If you’re looking for the best edibles in DC, you’ve come to the right place. Washington D.C. is home to 7 medical marijuana dispensaries and over 100 recreational gifting vendors, making DC’s edible market rich with variety you wouldn’t see in most legalized cannabis states.
From pot infused brownies, melt in your mouth marijuana cookies, infused THC drinks, weed gummies, and even dissolving lozenges, our team has put together our favorite THC edibles in DC as of 2023.
Are edibles legal in Washington DC?
Yes, edibles are legal in DC. Initiative 71 legalized consumption and possession of marijuana, including THC consumables. It’s still illegal to buy and sell edibles recreationally as of 2023 unless you purchase through an I71 dispensary, which requires no medical marijuana card.
If DC weed laws seem confusing, that’s because it is! This has everything to do with congress blocking DC from using their own tax money to set up a recreational market through the notorious Harris Rider bill. In short, edibles are legal in DC at medical dispensaries and through the recreational gifting loophole (learn: what is gifting in DC).
Coming soon: The Medical Cannabis Amendment Act of 2022 signed by Mayor Bowser will offer new retail licenses for DC cannabis cooking classes, where you can learn how to make your own edibles at home. These edible cooking classes will open in early 2024.
How to buy edibles in DC without a medical card
The only way to legally purchase edibles is through a medical dispensary, which requires you to have a DC self-certify medical marijuana card. If you have a medical cannabis card, you can visit any of the 7 licensed dispensaries and order edibles today.
As a DC resident for over 15 years, I personally found that the best edibles in DC are actually sold at the recreational gifting dispensaries and not medical. The edibles there are stronger, priced lower, tastier, and even offer bulk discounts not seen at medical dispensaries.
In order to buy edibles without a medical marijuana card in DC, you simply need your ID proving you are 21 years old, and you must visit an I71 dispensary. For the list of best vendors for edibles and steps on how to buy, check out our article on how to buy weed in DC.
Best Edibles in DC
Athena’s Gifts Baked Goods
It’s rare to find weed edibles infused with marijuana flower in 2023. The industry as a whole has moved to distillate, as it’s far easier to ensure accurate dosages. My personal preference is for flower-infused edibles, as the experience tends to be a lighter, brighter, more organic high. Athena’s Gifts honors these ancient ways, so when the Gentleman wants to get thoroughly stoned, this is what I reach for.
Athena’s Gifts has a fantastic edibles menu of cookies, cereal bars, and brownies along with a rotating specialty selection, like cheesecakes! All of it is made fresh locally (and also available from Lucky Chuckie). Oh! They also make infused juices and tinctures. The dosages may not be strictly accurate — if you’re new to weed, start slow and gauge your tolerance. Eat like, a quarter of a cookie. If you’re a daily smoker, have at it! Now, I want to acknowledge that daily cannabis users, especially dab aficionados, are going to have a tough time feeling high from flower-infused edibles. I’ve come up with a solution to our problem, friends! Don’t rely on the edible alone. Smoke something along with it, and you’ll feel a boost as the edible comes on that is unmistakably higher than your baseline. You are welcome.
Puff Kings Gummies
What I like most about Puff Kings’ edible selection is the many options that include THC and CBD in the same product. This eases the weight of a THC-only edible high considerably, making it a more relaxing and long-lasting experience. It’ll still help you sleep at night, but it won’t knock you out in the middle of the day at responsible dosages. In my experience, this synergy is also better at relieving pain and anxiety. There’s some research that indicates CBD acts as a neuroprotectant against the side effects of THC, like memory loss. I really can’t stress enough what a beneficial combination these cannabinoids make.
Puff Kings typically offers impeccably crafted gummies, chocolates, cake pops, rice krispy treats, and brownies. Every so often, they come up with something really unique, like infused buffalo sauce in the summer and infused cornbread kits in the fall. Commendably, they’ve offered giveaways of their CBD-only edibles frequently throughout the pandemic. Great folks, great products, what’s not to love?
Adose Wellness Gummies
Adose Wellness is a solid new addition to Washington DC’s weed edibles scene! Their core menu features some unique takes on crisped rice treats, like Churro and Strawberry White Chocolate, along with a wide selection of gummies to satisfy the sophisticated palate of any candy connoisseur. Blue Raspberry, Blackberry Lemon, and Peach Bellini are but a few of the many options available for your consideration.
