Is smoking marijuana dangerous for the respiratory system?
The question of whether or not smoking marijuana is dangerous to the respiratory system is, of course, very important. But we have to keep in mind first of all, that there are other ways to get the psychoactive effects of cannabis, such as vaporization, that does not release tar and ash and so forth. Despite the fact that you would think that smoking anything, any plant product over a long length of time might predispose to bronchitis or pneumonia or obstructive lung disease or even cancer, the epidemiological evidence that has come out from two very large studies in California indicates that, in fact, marijuana smokers who don't smoke cigarettes have no increased risk of pulmonary disease. In fact, those individuals who smoked both cigarettes and marijuana were found to have a lower level of smoking-related disorders than the people who smoked cigarettes alone. Now that research has been criticized because people have said that at least in the United States, marijuana users are not smoking as much or as frequently or in such volumes as a two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker but even studies that have gone to Jamaica where you have groups of people who do use marijuana on an almost continuous basis for ten, twenty years have not indicate elevations in either brain affects or pulmonary affects of smoked cannabis.
