# Tobacco or Marijuana? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 18, 2012, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522 "2012-06-18T15:11:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/21 "2012-06-21T03:19:06Z")
> [@Alan\_Smithee](#): > > True, but with the medical pot you can get today a joint a day by yourself would be a **lot**. I would imagine anyone who smoked nearly that much would invest in a vaporizer: it would pay for itself just due to the better efficiency. No shit. I do a fairly small pinch morning and evening. Enough to take the edge off the pain but not enough to get particularly stoned. Old school vaporizers - the kind that put the vapor into a balloon like bag are something on the order of $700. The magic flight box is way more reasonable at around $75. Purportedly the magic flight is stealthy enough that you can carry it with you and smoke it discreetly in sort of public. The less expensive one is getting to be fairly popular. Some people are working on making e-cig cartridges with hash oil. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/22 "2012-06-21T18:33:24Z")
Aren’t the dispensary limits usually some ridiculous number, like 2 oz. per week (I can’t enter to verify)? At a joint a day, that would last you a very, very long time. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/23 "2012-06-21T18:39:05Z")
Ah. I wasn’t up on current dosages for marijuana. The stoners I knew in high school would light up on the walk to school, during lunch, after school… ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/24 "2012-06-21T19:45:53Z")
2 oz per week is a crazy lot of shit to smoke for a regular person – compounded with the intensity of all the “medicinal” I’ve, er, seen over the past few months. I bet people who find a strain that works for them and don’t do much else during the day and have been doing it a while could easily cap an once per week. Two ounces is a lot of weed, brah. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/25 "2012-06-21T20:03:22Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > Guys, take another look at what **Qadgop** said in post #5: One _joint_ a day is equal to one _pack_ of tobacco, not 20 joints. If somebody smokes one joint a day, they’re at roughly the same risk as a one-pack-a-day tobacco smoker. People who smoke two or three joints a day are at two or three times the risk. Keep in mind that these numbers are heavily influenced by European stats, and that a “joint” is considered to contain an admixture of tobacco and cannabis. The harm comes from taking in great lungfuls of tobacco smoke and holding them as per cannabis use. Studies that look at the actual impact of cannabis vs tobacco find [otherwise](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277837/). ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/26 "2012-06-21T20:21:32Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > Keep in mind that these numbers are heavily influenced by European stats, and that a “joint” is considered to contain an admixture of tobacco and cannabis. The harm comes from taking in great lungfuls of tobacco smoke and holding them as per cannabis use. > > Studies that look at the actual impact of cannabis vs tobacco find [otherwise](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277837/). I am so not impressed by that link. It’s a review article, published directly online by a guy who touts pot as a cancer cure and describes the cannabis flower as the most effective and versatile medicine known to mankind. :rolleyes: [http://mendonews.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/marijuana-cancer-cure-robert-melamede-on-endocannabinoids/](http://mendonews.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/marijuana-cancer-cure-robert-melamede-on-endocannabinoids/) And his cites in that article are cherry-picked, and the link between what he says they mean and they actually seem to mean are quite tenuous, IMHO. As for the study I cited, here’s a full copy: [http://av.medpagetoday.com/upload/2008/2/1/280.pdf](http://av.medpagetoday.com/upload/2008/2/1/280.pdf) In it you find that 3/4 of the pot smokers didn’t smoke tobacco at all. My basic assertion stands: There’s not a lot of good data out there. The link I provided is a link to a tiny bit of what appears to be good data. More is needed, however. The review put out by Dr. Melamede is not chock-full of good data. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/27 "2012-06-21T20:44:52Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > I am so not impressed by that link. It’s a review article, published directly online by a guy who touts pot as a cancer cure and describes the cannabis flower as the most effective and versatile medicine known to mankind. Woof, that is embarrassing. First link. [/quote] > [@QtM](#): > > As for the study I cited, here’s a full copy: [http://av.medpagetoday.com/upload/2008/2/1/280.pdf](http://av.medpagetoday.com/upload/2008/2/1/280.pdf) Well, that’s reassuring - it’s my turn to be less-than impressed: > [@](#): > > In total, 79 cases of lung cancer and 324 controls were included in the study. Here’s the National Cancer Institute’s current consensus: > [@](#): > > A large retrospective cohort study of 64,855 men aged 15 to 49 years from the United States found that Cannabis use was not associated with tobacco-related cancers and a number of other common malignancies. However, the study did find that, among nonsmokers of tobacco, ever having used Cannabis was associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer. > > [6]cite quote:–\> “We conclude that, in this relatively young study cohort, marijuana use and cancer were not associated in overall analyses, but that associations in nonsmokers of tobacco cigarettes suggested that marijuana use might affect certain site-specific cancer risks.” ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/28 "2012-06-21T20:52:17Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > The harm comes from taking in great lungfuls of tobacco smoke and holding them as per cannabis use. … marijuana is a gateway drug to tobacco now? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/29 "2012-06-21T21:29:57Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > … marijuana is a gateway drug to tobacco now? More that the risks of cannabis use of frequently inflated by conflation with tobacco use, as in the most recently publicized study from the British Lung Foundation, which alarmingly declared “cannabis smoke is twenty times more carcinogenic than tobacco smoke!” However, they are looking at statistics reflecting typical British self-reporting cannabis users, ignoring that “the [commonest method](http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199798/ldselect/ldsctech/151/15108.htm) of using cannabis in the United Kingdom is to smoke cannabis resin mixed with tobacco, and nicotine use is very high among cannabis users.” Naturally, if you are smoking hash mixed with tobacco, and you’re holding it in as people do when smoking hash, you’re going to see more of the ill effects of tobacco. Studies that are scrupulous about disentangling tobacco use from cannabis arrive at dramatically different conclusions. (Note that QtM’s study, quite apart from being statistically insignificant, also counts people who smoke tobacco “occasionally, but never daily” as non-users of tobacco. This does everything but explicitly select for people who season their weed with tobacco, taking in great lungfuls of tobacco smoke and holding it in.) ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/30 "2012-06-21T21:48:32Z")
I get all that, it just seems odd to me because back in 7th grade, the anti-drug propaganda was all geared towards telling us that tobacco leads to marijuana use. Go figure. How many joints per ounce of marijuana, by the way? Some people are saying a joint a day, others are counting ounces per whenever. What’s the conversion rate? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2012, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/31 "2012-06-21T22:54:10Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > How many joints per ounce of marijuana, by the way? Some people are saying a joint a day, others are counting ounces per whenever. What’s the conversion rate? The usual rule-of-thumb is that one gram yields four joints, so an ounce would yield around 112 joints. Of course, this is highly variable - in my experience, “joints” get much smaller as you age. Most I’ve seen in the past decade have been tiny pinners, cut in halves which are shared between two people - so by my lights I’d say “There are about eight hundred ‘joints’ in an ounce of cured cannabis.” This statement would cause expulsions of smokey laughter from virtually everyone I knew in my twenties - at least when _they_ were in their twenties. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/32 "2012-06-22T01:47:53Z")
> [@Larry\_Mudd](#): > > it’s my turn to be less-than impressed It is what it is, and it’s a very small study but with some somewhat sound scientific underpinnings and assumptions. As I’ve said over and over, we really don’t know much yet about what pot does regarding cancer risk over the long run. Might be nothing, might be significantly more than nothing. The data isn’t really very reassuring either way. Me, I think it’s less risky than tobacco, possibly a lot less risky. But none of the studies convince me it’s safe as far as that risk goes. ---
**Author:** ![Shadowfyre](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shadowfyre/32/9972_2.png) [@Shadowfyre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shadowfyre)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2012, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/33 "2012-06-22T15:52:19Z")
So we have a joint at approximately a quarter gram. I have trouble visualizing a quarter gram. Most of the people I know (I can think of 5 people off the top of my head), go home and eat dinner and then do a one hitter to chill out for the evening. They may do more on occasion, but their daily use is one or two hits. How many one hitters to a joint? ---
**Author:** ![CC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f1d935/32.png) [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2012, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522/34 "2012-06-23T21:44:02Z")
My friend Ernie (heh heh) can get many loads of reefer into his one-hitter from the same amount of dope that would make one joint. Wild ass guess - 15. If he takes the proverbial one hit every other day or so, it would take him a couple weeks to smoke the equivalent of one whole joint. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tobacco-or-marijuana/625522.md?page=1)