35
votes
Many people think cannabis smoke is harmless − a physician explains how that belief can put people at risk
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- Authors
- Beth Cohen
- Published
- Aug 30 2023
- Word count
- 767 words
I personally partake but often I find myself hesitating to make that known, partially because of the "weed culture" in general and how much of it is wrapped in pseudoscience. At the very least, I don't really delude myself into thinking that burning something and inhaling it is necessarily safe lol.
I don't think any reasonable person would ever believe inhaling burning substances of any kind was harmless. Then again, all you have to do is look around to see the world is full of unreasonable people.
For sure. I've come across many who believe that people can't get addicted to marijuana. Often while partaking everyday and then say they're "jonesing" when they've run out.
Sure, there's probably zero to limited physical addiction with marijuana compared to something like opiates/opioids, but psychological addiction is a thing, people. I don't think gambling or shopping addicts will suffer physical withdrawal symptoms, but they sure will deal with psychological ones.
And there are physical withdrawal symptoms if not nearly so severe as some other substances.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9110555/#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20features%20of,tension%2C%20sweating%20and%20stomach%20pain.
it's basically like caffeine withdrawal when you drink a few cups of coffee a day. it's not fun but it's not that hard to deal with.
But the way some people online act you'd think the damn plant cures cancer.
I see a lot of young adults think they need it "for their anxiety" but it's more obviously withdrawal effects than it is actually treating their anxiety.
And yeah it's not the worst of things. (And plenty of people respond to caffeine w/d by just using more) but I share your annoyance at the "it's a miracle drug with no side effects".
It's great for some things, fine for recreation or whatever, but killing cancer cells in a petri dish is not the same as curing a disease.
For me it actually does ease my anxiety, but then again I have the real kind diagnosed by a real-life medical professional and not the kind diagnosed by spending too much time on TikTok.
Oh yeah, I'm not even saying these students all don't have anxiety, but they're self-medicating underage without seeing a doctor and are unaware that withdrawal effects are similar to their reported symptoms.
I do a lot of "have you considered campus medical/counseling support to talk through options?"
See, they think that cos there have been studied done that showed remission of cancer. However, most of these are in vitro due to the drug being illegal pretty much everywhere.
Remission of cancer implies a specific status in regards to a person's health and detectable cancer, cannabis has been shown to kill some cancer cells in vitro and prevent cell growth in vitro. But that's it.
Just for clarity. Remission is just a tricky word to use there.
I wish caffeine withdrawals were not that hard to deal with. I've had to cut caffeine basically entirely because of how hard it is for me to even come off of a cup a day prior to 11am with no more caffeine after that.
The withdrawals will give me a migraine that puts me on my ass for a whole day.
heavy cannabis users will experience similar migraines. they can be pretty gnarly but generally only for heavy users going cold turkey.
What you have going on seems different from withdrawal -- iirc withdrawal is due to the dependency you build up with regular use. This "come down" effect after a single cup is probably something else.
That said, caffeine is known to both cause and alleviate migraines (I think due to its effects on blood vessels in the brain) so what you describe sounds like a more serious version of that.
Ah I do think I might've misunderstood. It wasn't clear to me that they meant "a cup per day every day" rather than "whenever I have a single cup of coffee with no other coffee that day (which isn't necessarily every day)". I think I assumed the latter but the former probably makes more sense, you're right.
Anything can be an addiction if not done in moderation.
But marijuana has little physical dependence of that nature, especially when compared to nicotine or alcohol or caffeine (much less harder drugs). While there is some degree of physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms, and there are definitely enthusiasts who incorrectly claim you "can't get addicted to marijuana," the vast majority of "marijuana addiction" irl is based on the same mechanisms you see in "addictions" to shopping or video games.
I don't think your assessment of how the word "addiction" is used nowadays is accurate. It's certainly common enough in common parlance to refer to these types of compulsive behavior as addictions -- check out this google ngrams chart, which shows use of "addiction" to activities like sex, shopping, and gambling to a few drug addictions over time. If anything, the use of "addiction" for non-drugs is a recent phenomenon.
