What does marijuana really do to your body?

Factual Questions
21

How does marijuana smoking compare to tobacco smoking?

Basically, we don’t know. We havent’ studied it long enough. There are a number of reasons for that.

One, people who smoke a lot aren’t always forthcoming about it, and don’t get put into many quality studies.

Two, those that do smoke a lot haven’t been followed for 30 or more years, and compared to their peers over the same length of time.

Three, many who do smoke it regularly also smoke tobacco, so it’s hard to sort one effect from the other.

Four, noone is funding a lot of research into the longterm lung effects of smoking marijuana. It’s not sexy, like the ciggy studies.

So we have to extrapolate. We compare the smoke of marijuana to the smoke of tobacco. And overall we conclude, that the smoke from marijuana contains at least as much tar and carbon monoxide and other nasties as tobacco, if not a whole lot more. We also see from other studies that marijuana smokers tend to inhale deeper and hold the smoke in longer than tobacco smokers. Meanwhile tobacco smokers smoke a whole lot more of the time than marijuana smokers.

So we give an edumacated guess: We’re pretty darn sure it can’t be very good for you, but we can’t give you much in the way of numbers or statistics.

I have no qualms in telling my patients that the smoking is damaging their lungs in ways we can’t quantify, and they’d all be better off not smoking it.

22

Use of water pipes with tobacco significantly increases the nicotine and carbon monoxide exposures. It is no cure-all for the problems associated with inhaling burning, corrosive gases.

23

This is from Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World

24

Smoking it carries the usual risks involved with inhaling burning substances. Tell him to bake with it rather (that’s bake like with an oven… first). :smiley: mmmm, cannabutter…

25

I’m no expert, but I think that vaporizers heat the marijuana to the point where the oils evaporate, but not to the point where there’s combustion. So, it’s not exactly smoking it.

26

A related question - Is the “six weeks” figure for the amount of time detectable residues of marijuana remain in your body true? Also, is it an urban myth or do marijuana residues remain for longer than usual in the testicles?

27

A vaporizer, not a water bong. You’re still burning the marijuana with a water bong, you don’t burn the marijuana with a vaporizer.

Whether or not the vaporizer produces no carcinogens is a question I’m not positive of, but I do know that by not burning it to extract the THC, you’re definitely not producing the carcinogens you would if you burned it.
http://www.canorml.org/healthfacts/vaporizers.html

28

Great link Cerri.

29

Case history (me):
When my company began random testing I stopped smoking pot for over a year. Then one weekend I smoked a few joints with a friend. Seven weeks later I got tested. I didn’t even worry about it, but sure as hell I tested positive. Four weeks after that (total of over three months) I was still testing positive, but at below policy levels.
I know nothibg about the balls part of your question.
Peace,
mangeorge

30

That would be me. If I smoke pot, I get panick attacks. By the way, it came out of the blues. I used to be a regular (as in every day) cannabis smoker without any problem and suddenly one day, I got my first panic attack. I was smoking a particularily strong cannabis in this instance, so maybe it’s part of the reason, but even a mild one would now have the same consequences.

Also, a friend of mine who was a very very heavy cannabis smoker became psychotic (paranoid). But perhaps this could have been caused or aggravated by his intensive use of cannabis, and perhaps it’s totally unrelated. How could we know?

31

FTR, my uncle (who I rarely see) is dying from lung cancer. He never smoked cigs but has smoked pot for over 30 years now and continues to toke during treatment (not a blood relative, thank god). I do believe he’ll have part or all of his lung removed.

Don’t know the frequency he smoked - he has 3 kids and one of those “normal family lives” so I don’t know when he really had the time or privacy to light up. But I’m sure he has been smoking quite regularly since he went a bit batty and moved to LA by himself to become a bodybuilder/actor…

I will also say both his parents have passed away in the last 5 years from cancer. But who’s to say if that’s why he has lung cancer? His 5 older and younger siblings don’t smoke weed and they don’t have it.

