Linalool: present in forty-seven profiles, leading in none

• In the pharmacy list. Does not lead in any of the 85 strains, although profile databases mention it in 47 of them. This is the content of this page, not a gap.
• Evidence. 2 works from 2009 to 2024, all on animals or in cell culture, none on patients using the flower.
• Temperature. 195.5 °C, with the measurement condition determining whether the number means anything.
• What we do not provide. Percentage share in the profile, as the denominator in sources varies and the numbers are not comparable between strains.

What is linalool and where is it found outside of cannabis?

Linalool is a monoterpene alcohol with the molecular formula C10H18O and a molecular weight of 154.25, described in the PubChem database under CID 6549. Its systematic name is 3,7-dimethyl-1,6-octadien-3-ol. Outside of cannabis, it is responsible for the scent of lavender, coriander, and rosewood, and PubChem notes its presence in over two hundred plant essential oils.

The entry in the chemical database is more precise than the entry on the strain card. PubChem maintains a separate record for the (3S) configuration form, with the same molecular formula, under CID 67179. Thus, the same elemental composition describes two molecules that are mirror images of each other, while strain profile databases provide a single entry named linalool, without distinguishing between the two forms. Therefore, the description of a specific flower does not indicate which of them was detected or in what proportion they stood next to each other.

Besides essential oils, the same compound is also noted in apples, grapes, and citrus fruits, and in the food industry, it functions as a flavoring substance evaluated by the FAO and WHO expert committee on food additives. For our compilation, this means one thing: the question about linalool is not a question about something specific to cannabis. It is one of the most widely distributed monoterpenes in the plant world, which in cannabis flower may be one of the components of the fragrance mixture, and may also be completely unrecorded.

How long does it take for linalool to reach the body and how long does it stay?

Unknown. No one has published a measurement tracking the concentration of linalool in human blood after vaporizing cannabis flower, so there is simply no answer expressed in minutes. However, the boiling point of the pure substance is known, and it is most often confused with the answer to this question.

Four records come from the Hazardous Substances Data Bank, the Human Metabolome Database, safety data sheets prepared by the ILO and WHO, and from reports by the food additives committee. The source does not assign a specific record to a specific database, so we do not do that either. None of these measurements were made under reduced pressure, which is convenient for linalool: all four refer to conditions comparable to each other, and the atmospheric value calculated from them is 195.5 degrees Celsius.

Boiling pure liquid in a flask and releasing the compound from crushed resin in the device chamber are, however, two different phenomena. The first number does not imply any setting for the second, and the text that provides it as a recommendation for the device states something that the measurement does not contain. The experience that the patient feels depends not on a single terpene, but on how the raw material was administered.

The route of administration determines the course more than the strain itself. After vaporization, the substance passes from the lungs to the blood almost immediately, so the first sensations appear after a few minutes, the intensity increases for another ten to thirty minutes, and the whole experience fades within two to four hours. After ingestion, the raw material first passes through the intestine and liver, so the first sensations are awaited from half an hour to two, and the episode lasts six, sometimes eight hours. Hence the most common mistake with oral administration: anyone who thinks nothing is happening after thirty minutes and takes another dose will receive both doses at once. The above ranges describe the route of administration, not the strain; pharmacokinetic studies for a single cultivar have not been published.

What have studies shown about the effects of linalool?

Two works, both on mice. The evidence base for this entire compilation consists of twenty-two entries spread over eleven terpenes, and none of them included humans; two do not concern mammals at all. For linalool, there are two inhalation studies on rodents, without a single result from cell culture.

The older one is from 2009 and was published in the journal Phytomedicine, authored by Linck VM, da Silva AL, Figueiró M, Piato AL, Herrmann AP, Dupont Birck F, Caramão EB, Nunes DS, Moreno PR, Elisabetsky E. Mice kept for 60 minutes in a chamber saturated with linalool at concentrations of 1% and 3% had prolonged sleep induced by pentobarbital and lowered body temperature; the 3% concentration reduced motor activity, while coordination in the rota-rod test remained unchanged.

The newer one was published in 2024 in the journal NeuroSci, authored by Wagner JK, Gambell E, Gibbons T, Martin TJ, Kaplan JS. With short inhalations of vapor, designed to mimic inhalation in humans, linalool acted anxiolytically in the elevated plus maze in female mice when doses were spread over 30 minutes, and in males only with a single inhalation; the sub-threshold combination of linalool with cannabidiol produced a synergistic effect only in females.

