Breathe it in! – Smoking Cannabis Not Linked with Lung Damage

Cannabis smokers performed better on lung function tests compared to nonsmokers and cigarette smokers.

Go ahead I’ll let you read that heading again. If you puff cannabis regularly in moderate amounts then chances you aren’t doing any damage to your lungs.

One of the remaining criticisms of  cannabis opponents I hear is that marijuana smoke is harmful for the lungs and thus another reason to keep the plant illegal. Now not only is cannabis safer than alcohol but if you smoke it too your clearly doing less damage than cigarettes. Two substances which are LEGAL!?

Understanding if smoking cannabis causes lasting damage to the lungs like cigarettes will have important implications for public health and medical use of the plant.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Lung function from over 5,000 young adults between 18 and 30 was tested to determine marijuana’s effect on the organ. After 20 years of testing the researchers yielded some noteworthy results: regular marijuana smokers (defined as up to one joint a day for seven years) had no discernible impact on lung activity from non-smokers.

More surprising was that researchers found marijuana smokers performed slightly better than both smokers and non-smokers on the lung performance tests. While tobacco smokers showed an anticipated drop in lung function over time. This new research found that marijuana smoke had an unexpected and apparently positive effect.

Low to moderate users actually showed increased lung capacity compared to nonsmokers on two tests. One which measures the air someone breathes out in the first second after taking the deepest possible breath. The second measures the total volume of air exhaled after the deepest inhalation.

Why is that? Probably because stoners like to try and take the biggest TOKES POSSIBLE and hold them in!

As marijuana enters the mainstream studies like the one published in JAMA might dispel false assertions about the plant’s health hazards and promote its medicinal benefits. According to Dr. Donald P. Tashkin, a marijuana researcher at UCLA medical school and not related to the study says that THC is known to have anti-inflammatory properties which may prevent lung irritation from developing into the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that frequently devastates the lungs of tobacco smokers.

Since inhaling the unfiltered smoke of a combusted cannabis buds isn’t considered the optimal delivery system for this new wonder plant. So he suggests that those who want to unlock its cannabis’s full potential find lower impact ways to get ripped.

“The smoke in marijuana contains thousands of ingredients many of which are toxic and noxious and have the potential at least to cause airway injury,” said Tashkin in a recent TIME article. “In an ideal world it would be preferable to take it in another form.” Vaporizer anyone?