Anyway, there’s one story about getting cancer from smoking pot (presumeably)

32

Some interesting facts;

So 70% of cancer deaths and 15% of lung cancer are not related to smoking.
My point is that although smoking is idiotic, having lung cancer certainly doesn’t prove one to be a smoker.
BTW; I’ve read that while pot smokers are likely to light up cigarettes, they’re also very likely to let it burn up without actually smoking it. I used to do that. A lot. :wink:

33

Ah. Gotcha.

Just don’t assume it’s safe. We lack credible data about the long-term effects of these devices.

34

Ok - I’d recommend this excellent website that can no doubt educate you as to the positives and negatives of the substance. Dr. Grinspoon is a Harvard Medical School faculty member, so this is not just an advocacy site, but rather an educational one. I think the OP should be able to find what s/he is looking for. And, if not, it’s still a grand place to visit and learn. xo C.
<www.marijuana-uses.com>

35

I’m sure some do, but most? Smoking a quarter a week would mean spending $300 a month on weed, and spending every waking moment stoned.

36

I don’t think this is exactly what the OP was asking for (nor are many of the posts above, it would seem), but a factoid I’ve heard is that marijuana is safer than aspirin: people have died of aspirin overdoses, but there is no known lethal dose of marijuana.

So, flamingbananas, it would seem the best course might not be trying to scare your friend, but dealing with him rationally, friend-to-friend. Ask why he’s using so much pot, and whether it might have some negative effects on his life (since we haven’t conclusively found many physical problems it’s likely to cause). If you can’t point any out to him, or if he doesn’t think they’re problems, then MYOB.

37

I’ve tried this. He says he is “just experimenting” but this has been going on longer and heavier then I would think expirementing would be going on for. He does it here, which not only makes me mad and points out his stupidity, but it makes my asthma bad. I’ve pointed this out to him and he said that he would stop smoking it here, but when I got home the other day I smelled it. I know I can scare him off it if I can show him one fact that really freaks him out.

38

I don’t think you’re going to find one. Marijuana isn’t really a scary drug.

39

Good lord, Man! (Woman?) Maybe in Jamaica, but not 'round here. When I smoked my heaviest - stoned **every night ** (though not during the day), a quarter would last me for three months! The heaviest smoker I know personally goes through about an eighth a week, and he **is ** so sh*tfaced he can’t hold a job. If “most marijuana smokers” are buying a quarter a week, they’re smoking up a lot of their friends, or smoking more than they need, 'cause you just don’t need to consume that much on your own!

(This actually makes the rest of your points even more salient, as the quantity of marijuana smoked by the average user is even lower than your estimate, I’m sure.)

The only physical effect of marijuana that you might be able to scare your friend with only works if s/he’s under 22. And no, I don’t have a cite for it, so I can’t be 100% sure that it’s true, but it was told to me by a health teacher that I really trusted. She was the only adult who actually gave us “The Straight Dope” on the list of drugs the school made her teach us about in high school. (The school wanted her to say, “Drugs are bad, don’t do them.” but she actually gave us pros and cons on each one.)

According to her, marijuana will cause the body to coat the neurons (nerve cells) with a thin layer of lipids (fat.) This lipid layer is needed in small bits to help electricity jump through nerves faster, but when too much is built up (like through smoking lots of weed) it actually acts as an insulation, slowing down the electrical charges, and therefore slowing down reaction speed, thinking, etc. Plus, since the neurons in your brain grow until you’re around 22, and they can’t grow through the excess lipids, you can actually stunt your brain growth on a neurological level if you smoke lots of pot before your brain in done growing. Now, when you stop smoking pot, this lipid layer will gradually be reabsorbed into the body. No harm, no foul - except if you’ve been smoking during adolescence, when the neurons should have been growing. They simply won’t grow later to catch up. Net effect: you’re dumber than you otherwise would have been.

Like I said, I have no cite for this theory. I don’t know if it’s horribly outdated or been proven wrong or what. But it did stop me from toking up until I was 22!

(I have heard that “they” are doing research into using marijuana to rebuild the mylein sheathing (that lipid layer around each neuron) in ALS patients, so it does make sense to me.)