When listing off drugs you can snort up your nose, marijuana usually doesn’t make the list. But with cannabinoid-spiked nasal sprays, that’s now possible, though when it comes to how high it gets you, sniffing might not be any different than smoking.
Homemade cannabis nasal sprays have existed on the fringes of the medical weed market for years now, but a Colorado company recently released a commercial version. Verra Wellness’s “nasal mist” comes in three ratios: 10:1 THC to CBD, 1:1, and 1:100. According to the company’s marketing material, spraying the mist up your nose allows for “increased bioavailability,” of the cannabinoids. But an expert I spoke to said there’s not much science to back up these kinds of claims.
“A lot of the stuff about bioavailability and any drug tends to be kind of hype-y,” said Dr. David Casarett, the chief of palliative care at Duke University who has researched and written about medical marijuana. “If one product had a bioavailability of 50 percent over, say, 25 percent, you could use a little less but it’s not like it’s a life changer.”