Tobacco is carcinogenic, even if chewed or sucked, and lacks any legitimate medical use. However Cannabis has many medicinal uses, is very safe and non-toxic with no signs that it causes cancer. I don't think that smoking weed is necessarily good though - I would recommend vaporizing it.
I think this issue is muddied by conflating two different questions.
1. Tobacco itself is quite carcinogenic. Snuff, chew, gutka, and any other means of consumption all have strong cancer links. Cannabis, as I understand it, is not nearly as carcinogenic as that.
2. Smoking is also, separately, carcinogenic. Regularly breathing dense smoke is terrible for your lungs, even if you're smoking dried lettuce.
I think it's pretty well established that via 2, smoking cannabis is bad for you. If it's less bad than tobacco, that's as likely to be usage habits as anything. But people are still arguing fairly extensively over 1 - tobacco is a known carcinogen no matter how you ingest it, but I'm not sure that's a settled question for cannabis.
It's a LOT less harmful than tobacco. It also is usable in many non-smoking forms. Tobacco chew and snuff still give you cancer. But, since USA has outlawed research there is ver limited data on how not bad cannabis is.
Its a hard connection to prove, but all smoke contains chemicals that are known to cause cancer. Eaten cannabis probably isn't carcinogenic, but smoked probably is. Few cannabis smokers inhale nearly as much smoke as tobacco smokers. Also, tobacco is a nightshade and toxic if eaten, so maybe that has something to with it being more damaging when smoked.
Nicotine has been found to be oncogenic. If weed is consumed without tobacco, it might actually be safer than tobacco. I‘m not saying that’s a safe bet, but the jury’s out.
Note that smoking cannabis does not have the same cancer health problems as tobacco, tar is not really the issue here. In fact cannabis has a very slight but detectable protective effect for nearly all cancers. Generally, most of the problems with smoking cannabis involve heat-induced damage to the lungs, not the same things that make tobacco smoke dangerous.
It gets pretty confusing when cannabis itself is thought to have anti-cancer properties and the actual amount and temperature of the smoke is much less than that of tobacco. Yeah breathing in any smoke is not good for you, but is it like smoking a pack of cigarettes? Or is it like enjoying a campfire and breathing in a small bit of smoke? One is profoundly bad for you, the other is of such little concern that nobody should be worrying about it unless they have serious lung conditions.
The reason weed is less cancerous than tobacco is because weed smokers typically smoke far less total volume of plant matter than tobacco smokers. Cigarette smokers light up many times every day. Most weed smokers only use it recreationally on an occasional basis, because it's not as addictive.
Smoking causes cancer. Not tobacco. Not marijuana. Inhaling smoke causes cancer, pretty much independent of what is being burnt. (Though obviously some substances are even worse still.)
For some reason people think it is tobacco that causes lung cancer, and therefore joints are safe/healthy. Ridiculous. It is inhaling all that ash that gives you lung and throat cancer.
Vaping avoids the carcinogens of cigarette smoke, but likely carries its own risks. As you mention it's like breathing in a Halloween/stage smoke. But why do you think that is safe to do?
Ultimately if the air is smokey, it contains particulate matter. That particulate matter is not good for your lungs, no matter what it is.
Cannabis smoke, like any smoke generated from combustion of plant matter, contains a number of carcinogenic compounds. Smoking cannabis does not cure cancer. Quite the opposite.
Your position that breathing air is unhealthy without cannabis is quite interesting. I'd love to see some of the studies you're talking about. I have never seen a study concluding that smoke inhalation is a good thing.
Tobacco is highly addictive and carcinogenic. Marijuana doesn't cause physical withdrawals, and while certainly isn't good for your health, it does not cause lung cancer and emphysema anywhere close to the rates of tobacco.
There is ample evidence that smoking weed is bad for the health of the respiratory system. However, it is far less statistically likely to cause lung cancer than tabacco smoking. There are a few citations in this thread that should be able back up the claim.
Smoking isn't healthy and no-one should be making such claims. Other respiratory health issues are just as deadly as cancer.
You state that smoking weed has carcinogenic effects similar to tobacco which very obviously is not the case. They are completely different drugs with completely different side effects. Smoke from marijuana does not equal smoke from tobacco. I am not saying its without negative consequences but they are apples and oranges.
Of course we have research on smoked flower. 1000s of years of research. Mankind has been smoking this plant longer than recorded history and Ill take that any day over the literature at pubmed. I would love for the feds to allow more research of course but its still schedule 1 so not much to be done.
So far the evidence seems to show that smoking and vaping cannabis does not have nearly the potential for lung cancer that tobacco smoking does. It is associated with various respiratory ailments (under heavy use). And it may have a slight protective effect against some cancers.
As usual, more and higher-quality data would help elucidate the source of the protective effects.
Cigarette smoke has a number of carcinogens in it. While nicotine itself is not known to be a carcinogen [0] it does inhibit programmed cell death [1]. Thus, nicotine promotes carcinogenic activity in the lungs and in other bodily tissues.
Interestingly, THC seems to have the exact opposite effect promoting programmed cell death rather than inhibiting it [2]. This may lead to a low risk of lung cancer when smoking marijuana as compared to a high risk of lung cancer when smoking cigarettes [3].
> Tobacco has dramatic negative consequences for those who smoke it. In addition to its high addiction potential [1], tobacco is causally associated with over 400,000 deaths yearly in the United States, and has a significant negative effect on health in general [2]. More specifically, over 140,000 lung-related deaths in 2001 were attributed to tobacco smoke [3]. Comparable consequences would naturally be expected from cannabis smoking since the burning of plant material in the form of cigarettes generates a large variety of compounds that possess numerous biological activities [4].
> While cannabis smoke has been implicated in respiratory dysfunction, including the conversion of respiratory cells to what appears to be a pre-cancerous state [5], it has not been causally linked with tobacco related cancers [6] such as lung, colon or rectal cancers. Recently, Hashibe et al [7] carried out an epidemiological analysis of marijuana smoking and cancer. A connection between marijuana smoking and lung or colorectal cancer was not observed. These conclusions are reinforced by the recent work of Tashkin and coworkers [8] who were unable to demonstrate a cannabis smoke and lung cancer link, despite clearly demonstrating cannabis smoke-induced cellular damage.
> Furthermore, compounds found in cannabis have been shown to kill numerous cancer types including: lung cancer [9], breast and prostate [10], leukemia and lymphoma [11], glioma [12], skin cancer [13], and pheochromocytoma [14]. The effects of cannabinoids are complex and sometimes contradicting, often exhibiting biphasic responses. For example, in contrast to the tumor killing properties mentioned above, low doses of THC may stimulate the growth of lung cancer cells in vitro [15].
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