The History and Evolution of Cannabis Vaping

Cannabis just might be the world’s most popular non-edible plant. It’s so well loved, in fact, that people seem to come up with new ways of consuming it just about every year. Cannabis vaping is a perfect case in point.

People figured out long ago that smoking cannabis wasn’t necessary if you wanted to enjoy the plant’s compounds by inhalation but didn’t want to inhale smoke. If you heat the plant to a temperature just below the point of combustion, the active compounds leave the plant material as vapor. Inhaling the vapor is called “vaping.”

Commercial cannabis vaping products have existed for more than 30 years – a fact that isn’t widely known. Today, though, vaping means something very different to most people than what it meant over three decades ago. 

Ready for an interesting trip? This is the history of cannabis vaping.

Dry Herb Vaping with Manual Heating

For many years, cannabis vaping always involved taking dried cannabis flowers and heating them to just below the point of combustion. People were making their own vaporizers as early as the 1980s and perhaps even before that. The first cannabis vaporizer that was manufactured for commercial sale, though, was the Shake & Vape. 

Created in 1993 by Frank William Wood – better known as Eagle Bill Amato – the Shake & Vape was a glass pipe that relied entirely on manual heating. You’d put your herbs in the bowl of the pipe and heat the bottom of the pipe with a lighter. Upon seeing the vapor rise from the herbs, you’d shake the pipe to distribute the heat and inhale through the stem.

Dry Herb Vaping with Electric Heating

Using a lighter to heat the herbs manually was effective, but it wasn’t very convenient. It was also potentially unsafe since it required an open flame. There was a strong demand for vaporizers with electric heating elements, and the demand was met later in the 1990s by a product called the BC Vaporizer. 

The BC Vaporizer was a large desktop device that plugged into a wall outlet and had a metal plate for heating. A glass bulb covered the plate and herbs, and you’d inhale the vapor through a long tube. This concept was further refined in 2000 with the Volcano vaporizer by Storz & Bickel, which provided more consistent heating and had a built-in fan to propel the vapor.

It wasn’t long before people began to demand battery-powered vaporizers that would allow them to enjoy their favorite herb on the go. Manufacturers were quick to satisfy the demand as soon as the battery technology was good enough, but the early battery-powered vaporizers were sometimes problematic. It was hard to find the right heat setting to create the desired intensity without scorching the herbs and producing smoke. By the end of the 2010s, though, battery-powered vaporizers had become very reliable. 

Today, even the smallest dry herb vaporizers produce thick plumes of vapor with absolutely no burning or scorching – and although battery-powered vaporizers are still very popular, many people continue to use larger desktop units as well. Dry herb vaping in general, though, isn’t as common as it used to be because many people have switched to concentrated extracts. That’s the next topic that we’ll visit in this history.

Manual Dab Rigs

A dab is a waxy extract of cannabis that’s created by using heat and/or solvents to extract the active compounds while leaving the inactive plant material behind. Cannabis extraction technology has evolved into its own separate industry, which we’ll discuss in a moment. Dabs, however, were the first extracts that were widely used. They’ve existed since at least the early 2000s.

Just like early dry herb vaporizers, the first dab rigs were operated manually. You’d heat a metal or quartz element with a butane torch before quickly putting the dab on it, covering the dab with a glass dome and inhaling through a stem or hose. Since the heating was indirect – you heated the element and not the dab itself – combustion wasn’t a concern. Manual dab rigs were cumbersome and inconvenient, though, and many people didn’t enjoy the fact that dabbing required a torch for heating.  

Electric Dab Rigs

Dab rigs have evolved over the years in much the same way as dry herb vaporizers. They started out as table-sized units that required manual heating, but electric heating and battery power were eventually incorporated for convenience, safety and portability. Just like dry herb vaporizers, today’s dab rigs run the gamut from larger desktop models to more portable and pocketable devices. 

Although portable dab pens exist, they do have one shortcoming in that a dab of wax only provides a few puffs. Once it’s used up, you need to add more wax to your device. Because of the way that dabbing works, you can’t just travel with your dab pen – you also need to have a container of wax and a tool for transferring the sticky material to your device.

For people who want to vape on the go, a better option is now available – and that’s what we’ll discuss as we bring this history to a close.

Vape Cartridges and Oil-Based Extracts

Today, cannabis extraction has evolved into its own industry that’s just as large as the hemp farming industry – perhaps even larger. Laboratories have the ability to create extracts in a wide range of consistencies including oily liquids. Oil-based extracts led to the invention of vape cartridges. A vape cartridge is a small device containing up to 2 ml of oil along with a heating coil for vaporization. All that you need to do is connect a filled cartridge to a 510-thread battery, and you’re ready to vape. A cartridge contains enough oil to last through days or even weeks of vaping sessions.

Vape cartridges and oil-based extracts are the future of cannabis vaping because they provide the right balance of potency, convenience and portability. They also provide greater freedom than ever to customize your experience because it’s possible to find vape carts containing everything from full-spectrum extracts of famous cannabis strains to extracts containing individual isolated cannabinoids. Through advanced processes like isomerization and fractional distillation, the variety that’s available in the world of vape cartridges will only continue to grow in the future.