6 ms·

So smoking tobacco is bad. Got it. Now what about marijuana? Less bad? I don't think I've ever read a report on marijuana yellow-taped with as many warnings an

• spand 13y ago
  The substance is one thing, but volume is another. Are people smoking 'a pack' or two of marijuana every day for decades?
  • alan_cx 13y ago
    Yes. Assuming a "pack" is 20 joints. Easily. I know by name plenty of people who treat joints like cigarettes. Personally, I think a big part of the problem is the tobacco in the joint. I'd like to see a safe or safer tobacco replacement for rolling joints with. I know they are other ways to consume pot, a joint is the most convenient. All the things you can do with a ciggy on the go, you can do with a joint on the go. <HNHumourbypasstag>Driving for example.....</HNHumourbypasstag>
    • andyhmltn 13y ago
      > I'd like to see a safe or safer tobacco replacement for rolling joints with There already is one: Marijuana. The fact is you don't have to mix it with tobacco :) It's commonplace here in the UK but you can just smoke it on its own or you can use a vapourizer. You can even cook it with butter but that increases the effects
    • jasomill 13y ago
      Why not just roll a pure marijuana joint, perhaps using weaker pot than you've been mixing with tobacco? In my experience (US), mixing tobacco into joints is mostly a European thing.
• swombat 13y ago
  Weed is just as bad to smoke as tobacco, especially since it's often (though not always) mixed with tobacco. One big difference, though, is that weed itself is only very mildly physically addictive, and in a small percentage of the population. This is as compared with tobacco, which is more addictive than heroin, for pretty much everyone. Also, weed contains chemicals, like THC, which are not so harmful, and can be ingested in ways other than smoking (e.g. inhalers). And unlike cigarettes it has benefits as a painkiller for people for whom other painkillers no longer work (e.g. terminal cancer patients, who probably don't need to worry about getting lung cancer 20 years from now). Overall the scorecard seems to be: Smoking weed is probably just as bad as smoking cigarettes, but has a number of benefits over cigarettes and is nowhere near as addictive. That makes it less harmful overall.
  • hmsimha 13y ago
    FYI mixing weed with tobacco is purely a cultural phenomenon. This is something that I have never heard of being done in the U.S.
    • tks2103 13y ago
      Rolling a weed cigarette with tobacco produces something called a 'spliff' in the U.S. It's common in the U.S. in New York and California.
      • hmsimha 13y ago
        I've heard the word spliff many times in the U.S. but only used in reference to a joint with just marijuana.
  • WA 13y ago
    Tobacco (nicotine) is also only mildly physically addictive. The main part is psychological addiction. Weed has also a number of negative side effects over cigarettes. THC, after all, is a psychoactive drug and some people develop a psychosis from smoking weed. This doesn't happen when smoking tobacco. It depends entirely on what you're comparing here. Do you compare smoking 10 joints vs. 10 cigarettes or 1 joint vs 10 cigarettes (per day? per week? per month?)? If one smokes as much weed as tobacco, he might develop way worse symptoms than someone who "just" smokes cigarettes.
• DanBC 13y ago
  Cannabis is illegal. To experiment with cannabis requires special government licences. Population studies are hard because it is illegal and because the product is so variable. The illegeity of cannabis means that some of the health warnings are ignored as anti-cannabis propaganda.
  • Ygg2 13y ago
    Jaywalking is also illegal. Yet people jaywalk all the time... And from what I've heard the hazard of micro particles emitted when warmed goes like this: fireplace > weed > smoke. However smoking is more addictive and weed has positive substances that decrease risk of cancer. Best idea is not smoke weed, but ingest it. Avoid cigarrets and never have a real fireplace inside. Just stick a picture of a fireplace and add a heating element behind it.
    • bo1024 13y ago
      I think you might've missed the parent's main point, which (I think) was that it's much more difficult to do large studies on cannabis than on tobacco.
      • Ygg2 13y ago
        True, but not all studies need to be in a country where pot is forbidden. Pretty sure there is at least one country that has a large thriving population of pot smokers.
        • knz42 13y ago
          Not sure which country you have in mind but I am very sure (first hand) that those countries where cannabis consumption is legal are not those with a thriving population of "pot smokers". There, it is mostly tourists that consume weed, and tourists would make a lousy basis for a scientific study (hard to recruit them in advance and track their addiction). So the feasibility of a study is not so clear, even in places where legality is not an issue.
• argonaut 13y ago
  I reviewed the literature on the effects of marijuana for a school project a few years ago. What is remarkable is that one joint is actually less harmful than one cigarette, and that vaporizers and methods that don't involve inhaling smoke are basically risk-free. There are studies out there that have actually shown THC / cannabidiol to have slight anticarcinogenic effects, though that's all highly experimental (I think in a lab setting). The evidence for marijuana causing psychosis is extremely thin. Basically the strongest evidence out there are observational population studies (not controlled) that found there is a slight correlation between marijuana use and eventual development of psychosis. The obvious problem is that correlation != causation. It seems pretty reasonable to postulate that people who are mentally unstable are also more likely to try and seek solace/release in drugs.
• k-mcgrady 13y ago
  AFAIK it's just as bad as smoking tobacco (I'm pretty sure I read that it's similar to smoking several cigarettes). However there are ways to 'take' marijuana which remove the dangers that come with smoking it (vaporising).
• tsotha 13y ago
  A two-pack-a-day smoker is smoking forty cigarettes. A weed smoker is smoking, what, maybe the equivalent of two? I've no doubt on a puff-for-puff basis weed is just as bad or worse. But quantity matters.
• argonaut 13y ago
  I reviewed the literature on the effects of marijuana for a school project a few years ago. What is remarkable is that one joint is actually less harmful than one cigarette, and that vaporizers and methods that don't involve inhaling smoke are basically risk-free. There are studies out there that have actually shown THC / cannabidiol to have slight anticarcinogenic effects, though that's all highly experimental (I think in a lab setting). The evidence for marijuana causing psychosis is extremely thin. Basically the strongest evidence out there are observational population studies (not controlled) that found there is a slight correlation between marijuana use and eventual development of psychosis. The obvious problem is that correlation != causation. It seems pretty reasonable to postulate that people who are mentally unstable are also more likely to try and seek solace/release in drugs.