CT scans show cigarettes are harder on the lungs than marijuana

https://healthimaging.com/topics/medical-imaging/computed-tomography-ct/ct-scans-dont-lie-cigarettes-are-harder-lungs-marijuana

by XzetaU8 • 1 year ago

30 103 1 year ago

healthimaging.com

JimmyBiscuit• 1 year ago

I havent seen anything about frequency in the article. Unless they control for that it doesnt feel like you should claim that weed is somehow safer. Of course you will have less damage from smoking a few joints a day (which would be very heavy use) vs the standart amount of cigarettes a cigarette smoker smokes.

consp• 1 year ago

Isn't the "natural" reduction in frequency a factor which should not be accounted for as it might actually be the driving force behind it?

mandmandam• 1 year ago

There is a long-standing tradition in cannabis research of confusing the dose.

See: Rodent studies using insane super-doses injected directly with the equivalent of 140 joints+ every day, Marinol vs cannabis, claiming 5% THC cannabis as "high dose" in research, studies citing 'potency increase' as proof of increasing risk without controlling for dose adjustments, driving impairment studies using blood levels as measurement, etc.

bdavbdav3• 1 year ago

Is this not a similar argument to condoms / birth control effectiveness? Condoms are 100% effective if used properly and they don’t burst. The failure proportion is primarily misuse. You build in the misuse / other factors into the effectiveness rate.

eru23• 1 year ago

If you want an even starker examples: abstinence is 100% effective, if 'used' according to protocol.

AStonesThrow3• 1 year ago

You'd be surprised about artificial contraception. Sure, when used they can be highly effective to prevent pregnancy, but they also train people to do risky behavior.

It's sort of like giving away free parachutes and plane rides to everyone. Sure, that support will encourage lots of skydiving. But eventually, isn't someone going to go up without a parachute, say "YOLO" and dive out anyway?

The same thing happens with contracepting, promiscuous men and women: they become accustomed to using one another as objects and free, easy access to sex whenever. But when that contraception isn't readily available at hand, they're going ahead anyway. They're going to do it regardless, because it's the habit they're accustomed to now.

So on balance, it's really been found that free access to artificial contraception tends to encourage and increase unplanned/unwanted pregnancies. And that's exactly why it's so plentiful, because the goal is the opposite of what you may think...

mywacaday• 1 year ago

Way back in my college days we mixed weed and tobacco in joints, I presume this was the worst of both worlds?

oneeyedpigeon• 1 year ago

Very common in the UK and Europe where hash was more prevalent than flower until fairly recently. The prevailing wisdom would say not as bad as tobacco, worse than just pure weed, worse than vaping or an alternative method of consumption than combustion.

eru23• 1 year ago

Depends. You probably don't smoke as many of those as your typical cigarette chain smoker?

tomhow• 1 year ago

Referenced study here:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03630...

everdrive3• 1 year ago

I never see anyone describe just why Marijuana is less harmful than cigarettes (or apparently e-cigarettes) and it drives me up the wall.

My intuition would be that this is due to frequency, since a normal person would smoke weed far less often than they would smoke nicotine, and this is a really important distinction. If frequency is important to this question, then Marijuana smoke is not actually safer, but is just enjoyed more rarely. Maybe the lungs have a chance to clear themselves out and reduce inflammation between marijuana sessions? Just asking about the lifetime impact on users makes no sense since these drugs have totally different usage profiles.

throwup2384• 1 year ago

The answer is industrial processing. Inhaling combustants is bad no matter the plant matter but the tobacco industry has over a century of experience in optimizing their product which leads to a lot of nasty chemicals that have been grandfathered in as a historical accident.

They “reconstitute” tobacco dust and other waste into usable material via binders (“sheet tobacco”), add humectants to keep the tobacco from drying out, preservatives to keep it from oxidizing, shit to enhance the flavor, “puff up” tobacco with a bunch of chemicals so it takes up more volume, and so on. Since the 2000s there’s also compounds similar to flame retardants (!!!) in the wrapping so that the cigarette goes out if you fall asleep, instead of burning your house down. Much of these additions come from reprocessing the waste from previous steps to “minimize waste.”

Marijuana on the other hand is religiously tested for pesticides and other contaminants in most states. However that industry isn’t far behind: a friend loves diamond/oil infused blunts and to me it’s blatantly obvious that they’re using some of the same techniques to repurpose lost terpenes and adding synthetic aromatics that were never tested for combustion.

