Can Medical Marijuana Be Harmful To One's Lungs?
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. 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 - 420 Store 4 All. 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. 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. 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.
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