How to Dose Cannabis Tinctures

• Cannabis tinctures are alcohol-based cannabinoid extractions. They’re easy to stir into beverages or take sublingually.
• Cannabis tinctures can be deceptively strong, and dosing them requires some simple calculations and a bit of experimentation.
• Finding your ideal dose can take time and testing, but we recommend starting with a low dose and increasing it in small increments.

Cannabis tinctures offer a simple, discreet, and versatile dosing method for medical cannabis patients. Whether you use them sublingually (under your tongue) or stir them into your favorite beverage, tinctures are accessible and user-friendly—for the most part.

One element of using tinctures can pose a challenge: dosing. How much cannabis tincture should you take?

In this guide, we’re demystifying tincture dosing once and for all. We’ll briefly describe tinctures (and compare them to oils, another liquid cannabis product), explain how to calculate doses, and explore dosing tips for tincture aficionados in the making.

What Is a Cannabis Tincture?

A cannabis tincture is an alcohol-based cannabinoid extract. So, it has two key ingredients:

• An alcohol base – Tinctures are typically made using neutral-flavored, stable alcohols like ethanol or glycerin (also called glycerol).
• Extracted cannabinoids – The active ingredients in cannabis tinctures are cannabinoids: THC, CBD, and others.

Some tincture formulas also include oil content (to improve flavor or texture) and additional cannabis compounds like terpenes and flavonoids.

Without getting into complex chemistry, let’s touch on how tinctures are made:

1. Manufacturers combine raw cannabis flower with an alcohol base (like ethanol or glycerin).
2. Over time, cannabinoid molecules dissolve out of the plant material and into the alcohol base. Manufacturers sometimes add heat or increase the pressure in their extraction containers to speed up this process.
3. Once an optimal quantity of cannabinoids has been extracted, the plant matter is sifted out of the mixture. The result? A cannabinoid-infused, alcohol-based liquid.

Tinctures vs. Oils

What’s the difference between a tincture and an oil? Instead of an alcohol-based extraction, cannabis oil is a liquid fat-based extraction.

To make cannabis oils, manufacturers use almost the same process used to make tinctures with one key substitution: instead of using an alcohol base, they use an oil that’s liquid at room temperature.

Examples include:

• Soybean oil
• Olive oil
• Avocado oil

You can also make infused cannabis oils at home out of fats that aren’t liquid at room temperature: butter and coconut oil, for instance.

However, these will solidify again after the extraction process, so they’re not ideal for dropper bottle storage (one of the many perks of liquid cannabis extractions).

How to Dose Cannabis Tinctures

With a clear picture of tinctures, let’s move on to dosing—how do you figure out how much of a tincture to take? Let’s zoom in on a few methods.

#1 Read the Label

Depending on your product of choice, the manufacturer might have made it easy for you. You can put your scratch paper and calculator away if you can find one or both of these metrics on the label:

• Dose (in milligrams, or mg) of a cannabinoid per drop
• Dose of a cannabinoid (in mg) per full dropper

Let’s say a manufacturer clearly states that one drop of their tincture contains 1 mg of THC—that vastly simplifies your math. All you have to do to determine how many drops to take is divide your ideal dose by the dose in one drop. If you want to take a 20 mg THC dose, for instance, that’s:

20 mg ÷ 1 mg/drop = 20 drops

Some manufacturers even put the total number of drops per full dropper on the label. So, if this hypothetical product label says that one full dropper equals 40 drops, you know that you’ll need to use about half of a dropper to get your 20 mg.

#2 Calculate the Dose per Drop

In some cases, manufacturers will only list the cannabinoid concentration on the bottle or the total mass of the cannabinoids in the entire bottle.

This is where you might have to dust off your algebra skills.

Let’s say you’re using an ethanol-based tincture, with 1% THC concentration.

First, let’s figure out how many mg of THC are in one drop.