Adose Wellness’ infused treats are then categorized by potency and cannabinoid profile. Precise dosing, therefore, is of paramount importance, so naturally these are distillate-based products. Newcomers can feel at ease with low-dose THC at Level 1 or the CBD dominant combo at Level 2. Level 3 is a balanced 1:1 dose with 5mg of THC and 5mg of CBD, still not intimidating. Level 4 edibles contain what is becoming the industry standard, 10mg of THC per serving, and Level 5 caps us out at 20mg THC/dose. No matter which gift you choose, you get 10 servings- so a S’mores crisped Rice Treat at Level 5 will contain 200mg total.
I got to try out Adose Wellness’ gummy edibles myself recently. I ended up taking 60mg THC from half a dozen Level 4 Sour Watermelon gummies, which, yes, I know I could have eaten three Level 5s, let an old man have his candy, dammit! Then I supplanted that with a single Raspberry Level 2 (7.5mg of CBD, 2.5mg of THC). And then I fell asleep on the couch at 9pm, watching Matlock reruns, I presume. Ok, so maybe 62.5mg of THC is too much for me these days. I tried again, this time just 30mg, and had a nice, manageable buzz for the next couple of hours. Oh, and aside from their perfectly balanced flavor, the texture on Adose Wellness’ gummies is better than store-bought.
District Elixir Syrups
District Elixir is one of my favorite new DC edible finds and I’ll tell you why- their products are full-spectrum, flower-infused, strain-specific, and they take great strides to accurately measure dosing despite the inherent challenge. They offer classic baked goods like snickerdoodles, ginger snaps, and chocolate chip cookies in mini- and full-size options along with their cannabis syrups packed in medicine droppers. That’s a really great detail, because once you’ve figured out the right dose for you, you can dial it in with extreme precision. Syrups can be added to drinks to work as an edible- District Elixir suggests adding theirs to hot beverages like coffee or tea- but they’re sweet enough that you can drink them straight.
While my own tolerance is still higher than the average bear, I know someone that has a terminally low threshold for ingested cannabis, so of course I ply them with edibles to find out how effective they are at low dosages. In this case, our tester was significantly stoned from eating a quarter of a miniature ginger snap, which equates to roughly 6mg of THC from Gary Payton flower. Personally, and especially on weekends, if it’s flower-infused then I’ll throw projected potency concerns out the window and just go for it. In this case, I ate a 150mg+ THC snickerdoodle made with Bubba OG. Onset took about 45 minutes, after which I enjoyed a relaxed and upbeat mood for the next couple of hours, a nice little window to get some quality time in with the Playstation and advance my quest for the Elden Ring.
What were we talking about? Oh yeah, I tried District Elixir’s syrups, too, which is a good option if you’re counting calories. The package of 5 droppers, 1mL each, contained approximately 90mg of Zookies-infused syrup altogether, which I drank straight. It tastes almost like..hemp and honey? Regardless, onset was faster with this method of ingestion, closer to 30 minutes before my mind started to mellow and my anxieties all floated away. What was I doing again? Ah, right. Elden Ring. Excuse me.
Treats by Tre Ice Cream
Treats by Tre has been around the DC cannabis scene since the early pop-up days of I-71, but I finally got a chance to try them out and learn how long, regrettably, I've been missing out. Their edibles are all full-spectrum infused coconut oil created with flower from TbT's own garden. They offer dairy-free, vegan, and gluten-free options across their menu of baked goods, chocolates, candies, and their most unique product line, frozen treats like ice cream and gelato. Fantastic so far, yeah? What really takes Treats by Tre to the next level is the lengths they've gone to ensure accurate dosing despite the challenges flower-based edibles present, by calibrating their in-house potency testing equipment's results against a trusted lab. Single-serving dosages are geared toward casual users, but there's no law that says you can't eat an entire pint of ice cream to yourself and I'm certainly not going to tell anyone.
That's a bit much for me, so I went hard on a Treats by Tree Cheesecake Brownie instead, downing the lot in-between meals. I started buzzing before I even made it up to kickstart the mental festivities with a joint, about 30 minutes later. Post-smoke and I found myself once again in The Zone, enthralled by the new Yu-gi-oh Master Duel game for the next 2.5 hours. The comedown was smooth and organic- no KO at the end of this ride, I just slid slowly back out of that altered state of consciousness and went about my evening, though I did enjoy a great night's sleep after.
