Is inhaling marijuana smoke safer than inhaling smoke from tobacco? A majority of American adults say yes, according to a new survey, and they also believe there is less harm to adults and children from secondhand marijuana smoke than tobacco smoke.
However, those beliefs are just not true, said lead study author Dr. Beth Cohen, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and co-director of UCSF’s program in residency investigation methods and epidemiology.
A 2021 study found teens are about twice as likely to report “wheezing or whistling” in the chest after vaping marijuana than after smoking cigarettes or using e-cigarettes. In fact, regular cannabis vaping was associated with even more negative respiratory symptoms: disturbed sleep due to wheezing; limited speech due to wheezing; wheezing during or after exercise and experiencing a dry cough at night that was not due to a cold or chest infection.
…
A 2022 study looked at the lungs of people much younger than 50 who smoked both tobacco and cannabis and found 75% had emphysema, a disease of the small airways that causes damage to the air sacs in the lungs. About 67% of the tobacco-only smokers had emphysema, while only 5% of the nonsmokers had the disease, the study found.