The methods of both studies differ enough that the results cannot be summed. In the first, the animals spent an hour in a chamber filled with vapor of the compound, while in the second, they received short inhalations designed to resemble human inhalation. The first measured sleep length after barbiturate and body temperature, while the second assessed behavior in the maze. Both describe animal behavior under imposed conditions, not symptoms in a patient after pharmacy flower.

What has not been shown about linalool?

Nothing has been shown in humans. Neither of the two studies included humans, none measured the concentration of the compound after vaporizing the flower, and the newer one adds a caveat that popular strain cards are silent about: the result varies depending on the sex of the animal and the dosing schedule over time.

None of these studies included humans. The newer one additionally shows that the result depends on the sex of the animal and the method of administration, so the statement “linalool calms” without these caveats has no support even in the rodent model.

Breaking this statement down shows how much of the popular thesis remains. The anxiolytic effect was observed in 2024 in females when doses were spread over thirty minutes, and in males only with a single inhalation. The same experiment conducted on males with a spread dose would not show any effect at all. The sex of the animal and the method of administration are not mere methodological details, but conditions on which the result itself depends.

It has also not been shown that the state achieved in the chamber can be reached with a pharmacy portion of flower. Mice from the 2009 study breathed air saturated with the pure compound for an hour; a person vaporizing the flower inhales a mixture of many substances for a few minutes, in which linalool constitutes a fraction. No one has measured what portion of it passes under such conditions into the vapor or how much of it reaches the bloodstream. Finally, it has not been shown that the described synergy with cannabidiol, visible only in females and only at sub-threshold doses, transfers to any product dispensed in Polish pharmacies.

What adverse effects have been reported after linalool?

No adverse effects have been reported, because there is nowhere to report them. The reporting form indicates the product, not a single aromatic component, so there is no entry describing linalool itself in Polish data. Separately, there is a chemical classification of the pure substance, and it is this that is often mistakenly cited as the safety profile of a strain.

In the European inventory of classification and labeling, compiled by PubChem under CID 6549, company reports describe pure linalool with labels H315 (causes skin irritation), H317 (may cause an allergic skin reaction), and H319 (causes eye irritation). This is a classification of the substance in concentrated form, used in industry and cosmetics, and pertains to contact with skin or eyes. It does not describe vapor from a vaporizer, in which the compound is a fraction of the mixture, and cannot be transferred to flower without a measurement that no one has performed so far.

The symptoms that the patient asks about actually concern the raw material as a whole, not its single component.

Reports of adverse effects are collected for a medicinal product with a batch number, not for a strain name, so the following pertains to cannabis flower as a group of raw materials. The most frequently reported symptoms are dry mouth, red eyes, and increased heart rate. Less commonly described are dizziness upon rapid standing, daytime drowsiness, and transient worsening of short-term memory, as well as anxiety that increases with dosage. A separate issue is medications taken concurrently, especially sedatives and those affecting coagulation: their assessment requires knowledge of the entire list of products, not just the description of the plant. We do not provide the frequency of these symptoms numerically, as public compilations for cannabis flower in Poland do not separate them by individual products.

Which strains from Polish pharmacies have linalool as a leading terpene?

None. The leading terpene field in the pharmacy list, on which this compilation stands, accepts only six names, and linalool is not among them even once. All eighty-five strains are assigned one of six other compounds, and this page describes presence in the composition, not dominance.

The distribution of these six names is clearly uneven. The top two entries in the table account for fifty strains together, which is well over half of the collection, while the two rarest appear only six times each. The total adds up to eighty-five, so there is no strain in this list without an assigned leading terpene. The zero for linalool is therefore not a gap in the data, but a complete answer.

However, the absence of linalool in this field is a property of the source, not the plant. The pharmacy list indicates one compound per entry and does so from a closed dictionary of six names, so a terpene outside this six cannot appear in it, even if it stands high in the profile. Therefore, the question of dominance and the question of presence in the composition have two different answers here, and conflating them is the most common mistake in popular strain compilations.