AStonesThrow3• 1 year ago

I feel like the harms of alcohol are also magnified by adulterants here. For example, an alcoholic will often choose dirt-cheap beer or spirits to consume on the regular. Is that stuff pure and clean? No. There is no requirement to label ingredients in a bottle of wine, beer, or vodka. You can put any old stuff in there as long as you're not outright poisoning people.

They're going to a convenience store, or a dive bar that carries the worst stuff and they're going to drink that, day-in, day-out, to excess.

I believe that, if drinkers had access to pure and clean ethanol-based beverages, and also maintained good nutrition and a decent diet, they wouldn't get all this liver failure and horrific metabolic stuff that they suffer as alcoholics. I feel it's often tangential to the substance itself.

When I smoked, I often picked up clove cigarettes. My hairdresser friend with purple hair advised me that the molecules of clove smoke were huge compared to tobacco smoke and I was killing myself that much faster. I thank President Obama for finally closing out the clove cigarette market. I was eventually smoking American Spirits, which are mass-market, but touted as extra pure or clean. Who knows, really?

everdrive3• 1 year ago

I would understand this to mean that natural cigarettes (just some tobacco in paper) would be much healthier. However, I don't think this is true either. I hear you regarding the shocking and astoundingly bad chemicals added to the process, but my impression is that any kind of smoke is also quite bad for you. (as an aside, we're cursed with flame retardant chemicals in our couches and mattresses because people are too stupid not to fall asleep while smoking)

lyu07282• 1 year ago

There was research on that, low or heavy marijuana use makes no difference. It just doesn't cause cancer, that's pretty much established fact at this point. There were substances in THC found that kill cancer cells, so whatever negative effects it does have (marijuana has 4 times as much tar than cigarettes) seem to be cancelled out.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1277837/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/0...

rikafurude212• 1 year ago

Sorry but any kind of smoke in your lungs causes cancer. Marijuana smokers have this bad habit of claiming 0 downsides to their favorite drug just because it was historically demonized. Be honest about the cons.

kirsebaer• 1 year ago

Tobacco absorbs and concentrates radioactive metals in soil and fertilizers. Cannabis does not do this. https://www.cdc.gov/radiation-health/data-research/facts-sta...

The tobacco industry was well-aware of the risk from radioactivity since the 1950s. https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/big-tobacco-knew-rad...

everdrive3• 1 year ago

Thanks for the information. I wasn't aware of this, and this definitely aligns with the findings in the article.

eru23• 1 year ago

I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm fairly sure that when you put _smoke_ in your lungs, radioactivity is the least of your worries.

jajko• 1 year ago

Smoke tobacco bought in a package, and smoke just tobacco from cigarettes. Apart from cigarettes one being absolutely disgusting, it feels like there is something extra. I'd expect some addiction-enhancing stuff that also increases cancer rates, on top of that paper which is also carcinogenic to smoke.

Better comparison may be tobacco smoked in pipe but inhaled in same way as weed, and weed. But nobody smokes pipes like that.

rascul2• 1 year ago

The fire safe cigarettes that have been mandated in the USA over a decade now have even more nasty stuff added to the paper to make the cigarette go out.

bawolff2• 1 year ago

So according to https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medica... about 29% of male uses use canabis 5-6 times a week. Presumably the top 5% smoke canabis even more.

You might be right about average user being less, but there are still enough people who use it all the time that i would expect negative effects to show up in them, if it was only about frequency of use. Like the top 1% of canabis smokers probably smokes as much as the average cigarette smoker, so if its just about dose we should still see it.

luma• 1 year ago

I think their point isn't the number of people, but that a heavy weed smoker might maybe run through a few joints in a day while cigarette smokers might run through a couple dozen.

eru23• 1 year ago

[...] would smoke weed far less often than they would smoke nicotine, [...]

Nobody smokes nicotine. People smoke tobacco. And it's that very smoke that's bad for you.

Just don't inhale smoke (whether marijuana or tobacco). You can vape or take edibles or use a nicotine plaster or chew a gum, etc. Compared to those alternatives, whether you set fire to marijuana or tobacco or toilet paper is pretty much a rounding error.

rich_sasha• 1 year ago

Either way I don't want this shit in my lungs. Knowing it's less bad than one of the worst carcinogens out there is little comfort.

Broken_Hippo• 1 year ago

I mean, fine. Don't do it then. Few people care if you personally do and if they pressure you, they aren't your friends.

