I wonder what my teenage pot parties would have been like if my friends and I had been consuming cannabis tea instead of smoking joints. I’m sure we’d still have been listening to The Grateful Dead and staring at LP covers (yes, that’s how far I go back). But perhaps we would have been a little less freaked out when our parents arrived home and the whole house smelled like reefer.

Nowadays, people are gradually waking up the therapeutic benefits of medical marijuana. Put simply, cannabis appears to be an amazing compound with numerous health benefits. For example, it is a natural analgesic that can mitigate nausea and stimulate the appetite in cancer patients. It has also shown promise in treating epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and digestive disorders like Crohn’s disease.

In addition, researchers are discovering that cannabinoids in marijuana have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and even antitumor properties. No wonder that Dr. Ethan Russo, a leading cannabis researcher, says that marijuana “is the single most versatile herbal remedy and the most useful plant on Earth. No other single plant contains as wide a range of medically active herbal constituents.”

Still, smoking any substance entails some health risks. Thankfully, there are ways to derive the health benefits of marijuana without lighting up. Edibles and cannabis-infused beverages are arguably a safer alternative to toking or vaping. With that in mind, let’s look at five specific advantages of brewing your own cannabis tea.

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