Why would cannabis be less harmful than tobacco? The smoke from each is roughly the same, with the obvious differences being nicotine in tobacco and cannbinoids in cannabis.
Maybe cannabis smokers smoke less frequently than cigarette smokers; but maybe they inhale the smoke deeper and hold it longer.
It's a bit frustrating that anyone who expresses any concern about cannabis is written off as a propagandist of an oppressive government.
(I'm pro legalisation)
But unlike tobacco, cannabis does not contain a chemical as highly addictive as nicotine. Your average tobacco smoker probably smokes an order of magnitude more tobacco than your average cannabis smoker smokes cannabis. Evidently there is a nonzero risk of physical or psychological dependency for marijuana, but it's nowhere near the risk profile of tobacco.
> Smoke for smoke, cannabis and tobacco are probably
> equally harmful.
If you smoke heavily from 14 and quit at 18, your health risks from tobacco will normalise to that of a non-smoker after x years, but there's a suggestion here that if it's cannabis you're smoking, you've caused yourself irreparable harm
The smoke itself is made up of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons like anthracene. These molecules are carcinogenic on their own, and activate the bodies' inflammation response causing additional damage. In this regard, both marijuana and tobacco will have very similar detrimental effects. However, some of the compounds found in marijuana, like cannabidiol, are anti-inflammatory agents (targeting the CB2 receptor), which helps prevent some of the damage that would otherwise be caused by the smoke (but not all of it).
The other source of damage is radioisotopes absorbed from the soil. The tobacco plant tends to absorb radioactive elements like polonium more readily than many other plants. These radioisotopes are deposited on the lining of the lungs, where they undergo decay, causing cellular damage. Marijuana may or may not be similar to tobacco in this respect, but I have not done much research on that.
This isn't going to be a significant issue if it's grown indoors. Also, a large part of the reason why tobacco has a lot of radiation is because of the fertilizer that sticks to the leaves, whereas this isn't an issue with cannabis because it's not being fertilized by crop dusters.
http://www.m.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/news/20060523/pot-smoki...
http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/health-and-fitness/53910-...
I'm guessing it's probably because you don't have to smoke as much as tobacco.
Also, anecdotally: I have yet to hear of someone getting lung cancer from smoking pot. Heck, Willie Nelson has been toking up for decades, and apparently his lungs are just fine.
And then there's this: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/cannabis/healthpr...
> It's a bit frustrating that anyone who expresses any concern about cannabis is written off as a propagandist of an oppressive government.
That was not needed.
The comparison I've heard is that a regularly smoking 1 joint a day is roughly equivalent to smoking 1 self-rolled cigarette using tobacco grown without additives.
Correct. Unless you include users who mix in other substances to increase the efficacy of the cannabis they are smoking.
I've had friends mix everything from coke, meth, crushed barbiturates and yes even tobacco in with their cannabis.
They're mixing coke and meth in to smoke coke and meth.