The short answer
Most wax pen hits land somewhere between 2 and 7 mg of THC. A normal three second draw from a cartridge labeled 80% THC tends to come out around 3 to 5 mg. A long, slow pull on a hot battery can push past 8 mg. A quick sip at low voltage might be under 2 mg.
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That range is wide because nothing about a pen hit is standardized. Two people with the same cartridge in the same room can get very different doses depending on how they draw and what they draw with.
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Doing the math on your own cart
You can get close with two numbers: the potency on the label and how many hits you finish the cartridge in.
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Say you have a full gram cart labeled 80% THC. That tube holds about 800 mg of THC. If you empty it in 160 puffs, each puff carries roughly 5 mg. Stretch it to 250 puffs and you are closer to 3 mg. The label does not tell you how much oil the coil actually vaporizes per draw, so this is an estimate, but it beats guessing.
Concentrates sold in legal US shops commonly test between 60% and 90% THC. Distillate sits at the top of that band. Live resin, cured resin, and hash rosin usually land a bit lower, often in the 60% to 80% range, because they keep more of the plant's other compounds.
What moves the number up or down
- Potency of the oil. A 90% distillate cart delivers more THC per milligram of oil than a 65% rosin cart. Same puff, different payload.
- Draw length and strength. A 2 second sip and a 6 second haul are not the same event. Longer, harder draws move more oil across the coil.
- Battery voltage. Low voltage produces thinner vapor and less oil per second. Higher voltage vaporizes more oil at once, which raises the dose per hit and usually wrecks the flavor.
- Hardware design. Coil type, airflow holes, and wick material all change how much oil gets heated per puff.
- Clogs and reclaim. Oil that pools in the mouthpiece or sits unvaporized in the chamber never reaches your lungs. A partially clogged cart can hit weak, then hit hard once it clears.
- Absorption. Inhaled THC absorbs fast, but not all of it. Some vapor leaves on the exhale.
How a wax hit compares to other methods
A joint rolled with 0.5 g of 20% flower holds about 100 mg of THC, but a lot of that burns off in sidestream smoke. What a person actually inhales from sharing one is often in the 20 to 40 mg range. That is several vape hits.
A 10 mg edible is more THC than most single pen hits, and it arrives over an hour instead of seconds. A full dab off a rig can run 30 mg or more in one go. The pen sits in the middle: fast onset, moderate dose per puff, easy to overdo because each hit feels small.
Why the label is not a dose
Lab testing measures the oil inside the product, not what reaches your bloodstream. State rules generally require potency testing and total THC on the label, with some allowed variance around the reported figure. Even a perfectly accurate label gives you a product-level number, not a per-hit number, and it says nothing about your device settings or how you inhale.
Practical dosing
If you are new, coming back after a break, or switching from flower, start with one short draw at the lowest voltage that still produces vapor. Wait 10 to 15 minutes before deciding you need another. Inhaled THC peaks within about 10 minutes, so the second hit you take at minute two is usually a decision you regret by minute twenty.
Regular users build tolerance and can absorb more per session with less effect, which is exactly why comparing your dose to someone else's is not useful. Track your own hits against your own cart and you will get a working sense of what 3 mg feels like for you.