This sort of thing really isn't about giving anyone comfort. It is an attempt to learn so folks can use them to understand the world better and the ways our bodies interact with it. It might result in harm reduction in other people, which benefits society in general.

IAmBroom2• 1 year ago

The equivalent of posting to say, "I never watch that stupid show anyway."

No one is impressed.

montebicyclelo• 1 year ago

Many have touted smoking marijuana as a safer alternative to cigarettes

Wierd take, given that they are completely different drugs, with completely different effects on the brain, with the only similarity being that they are both ingested via smoke.

zwnow4• 1 year ago

And any kind of smoke isn't good for the lungs. I'm tired of people pretending that Marijuana is that wonder drug that's somehow "healthier" than smoking. It's just less unhealthy, which still makes it unhealthy.

btreecat2• 1 year ago

Sitting in traffic is unhealthy, eating junk food is unhealthy, living with excessive heat is unhealthy, poverty is unhealthy, too much water is unhealthy.

Lots of things are unhealthy. Some of those are many degrees worse than others, and some only in certain context.

elif4• 1 year ago

There are neurogenic, anti-tumor, and anti-inflammatory properties and no direct chemical addiction mechanisms as present in nicotine.

Additionally your statement about "any kind of smoke" while kind of true does not recognize the disproportionate concentration of carcinogens specific to cigarette smoke.

It also misses the disclaimer that nearly as many cannabis users vape and consume edibles (roughly 70%) as do smoke (only 79%) which is certainly better than smoke, even before you add the benefits of water filtration and cooling common for marijuana users.

kubb• 1 year ago

Just use a vaporizer and the problem is gone. This one is good:

https://www.storz-bickel.com/en/venty

eru23• 1 year ago

Yes. And you can get the mind-altering effects of both marijuana and tobacco without setting them on fire.

freefaler• 1 year ago

More "healthy" for the lungs, but less healthy for the brain... Not sure what is worse.

eru23• 1 year ago

Eh, they are both fairly harmless on the brain. (At least directly.)

What kills you is the tar in your lungs (and on the way there, like your throat). And you get that from burning stuff in general.

Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe3• 1 year ago

You say "harmless" but I'd rather say "non toxic".

To illustrate: cannabis will not create gaping holes in your brain like mercury would, but although I'm convinced there are valid reasons to use cannabinoids for medical purposes, I'm also convinced that recreational use (especially at a young age) has a terrible impact on brain development and personnality developpment.

My personal take is that the proportion of people that subjectively enjoy cannabis at the cost of feeling okay with very bad life decisions is high enough to warrant extreme carefulness when decriminalizing it. The typical example is the stoner apathy that turns into amotivational syndrome.

Re reading your comment I see that it was mainly to get this off my chest. Hope you don't mind.

IAmBroom2• 1 year ago

Good thing humans are 90% brain, and the other organs don't contribute to quality of life at all. /s

Mc_Big_G• 1 year ago

I'd like to see smoking compare to vaping natural herb. It seems like the obvious, healthier choice.

eru23• 1 year ago

Well, putting any kind of smoke in your lungs is bad.

The difference between vaping and smoking dwarfs the relative rounding error between tobacco vs marijuana in terms of direct health effects.

(There are indirect health effects, of course. Marijuana is more likely to give you the munchies. Tobacco is more likely to help you with weight loss, if anything.)

SavinMyLungz4• 1 year ago

Tangentially, since moving to edibles to avoid damaging my lungs and hopefully live longer, I've noticed that I don't have cravings for edibles the way I do with smoking flower. Eg, if I smoke one day, then I will feel a craving to smoke for the next week or so. But if I eat edibles one day but not the next, I don't notice any craving.

My hypothesis is that it's similar to cigarettes where the nicotine is much more addictive in combination with MAOIs in the cigarette. I don't know that MAOIs are the culprit here, I haven't looked into it. And this could be idiosyncratic to me, of course.

Just another reason not to smoke. The cannabis industry in my state has perfected gummies and driven the price down to the point it's not much more expensive than smoking, even with my really high tolerance, and the dispensary will deliver them to my house, so I'm all out of excuses.

elif4• 1 year ago

Cannabis addiction is a dopaminergic response so this makes total sense. The delayed response gratification of the edible onset is enough to break the response activation of dopamine behavioral reward.

CT scans show cigarettes are harder on the lungs than marijuana

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