Some cannabis types are safer than others. This is what the experts recommend

Cannabis tinctures have the advantage of accurate dosing.

Sarah Klein

More than a quarter of adults in the United States and Canada use cannabis for medical purposes. And the overwhelming majority - nearly 80 percent - smoke it.

“For a number of reasons, that’s a bad idea,” said Peter Grinspoon, a primary care physician and board-certified addiction specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School and the author of “Aging Well With Cannabis.”

“I can understand why people smoke, because it can be really clinically effective,” he said. “If you have chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, you can’t exactly take an edible and wait 45 minutes for it to kick in.”