Now, you obviously won't see "addiction" generally used this way in a formal medical context, but common language and technical terminology frequently differ in this way. My understanding is that medical and academic texts these days tend to avoid the word "addiction" and go for "substance use disorder" or "dependence" instead in many cases. There's also been some disagreement on whether compulsive rewards-based behaviors like these can be classified with substance use disorders -- gambling disorder is even in the chapter "Substance-related and addictive disorders" alongside substance use disorders in the DSM-V, but compulsive buying and compulsive sex were not.
The only reason inhaling drugs is attractive at all is that they're rapidly absorbed and distributed. The alternative to burning cannabis, vape oil, isn't likely to be any better for you (and that's leaving aside the whole episode with vitamin E acetate contamination).
I wish there were better ways to get a quickly effective dose - I'm using cannabis medically for pain control, and the long wait for edibles, tinctures, or patches to work can be problematic. It's also harder to find anything that still contains the entourage compounds present in the whole plant material.
Like nmn said, I would look into dry vaping.
Look at brands like Pax, Arizer, and Storz and Bickel.
I'm sure it has its own health negatives, but in my anecdotal experience, it feels like breathing warm air, not smoke. And there are even ways to use water filters/coolers with a vape if you want it cooler.
I like that with the dry vape you just use regular plant material. As opposed to vape oil where I worry about what else is getting into it from a relatively new and seemingly not well regulated industry.
We don't know what we don't know. I'm really hoping a lot more cannabis studies will start coming out so we can learn more about positive and negative effects as well as best practices.
What about dry herb vaporization?
As it stands, dry herb vaporization or low temp oil vaping are pretty untested. In theory, they should be the safest inhaled option, but inhaling hot, dry air can be damaging to the airways. There's evidence that drinking extra-hot coffee or tea can increase risks for mouth and throat cancer, so we should expect at least that scale of long term effects.
canna [flower] vape is relatively dry, but heat is easily avoided ny using a bag rather than a whip. it's at ambient temperature by the time it gets in your lungs.
(not saying there are no negative effects, but hot air isn't really one of them)
Where did I imply it's worse than combustion? They should be the safest methods of inhalation, but that doesn't mean harmless.
An oral spray might be a potential solution here, though they can be difficult to find outside of places where cannabis is highly commercialised in the US and Canada.
I've noticed recently how difficult it is to find edibles that are more than just pure THC, at least in my area. I also use cannabis for pain control and it's become such a pain to find what I want, either whole plant (so I get the relief and care less about remaining pain), or more CBD in the product than THC (so I get pain relief). I'm in California, so it's legal here, but the majority of edibles I have access to are just for the high.
Sadly, many people also think that incense smoke and candle smoke are harmless. I feel like people got the message that cigarette smoke is bad, yes, but maybe forgot that smoke in general isn't good to inhale regardless of the source. (Correct me if I'm wrong and there's actually a type of smoke that's healthy to inhale!)
You're correct, all smoke is harmful to the lungs. Even smoke from an innocent, cozy campfire is carcinogenic.
I had a housemate move out recently. When I saw her room I thought there was a small fire there. The walls and ceiling were black. I spent days scrubbing the oily soot off.
She just liked candles! I wonder what her lungs look like.
I can't believe she thought it was ok for her room to turn black and to just leave it like that for you to clean up 😭
I'm glad to see this - I think it's a good reminder of how my (and probably others') thought process and historical views have changed, and maybe just how effective the industry's marketing has been. I live in an area with a high concentration of cannabis shops due to location and zoning laws. It's amazing how I went from thinking of cannabis as a terrible "gateway" drug to being basically more ubiquitous than smoking in less than a decade. People partake in public now and I just think of it as a public nuisance - I hadn't given any thought to it with regard to secondhand smoke and how that might affect my health. I know people who mark "no" on the smoking section of medical questionnaires (when tobacco is addressed separately) despite being heavy smokers of cannabis. I think my / our behaviors and lack of conscious thought about the ramifications demonstrate just fine how my local culture has become comfortable with cannabis, perhaps to an inadvisable degree.
I'm interested to see where the research goes as scientific entities gain more opportunities to study this.
Well there are some things to consider.