MOTA Tinctures
Don’t let the fancy new packaging with the candy skulls fool you — the MOTA brand of edibles has been around since the early days of I-71, supplying this city with some of the most consistently potent products around. I’ve tried just about every type of their locally-made distillate-based edibles and they all work: the hard candies, the gummies, the rice krispy treats, you name it. Their tincture, however, is the best I’ve had anywhere.
Tinctures can function like an everyday edible when added to a drink, with a typical onset between 25-60 minutes. But you can also take a tincture sublingually, which means under your tongue if you don’t feel like Googling it. When I tried a sublingual application with MOTA’s tincture, I was high AF in five minutes, and it subsided after a couple hours, like I had smoked a joint (ingested edibles usually last much longer). Mercifully, MOTA tinctures do not burn, so you can keep them under your tongue long enough to get every precious molecule of THC in your bloodstream.
These days, you can find MOTA edibles at almost every storefront in town. I know for a fact that The Garden and All the Buzz keep them in stock!
Georgetown Kushcakes Truffles
Georgetown Kushcakes creates upscale desserts to delight foodies and cannaseurs alike. They concentrate primarily on two products that you’ll find in I-71 storefronts across the city: truffles and gummies. The gummies come in exotic flavors like pomegranate, lime, and tangerine. The everyday truffle lineup is Chocolate Chip, Milkshake, Mint Chip, and Peanut Butter, but they also release seasonal flavors like Pumpkin Spice and Red Velvet Cake. Speaking of seasons, they’ll break out some special treats every now and again to spice things up. Earlier this year they had jars of crème brûlée available and for the holidays, they’re breaking out the fudge!
Georgetown Kushcakes typically uses distillate for their edibles for guaranteed potency, which I can personally attest to, but they did release a collaborative truffle project this year that used live hash rosin! I haven’t had the pleasure of trying that one yet. My own sweet spot for the distillate version was at three-quarters of one 75mg truffle (they come in ornately designed boxes of four 75mg truffles in a 300mg pack, or a single 200mg truffle). More than that would have put a daily smoker like me to sleep, but I could coast on a little less than 75mg, man, really let my ass breathe. If you have a low tolerance, or don’t know your tolerance, then you want waaaaay less than that. Just nibble out 10mg.
Jackpots Gummies
Jackpots are vegan and gluten free gummy cubes that you’ll find in some of DC’s favorite I-71 shops like Gifted Curators, Legacy, and Peace in the Air. They come in brightly illustrated jars of 20 weighing in at 20mg of THC per piece, so you end up with 400mg. I had the chance to try these out myself recently. I had a 7 hour Amtrak ride, 'cuz I hate the whole experience of flying so much that I’d rather my trip take twice as long to avoid it. I’m not scared of crashing, I just loathe being rushed, taking off my belt so that my pants fall off my ass, my shoulders being cramped in the seat, and on top of all that, it doesn’t even feel like you’re moving. I mean, sure, you’re going faster than a train, but it feels like you’re in stasis. Shark’s gotta swim, man! What were we talking about?
Oh yeah, so I popped 2.5 Jackpot gummies for a total of 50mg before I got on the train. Within an hour, I zonked out, and caught up on some much needed sleep. I was roused about 90 minutes later feeling fine, no lingering oogey-ness in my head. That’s how you know you’ve got your dose right, you don’t wake up drained and fog-brained. Jackpots, baby!
A Cure by Design Plus Gummies
Talk about a blast from the past! If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you might remember me talking about A Cure by Design Plus from the old pop-up days and how their CBD tincture was a godsend when I got back from my cross-country roadtrip. My leg was jacked the hell up and A Cure’s tincture was the only thing that relaxed my muscle spasms long enough to sleep. I was slapping it on three times a day for the first month, at which point I was able to reduce it down to an as-needed basis.
I happened to be in No Kids Allowed recently and what did I find? A Cure by Design Plus’ RSO-infused gummies and syrups! I am so glad to see these great folks represented in I-71 storefronts! In case you’re not in the know, RSO stands for Rick Simpson Oil, a.k.a. whole-plant extraction. Anecdotal evidence suggests that blending up every bit of the cannabis plant, roots and all, is its most medically potent form. A Cure by Design also makes Delta-8 THC and CBD-only versions of their products for sale in area hemp and head shops.
