Hmm...a curious but important question: Faster absorption versus total overall absorption. It stikes me that the pH of the vapor will be the same in the mouth or the lungs, and both involve osmosis as the transfer mechanism. So is this a question of effectiveness, or efficiency? This kind of thinking is why I am chronically short on sleep, btw.
The bad thing is this is just the basic level of this issue. We could probably get into blood chemisty, blood-brain barrier permiability of molecular configurations, the half-life of said configurations, byproducts of the metabolism process of the various compounds, genotoxicty, phenotoxicity, general pharmacology, the profound interaction of inherently involved tissue as a correlary to the absorption mechanism...it's staying light so far, lol.