1. Generally speaking, one drop of a liquid typically equals 0.05 milliliters (mL). So, to figure out how many mL of THC is in one drop of our hypothetical tincture, all you need to do is find 1% (the concentration of THC in this tincture) of 0.05 mL:

0.05 mL x 1% = 0.0005 mL

2. Next, we’ll need to convert a volume measurement (mL) into a mass measurement (mg) since cannabinoid doses are usually expressed in mg. To do that, we’ll need to know the density of our base liquid, ethanol: 0.789 g/mL. Most densities are measured in grams per liter (instead of milligrams); so, let’s convert 0.789 g/mL into mg/mL:

0.789 g/mL x 1000 mg/g = 789 mg/mL

3. With our density in the right units, all that’s left to do is multiply our volume of THC (0.0005 mL) by the density of ethanol (789 mg/mL) to find the mg of THC per drop:

0.0005 mL x 789 mg/mL = 0.3945 mg of THC per drop

Now that we know how many mg of THC are in each drop of this hypothetical tincture, let’s find out how many drops you’ll need to use to administer your ideal dose.

#3 Calculate Your Drop Count

Let’s stick with our same hypothetical product and say that your ideal dose of THC is 20 mg. To find out how many drops to use, just divide your target dose by the dose per drop. In this case:

20 mg ÷ 0.3945 mg/drop = 50.697 drops

For simplicity’s sake, we can round down to 50 drops here.

That might sound like a lot. Consider that:

• 20 mg of THC is not a beginner’s dose. It’s just the dose we chose for this hypothetical. Per the metrics above, a start-friendly dose of 3 mg of this fictional tincture would shake out to around 7 drops.
• Tincture bottles contain thousands of drops—potentially hundreds of doses. In the grand scheme, 50 drops is barely a drop in the bucket.

Finding the Right Dose: How to Experiment

The calculations above, while useful, make one important assumption about your patient journey: that you know what your ideal dose of a cannabinoid is.

How do you figure that out? While it’s not as precise a calculation as the one above, it still requires a somewhat scientific approach:

1. Start with a low dose – If you’re brand-new to cannabis (or you’re not sure how many mg you usually use), start small—ideally in the single digits. If you’ve never used cannabis before, consider starting with less than 5 mg.
2. Experiment with fidelity – Getting good data requires repetition. Unless you have a negative experience with your first dose (which means you should stop and reevaluate your dose or your product selection before trying again), you should repeat your starter dose a few times to get a feel for your body’s response.
3. Document your results – Once the effects of your cannabis dose kick in, write down how you feel (or record a voice note, take a video, or dictate to a friend—whatever works for you). This is the qualitative data you’ll use to determine where to go next.
4. Blaze a path forward – If you didn’t feel much during your first few experiments, increase your dose incrementally (and repeat each experimental dose a few times) until you reach your ideal experience. If you were a little overwhelmed by your first dose, take it down a notch. Or, if you found an ideal niche on your first try (you lucky duck), stick with this dose for a while and readjust as needed.

TeleLeaf: Your Source for Cannabis Care and Knowledge

If you’re a newcomer to cannabis, you might be a little overwhelmed. After all, this is a lot of information to take in at once.

Luckily, there’s a simple way to become an armchair expert in all things marijuana: chat with a medical cannabis healthcare provider. That’s what TeleLeaf is all about. We connect prospective medical marijuana patients with the licensed, expert clinicians they need to find healing with cannabis.

Ready to learn more about all-natural healing (and get your medical cannabis card)? Reach out today to schedule an appointment.

Sources:

Healthline. CBD Oil vs. Tincture: What’s the Difference?.
https://www.healthline.com/health/cbd-oil-vs-tincture

Flower Power Botanicals. Understanding Cannabis Tinctures.
https://flowerpowerbotanicals.com/what-is-cannabis-tincture-the-ultimate-guide/

The BMJ. Alcohol Intake: Measure for Measure.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/