You’ve heard of joints, bongs and brownies, but now there’s a new way for students to get high on marijuana—vaporizers. Although vaporizers may be a less detectable and less dangerous alternative for smoking on campus, students may be slow to trade in their bongs for the time-consuming and more expensive equipment.
The typical vaporizer consists of a box with an electric cord on one side and a tube on the other. The user stuffs a small quantity of marijuana between the tube and the box and plugs the cord into an outlet. When the drug is heated to a high enough temperature, it forms vapors that the user inhales through the tube.
Though this new technology has been slow to catch on at Duke, officials worry about its potential danger to students.
“I think that students will likely take in more than they expect because this is a very efficient form of delivery and also one with which they have no experience,” said Cynthia Kuhn, professor of pharmacology and cancer biology. “I would expect more overdoses. For pot, it could mean more hallucinatory experiences instead of just a pleasant buzz, although it would be unlikely to be dangerous to your life.”
Many students on campus prefer vaporizers because the devices provide incentives over regular methods. They are efficient, smokeless and odorless—indetectable by residential advisers, said a freshman who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Research indicates that vaporizers may also emit less carcinogenic fumes than other methods because they are smokeless, said Jeff Kulley, a staff psychologist at Counseling and Psychological Services.
“It also takes a while—it’s not like lighting up a joint and taking a hit. The heating process takes a bit of time and could slow down someone’s usage,” Kulley said.
But the added time it takes to get high frustrates students who use vaporizers.
“You smoke all day, everyday, and you don’t get any work done,” the freshman said. “And the high is different—it’s not as fun as other highs from bongs or joints.”
He and Kulley both did not think vaporizers would catch on at Duke.
“Typically, if a method actually takes longer to get high, most people would abandon it and try something more instantaneous,” Kulley said.
The price of the new technology adds another hitch to its potential popularity. A typical vaporizer runs anywhere from $150 to $800, depending on its design.
“Maybe the cost would affect whether somebody would want to put money toward [a vaporizer],” Kulley admitted. “Sixty-five percent of [Duke] students have either never smoked pot or only once in their lives. I don’t think someone who doesn’t smoke it regularly would invest that much money into a vaporizer.”
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