Best Edible Weed Delivery Services in DC
Getting your hands on cannabis edibles in the DC area might seem complicated, but you actually have access to some of the premier DC weed delivery services the nation's capital offers.
Several marijuana delivery services will bring your favorite cannabis products like edibles, concentrates, THC carts, topicals, and even flower right to your front door. Here are some of our favorite delivery services brands and what you can expect when ordering from one of these systems.
Fat Budz DC
Fat Budz DC offers same-day weed delivery with any $100 minimum order. They have flower, pre-roll, and edible options available. They boast an impressive flower menu with 20 strains that are divided into three categories, including "Fat Budz Best," "Extreme," and "Ultimate."
Overall, the experience with Fat Budz DC is hassle-free, and they offer timely communication, delivery, and assistance.
Bagged Buds
With over 400 five-star reviews on Where's Weed, Bagged Buds is a reliable option with reasonably priced flower. They offer a variety of flower, tincture, shatter, edible, rosin, badder, and crumble options. Featuring guaranteed delivery in 60-90 minutes or less, Bagged Buds provides customers with high-quality products and discreet, knowledgeable service.
DMV 42 ZERO
Receiving only 5-star reviews on Google, this is a delivery service you can put your trust in. They offer a wide range of cannabis flower, edible, and concentrate options.
Their website boasts an interface that is easy to follow and understand with a four-step ordering process. DMV 42 ZERO requires a donation of $200 at a minimum and requests cash on delivery.
Lucky Chuckie
With one of the fastest delivery times (between 30 minutes to an hour), this delivery service is I-71 compliant. They offer everything from premium cannabis flower strains like Gorilla Glue to THC Infused drinks. One of Lucky Chuckie's weed experts can advise you on their products to ensure your experience is unforgettable.
Our Favorite Edible Brands Circulating the DC Area
With the recent legalization of weed, the local DC community has begun to raise the bar regarding what a weed edible might look, feel, and taste like.
Nowadays, you can find everything from THC-infused drinks to pizza and candy. This is in addition to the numerous cannabis delivery services and I-71 compliant stores selling every THC consumable you could ever imagine.
If you're a beginner to cannabis edibles, determining which brands you can trust may seem tricky, and if you're not careful, you could fall victim to some questionable ingredients. When buying and consuming cannabis edibles, it is important to find a brand that delivers consistent and high-quality, lab-tested results.
Here are some weed edible options we recommend to DC residents and tourists.
Best Gummies in DC
Adose Wellness Gummies
Adose Wellness gummies are infused treats that can be categorized by their potency level and cannabinoid profile. With a wide selection of gummy flavors like Blackberry Lemon and Blue Rasberry, this brand is an excellent addition to the DC cannabis edible scene and sure to delight even the hardest-to-impress edible consumer.
Jackpots Gummies
These vegan, gluten-free gummy cubes can be found at several DC I-71 compliant shops such as Legacy and Gifted Curators. They come in a brightly illustrated jar that contains 20 gummies at 20 mg of THC per piece.
Best Tinctures in DC
MOTA Tinctures
The fancy packaging with the candy skulls is enough to make you pick up one of MOTA brand's amazing tinctures that can function like an edible when you add it to drinks.
You can also take a full dropper of the tincture by placing it under your tongue and giving the THC some time to absorb into your bloodstream before swallowing. It can take anywhere from 25-60 minutes for the effects of the tincture to be felt completely.
District Elixir
District Elixir is a DC edible brand that provides full-spectrum, flower-infused, and strain-specific products. The brand's syrups are a good option for anyone currently watching their calories, and the taste is the perfect mixture between hemp and honey.
Find Access to DC Cannabis Today
Whether you're a regular consumer of weed edibles or a first-timer, at Gentleman Toker, we're proud to provide the DC community with a directory containing information about where and what to shop for to fulfill all your cannabis needs.
Consider our easy-to-navigate guide before partaking if you're looking for the best place to get edibles in the DC area. Consider taking a look at our website, where we provide reviews of different strains and cannabis products gifted in smoke shops in your local area.