We know that tobacco smoking is harmful to a person’s health. In addition to nicotine, tobacco smoking causes over 400 potentially harmful substances to pollute the lungs. With known causation for lung cancer, emphysema, low birth weight, and heart disease, there is legitimate concern over whether smoking medicinal marijuana may cause some of these same issues.
Here’s a few facts. Marijuana does not contain nicotine, which is good. marijuanasshops However, marijuana smoking sends four fold the amount of tar to the lungs as regular cigarette smoking. Cigarette smokers tend to smoke a lot more during any given day than marijuana smokers, and cigarettes are packed tighter than joints – so making a precise comparison is difficult.
There have been studies suggesting that marijuana smokers are more likely to end up with respiratory issues than non-smokers. cannabizsmoke This is not surprising. But does marijuana cause more respiratory issues than tobacco smoke? This is not known for sure yet.
What is known is that both marijuana and tobacco smoke damage the lining of the respiratory airways. The normal types of cells lining these airways have hairlike projections which act to sweep the mucus toward the mouth. This is a very important role, and smoking replaces these cells with ones that can’t sweep the mucus. Therefore it needs to be coughed out. With chronic use of tobacco smoke, some cells can be damaged enough and turn into cancer precursors. Unfortunately the cancerous precursor cells have been seen in the bronchial linings of marijuana smokers too.
Although there isn’t definitive evidence that marijuana smoke leads to the development of respiratory cancer like tobacco smoke, the limited existing research suggests that it is an important risk factor.
Many of the same cancer causing compounds that exist in tobacco are the same as those in marijuana. vapingsmoke People smoking marijuana tend to inhale more deeply than tobacco, so potentially the lungs are exposed to higher levels of these compounds.
Theoretically marijuana has the same carcinogenic potential as tobacco smoking, but in reality it just hasn’t been proven. Seventy percent of marijuana users also smoke tobacco, therefore, separating groups to formulate whether or not one causes increased cancer in reality would be extremely difficult.
In the big picture, medicinal marijuana has been shown to alleviate pain and suffering for numerous conditions. cbdsmokez It may help with nausea and vomiting for cancer and HIV patients dramatically. Thankfully there are other ways to intake marijuana medicinally, such as vaporizing and edibles.
