Is Smoking Cannabis Bad for Your Lungs: Any form of smoking is not going to do your lungs any good. If you’re someone who wants to do everything, everything they can to live a long and healthy life, perhaps you should consider taking your cannabis in the form of edibles. It is a misnomer to think that as cannabis is a wholly natural product, it must be far safer than tobacco. After all, tobacco contains over 7000 chemicals and at least 250 of them are known to be harmful.
But did you know there are also dangerous chemicals in cannabis? Cannabis smoke contains higher levels of two known carcinogens compared to tobacco smoke. It contains 50% more benzopyrene and 75% more fenzharassine. It has also been shown that cannabis smoking is bad for your lungs and the expression the more you use, the more you lose applies to both tobacco and cannabis smokers.
However, there is a difference in the damage level, but this has little to do with the constituents of the smoke and more to do with how often someone smokes tobacco and how often they smoke cannabis.
More people smoke 20 cigarettes a day than smoke two joints a day. In other words, if you only smoke cannabis, you are less likely to severely damage your lungs compared to a regular cigarette smoker. Research, however, has shown that heavy cannabis smokers do suffer from a reduction in lung function over time.
Is Smoking Cannabis Bad for Your Lungs as Smoking Tobacco?
What is interesting is that smoking cigarettes has a direct link to the onset of lung cancer. However, research shows that if anything, there is a negative effect when smoking cannabis and lung cancer.
Are concerned this could put down to the beneficial effects of chemicals in cannabis such as cannabinoids and phytochemicals. So what are your alternatives if you still want to enjoy the effects of cannabis? Well, we have already mentioned edibles and one shouldn’t forget the option of vaping.
Vaping has many advantages over smoking in that it doesn’t burn any of the constituents and instead simply heats cannabinoids, enabling the release of terpenes and other psychoactive phytochemicals. Like so many things we enjoy in life, like alcohol and chocolate, if taken in moderation, the chances of any harm resulting greatly reduced.