Cannabis users typically smoke much less than cigarette users. While some cannabis users smoke excessively, a joint a day would already be seen as quite heavy use by most people, meanwhile even casual cigarette smokers smoke multiple cigarettes a day. The median in the UK is approximately 10 cigarettes per day.
The other thing is THC and CBD are both antioxidants, so likely taper some of the damage associated with smoking. There's also a growing body of evidence that CBD is anti-inflammatory https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33998900/.
Of course combustion free methods still seem better than smoking, as far as safety is considered.
I think you're over valuing your anecdotal experience there. A lot more people smoke cannabis than the people involved in social circles around it. There are many people who partake non-socially. The equivalent to someone opening a bottle of wine on a Friday to unwind will roll a joint for the same purpose, but may not touch it during the work week.
While I personally have no idea what is truly considered "heavy" or "light", I would certainly consider a joint per day to be heavy (as I would with someone drinking wine or beer every day). In my own anecdotal experience, I have worked in several organisations rife with people who seem to smoke it in the casual manner I suggested - and I know a handful of people who smoke to deal with chronic pain, but typically only smoke when it gets very bad.
i think the moment you cross the line into daily use it starts to be heavy, and i say this as an excessive smoker
I've been considering moving to a primarily oral route for my THC. I use it pretty regularly to cope with life, but smoking is such a disgusting habit (in terms of smell and health) that I really want to move away from.
It's easier than ever to switch to edibles, with so many states legalizing various forms of THC. Do you happen to be in a state that has legalized any of it? My state just legalized it recently, but before it was legalized, I ordered edibles from some random store in another state and didn't have any issues ordering or receiving it. I can't say if I would advise it (depending on your risk level and the state you live in, ) but it's 100% possible to do.
You could also switch to vaping (the old fashioned kind, turning flower into vapor, not the oil pens we have nowadays.) I don't know how "healthy" it is to vape weed, but it's definitely better than smoking it. Anything is better than smoking anything.
I don't live in the states, and although it isn't legal where I live it's pretty much decriminalized. I do have a vape, but I find that the effect is much stronger and shorter than smoking which I find is a waste. I don't tend to smoke a lot at once, as I am very prone to anxiety with cannabis, so I drag it out through the entire day.
The issue with that is that half-burnt joints stink like high hell and I pretty much can't walk around with it in my bag without everyone on the bus smelling it, which I just think is rude to the people around me.
Buying edibles is illegal for me, so my current half-baked plan is to make my own canna-oil and find a creative way to take small doses throughout the day without making it too sugar heavy. I'm considering finding a way to incorporate it into tea or something of the sort, but I've admittedly been procrastinating the research I should be doing.
Apologies for my American-brained comment. :)
You may want to look into making THC tincture with ethanol. I feel like cannabutter is more common and probably simpler to make, but it's limited in use, for me. Especially since it's usually used in sweet baked goods, which it seems like you want to stay away from. A tincture would work well for mixing into tea.
Edit: I should work on my reading comprehension, I completely missed the point on the focus of the smoke part, see @PelagiusSeptim ‘s comment. So it’s completely logical that psychosis risk isn’t mentioned, I’ll leave my comment for those that are interested in this loosely related topic.
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I find it interesting that there's no mention of the association between (heavy) cannabis use and psychosis risk. Although it is difficult to establish a causal link, it is at least worth it to consider as a public health risk. See for example: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61162-3/fulltext?cc=y and https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article/42/5/1262/2413827 . Since the rise in quality of cannabis, the THC-content rises as well, which is associated with psychosis risk.
Especially starting with cannabis at a young age (<13 yrs) seem to increase the psychosis risk later in life. I feel that the association is clear enough to advise to start exploration of cannabis as late as possible, at least some years after the peak incidence of psychosis (21 yrs) and even safer, after 25-27 yrs, when the brain is thought to be fully developed. If cannabis use makes you anxious or paranoid, it would be wise to not continue to partake.
I can't easily find the article, but the association of psychosis and cannabis use seem to have three main routes:
Wouldn't really make sense to discuss psychosis in this article, this is about the dangers of cannabis smoke specifically, not cannabis use in general. As far as I'm aware smoking doesn't have a greater risk of psychosis compared to other methods, such as edibles.