Marijuana Safer Than Tobacco

Posted by IV on January 11, 2012 // Leave Your Comment

( 4UMF NEWS ) Marijuana Safer Than Tobacco

Small doses of pot won’t hurt your lungs like tobacco does, says a new 20-year-study.

Refuting claims that all marijuana use has a negative effect on respiratory health, researchers found that smoking two to three joints per month isn’t harmful.

“Tobacco takes you down that road toward breathlessness, but low to moderate levels of marijuana don’t,” said Dr. Stefan Kertesz, a co-author of the study, according to Health Day.

The research, which appears in the Jan. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, comes from one of the longest and largest studies on the effects of marijuana use, USA Today reported.

Over two decades, researchers studied the lung capacity of more than 5,100 people aged 18-30 from four different cities: Oakland, Calif.; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Birmingham, Ala. Lung tests, during which participants’ were asked to blow into a tube, were administered every few years.

Tobacco users in the group smoked about eight to nine cigarettes per day, while marijuana users smoked an average of two to three times in the past month.

“That’s really different from Cheech and Chong,” Kertesz said. “Americans who smoke marijuana typically don’t smoke it every day.”

While marijuana use of the group was light, smoking pot was just as common as smoking tobacco, researchers found.

But it’s the tobacco users who should worry. The study shows that the substance, in any amount, unlike marijuana, reduces lung capacity.

Story @ NYDailyNews