total. But as we’ve seen, this can be affected by a number of different factors.
If you’re not sure, the only certain way is to choose a trusted brand, try it, and do a little experimentation of your own.
