If you want to get very high quickly, according to a freelance science writer sharing her knowledge in the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, you might assume smoking the strongest weed possible is the way to go, yet new research suggests it's not that simple.

Using a smoking machine to test the intensity of individual joints, researchers now find that the amount of the active ingredient in cannabis that one gets from a joint depends on how it is engineered, writes Rachel Berkowitz in Scientific American, which has been in print since 1845.

Here's What The Scientists Say

"There's a lack of quantitative research on joint smoking. I want to understand what happens during inhalation on the chemistry side," says Markus Roggen, president and chief science officer of Delic Labs (OTCPK: DELCF), a cannabis and psilocybin research facility in British Columbia.

The Perfect Joint

Using a coffee grinder and a sieve, Roggen and his team prepared batches of one-, three and five-millimeter-diameter particles then rolled joints from 0.5 gram of each sample, pouring the particles into pre-rolled paper cones. Next, they connected the joints to a "smoke cycle simulator" that uniformly inhaled six times for three seconds each, then exhaled. Filters collected the aerosols at the machine's 3-D-printed mouthpiece and the researchers used analytical chemistry techniques to measure the aerosol levels from puffs taken at the beginning, middle and end of each joint. Wiess correctly noted that a human volunteer would have been in no condition to assess this many samples back-to-back.

The amount of THC and CBD delivered by each joint suggested that particle size did not matter in terms of intensity. For both cannabis strains, the 1-mm particle size delivered the most cannabinoid per puff, while the 5-mm size was less intense but led to longer-lasting joints.

How?

"Smaller chunks exposed a greater surface area to the flame more quickly, providing a faster and more efficient burn," Wiess explained. "And regardless of particle size, the highest concentration of cannabinoids per puff came toward the end of the joint. Meanwhile, more terpenes, chemicals in cannabis that contribute to flavor but not active drug concentration, came out of the plant at the beginning of the joint. This suggests that a joint will provide the best flavor at the beginning and deliver the strongest concentration of cannabinoids at the end."

Important For Medical Marijuana

Roggen said he hopes his research proves helpful for physicians prescribing medical marijuana to those who need to use inhaled cannabis.

Wiess, in Scientific American, noted that Roggen's research "provides a starting point for manufacturers to address issues relevant to quality control and to be able to manipulate the sensory, intoxicating and pharmaceutical effects of the resulting joint."