Resolving this difference requires looking at a source other than the pharmacy label. Profile databases list the entire set of terpenes detected in a strain, and it is they, not the list, that place linalool with specific trade names. How many there are is addressed in the next section.

How many strains from this compilation have linalool in their composition?

Forty-seven out of eighty-five. That many cultivars described on these pages have linalool listed in the terpene set by at least one of the two profile databases. This is over half of the collection, so a compound absent in the leading terpene field turns out to be one of the more frequently noted in composition descriptions.

This frequency looks completely different in each of the sources. The budcare.pl service lists linalool in seventy-seven out of one hundred forty-six entries it describes, which is over half of its own collection. The medweed.pl service lists it in eight out of sixty-five. The same plant, two very different pictures of composition, and that is before comparing specific names.

The table below collects all forty-seven entries along with information on which source mentions this terpene. The listed strains are dispensed by prescription and are not available for mail order; over-the-counter cannabis flower is a completely different assortment and stands in a separate category of the store.

The list is a collection of names, not a ranking. The order in it is alphabetical, as neither of the two sources provides a size that could be reliably compared between strains. How valuable the mere presence on this list is, is only determined by comparing both databases with each other.

Do both profile sources confirm linalool in the same strains?

No. Of the forty-seven strains with linalool in their composition, only five have it indicated by both services at once, and only one, Biscuit Runtz, has the entire set of terpenes consistent in both databases. The remaining forty-two entries rely on a single description.

The distribution looks as follows. Thirty strains are described exclusively by budcare.pl, as medweed.pl does not know them at all. Sixteen have descriptions in both services, but the terpene sets diverge, and in twelve of those sixteen, the disputed component is indeed linalool: eleven times it is mentioned only by budcare.pl, and only once by medweed.pl, with Equiposa.

The medweed.pl service lists terpenes in weight order, which provides a second, independent measurement of the same thing. In eight entries where linalool appears there, it ranks third once, fourth five times, and fifth once. The only occurrence in the first position is a description listing exactly one terpene and nothing else, so the order means nothing there.

Hence our refusal to provide percentage shares with terpene names. In seventy-seven entries where budcare.pl lists linalool along with the number, the sum of all declared shares falls once at forty-six, and once at one hundred twenty-five, in thirty-two different variants, with a median of eighty-six. Five of those entries exceed one hundred, which for a part of a whole is simply impossible. A number without a known denominator looks like a measurement, but it is not.

Frequently asked questions

Does linalool make you sleepy?

This has not been shown in humans. The two works collected on this page concern mice: in one, the animals slept longer after barbiturate administration, and in the other, females behaved less anxiously. Transferring such a result to human sleep after vaporizing cannabis flower has no support in any measurement.

Which strain from a Polish pharmacy has the most linalool?

This cannot be determined from the available data. Profile databases provide shares without a common denominator, and their sums for individual entries diverge from forty-six to one hundred twenty-five, so comparing two strains would be comparing two different scales.

At what temperature does linalool boil?

PubChem collects records for this compound ranging from 194 to 200 degrees Celsius, and the calculated atmospheric value is 195.5 degrees. None of these measurements were made under reduced pressure. The boiling point of the pure substance is not a setting for the vaporizer and does not imply any recommendations for the device.

Is linalool from lavender the same compound as in cannabis?

Yes, the molecular formula is identical and is C10H18O. However, PubChem maintains a separate record for the (3S) configuration form, and strain profile databases provide a single entry named linalool, without distinguishing between the mirror forms. Therefore, the strain card does not indicate which of them was detected.

Can linalool cause allergies?

Company reports in the European inventory of classification describe pure linalool as a substance that may cause an allergic skin reaction. This pertains to the concentrated form and contact with skin. For vapor from vaporized flower, in which the compound constitutes a fraction of the mixture, no such measurement has been published.

How many studies on linalool are included in the database of this compilation?

Two, both on mice and both with inhalation administration: a study from 2009 in the journal Phytomedicine and a study from 2024 in the journal NeuroSci. The entire evidence base consists of twenty-two entries spread over eleven terpenes, and none of them included humans.

Cannabis flower is a pharmaceutical raw material dispensed by prescription in the Rpw category. The material is informational in nature and does not replace the advice of a doctor or pharmacist.

Editorial text: ubucha.pl editorial team. The status of the list of strains available in pharmacies is maintained by the current availability review.