Marijuana Smoking Increases Risk of Lung Disease

According to this article from the Daily Telegraph over in Australia new research indicates serious risk of lung disease from smoking marijuana.

According to this study the incidents of bulbous lung disease occurring in chronic cannabis users is higher, and what’s worse is it occurs 20 years sooner then tobacco smokers. Bulbous lung disease is caused by long term exposure to toxic chemicals.

It is not at all surprising that this should be true. After all when you smoke a joint what do you do? You inhale deeply then hold in maximizing the exposure to the marijuana smoke and increasing the amount of THC that gets into the body.

With that being said why is this study not overly concerning to me in my belief in the legalization of marijuana? Simply because, even with this study, marijuana is considerably less harmful then tobacco or alcohol, plus this only takes into account joints and not other methods of using marijuana.

It has long been known that smoking a joint is basically the most dangerous way to use pot. Water pipes or bongs were invented for the sole purpose of cooling down the marijuana smoke in order to lessen the damage the smoke does to the lungs. Then there is vaporizers, again the temperature is not as high and the damage to the lungs is minimized. Of course both of these still contain some risk, so what about eating marijuana, there is zero damage to the lungs in this case. I have said it before and I will say it again, the only reason joints are so popular is because they are easy to conceal and relatively cheap, so the illegality of the drug is the sole reason why marijuana is more damaging to lungs in this case.