I mean, if you think secondhand tobacco smoke is bad, what basis is there to think that secondhand cannabis smoke is OK?
For that matter, what basis is there to think that firsthand cannabis smoking does not have similar long-term health consequences as tobacco smoking? The only obvious reason I can think of is that most people don't smoke cannabis all day, every day as many cigarette smokers do.
In my city they do, morning until night, about every 2 hours or so, directly entering my living space with no way to prevent (in each case one individual, in different buildings). Addiction.
Multifamily housing typically doesn't consist of hermetically sealed units. If your neighbors are doing something that produces odor, if it's strong enough, others are going to smell it in their units too. Additionally, shared spaces in the building often ending up smelling too. This isn't limited to pot smoking but it is a common enough occurrence that it's unreasonable to mock someone for mentioning it.
lol, way to layer on the sarcasm. I live in a complex and I can smell weed every time my neighbor lights up on the balcony even though my door is closed. I like the guy and he doesn't really have an alternative so I don't mind, but it is a bit annoying!
>For that matter, what basis is there to think that firsthand cannabis smoking does not have similar long-term health consequences as tobacco smoking?
The vast majority of tobacco is consumed in the form of cigarettes, which are more of a "tobacco product" than actual tobacco. There is a plethora of additives and most cigarettes are actually composes of a nasty cardboard-like filler[0] which has been soaked in a processed tobacco broth. Whereas smoked marijuana is typically just dried plant matter.
So without saying which may be better or worse, there likely is some sort of difference. Plus the growing processes and absorption characteristics of the two plants may produce different amounts of radioactive contaminants which probably contribute to the carcinogenicity of tobacco.
On top of that, tobacco smokers on average probably injest way more smoke than cannabis smokers do. Though cannabis smokers tend to hold the smoke in longer.
Bong resin is easier to clean than tobacco stains. tobacco turns into this lacquer like stuff that only smears and never lifts; cannabis residues are sucked right up with slightly watered ethanol.
There's many reasons filtering your indoor air would be a good idea; presence of any smoke is certainly one of them. Look at what hits the air every time you cook, for example.
While people smoke much less weed than to acco on a volume basis, hot boxing Is a problem fairly unique to weed smokers. To acco smokers aren't doing anything illegal, and to acco stinks, so someone's likely to want to open the window, and likely to convince the group to let them.
According to Lancet (some time back, after a half-day long search for actual science data online) the carcinogenicity of second-hand smoke particles was so low as to be immeasurable.
It's also claimed SHS causes cardiovascular problems. Perhaps ... lots of things can do that, like food and lack of exercise. Accounted-for in studies?
The shocker is not that first hand smoke also is, but that natural tobacco is not remotely as deadly as what is in nearly all national brand cigarettes, and the obvious reason these products are so deadly is that a large number of carcinogens are added to the product intentionally to make nicotine more addictive. I always thought it was a strange outcome of the 90's cigarette co. court settlements that this practice, I believe specifically detailed for the court, wasn't eliminated (and notably the unpaid remainder of the fines were eliminated entirely in the mid-naughts).
> The research was done in the living room of an off-campus apartment of an undergraduate student who came up with the idea, according to Professor S. Katharine Hammond, who oversaw the study and co-wrote the report with graduate student Patton Khuu Nguyen. The subjects were students who supplied their own cannabis and bong of their choosing. They were not observed while partaking of the bong in the apartment. They were aware their recreational usage was being measured but remained anonymous throughout.
> The experiment ran for two months in 2018 and served as the master’s project for Nguyen. Hammond, a tenured professor who has been at UC Berkeley for 28 years, was his faculty adviser.
This design of experiment is interesting. Although the conditions are extremely loosely controlled (thus leaving replication more difficult), I would expect the quality of the data to be higher since this is essentially gathering field-testing data.
I’m not going to claim that weed smoke is totally fine… but is all PM2.5 equally dangerous? Anyone with an air quality monitor near their kitchen can see that PM2.5 levels skyrocket when cooking. How do those particles compare to the ones in wildfire smoke or diesel exhaust?
The statistics indicating that smoking weed doesn’t significantly raise lung cancer risk when controlling for users who also smoke tobacco, despite higher carcinogen levels in weed smoke, tells me our understanding has a long way to go.
I really wish cannabis was associated with consuming jello or chocolate, instead of smoking something.
People, even dating apps, even doctors, ask "do you smoke weed", when they mean to ask "do you consume thc and cool with that" (okay doctors may be asking about lung cancer risk from smoking and other ways to fuck up your insurance premiums)
Caution: that's not exactly true. What you get is a different distribution of particulates. You'll get much less of the larger particulates, and you'll be inhaling mostly finer particulates. They cause a different pattern of tissue damage.
I would expect that dry herb vaping would be more or less equivalent to liquid vaping (but of course this would depend on temperature, contents of the liquid, etc), assuming that no combustion occurs.
Edit: I should say that this is not my specific area of expertise. This is a fairly active area of research, and while I am somewhat interested I am not following it super closely.
My doctor (not a doctor who proscribes cannabis per a consensus of the physicians in the practice) stressed rather urgently that any cannabis vaping should be dry herb and not liquid. Sample size of one and all.
That may be because there was a significant quality control issue a few years ago where the solvent used in some liquid vape cartridges was causing serious lung problems.
I don't remember the details, but I have heard dry vape lauded as a safer alternative, since there are no additives or solvents involved, meaning you only have to worry about pesticides and fertilizers.
opportunistic reminder that hookahs are "100 times worse than cigarettes" for your lungs and the rest of your body!
the consumer protection on hookahs is absolutely broken, as the warnings practically don't exist and a lot of people that avoid nicotine cigarettes use hookahs think theyre unrelated and benign, health wise.
Yes, pretty much anything that goes into your lungs is bad. Lungs are incredibly fragile. This is especially so if whatever you're inhaling is hot (eg.: water vapour, smoke from any source...).
In 2014 I ended up in the hospital due to an abnormally high concentration of material in an edible. Slept through 90 degree heat and had potassium depletion. Woke up and immediately couldn't control my muscles and had arrhythmia. Thought I was dying. Never touched an edible again.
Surely the problem was not the edibles if sleeping in 90 degree weather paralyzed you? I've sweated large amounts in my sleep, especially while sick, never have I considered I could sweat out enough potassium to paralyze me. Were you eating fine?
At least in California, the stuff (especially gummies) you get from the dispensaries is in well controlled doses. Once you find your tolerance levels for a specific brand (through experimentation with smaller amounts) it is easy to just eat half of one, know you're getting X mg of THC and use that as a baseline. Then you just keep buying the same thing and even with different brands, you still have that X mg baseline to go from.
I don't know anything about how the medicinal framework and supply was then
Its still interesting how too big of a dose and sleeping in heat has you in perpetual fear of edibles nearly 10 years later
As opposed to the correct dose
Like I absolutely think your experience is valid, it seems out of place to share a scary anecdote in a thread that assumes people are taking something within their tolerance range
> it seems out of place to share a scary anecdote in a thread that assumes people are taking something within their tolerance range
It's not at all out of place. You don't know what you're getting with an edible. The point being that these pseudoregulations aren't enough to keep you safe, even in a state like Kalifornia.
Medical Marijuana had been implemented since 1996 there
Is it out of place to suggest edibles in such a way that implies that there's no danger to them?
> Is it out of place to suggest edibles in such a way that implies that there's no danger to them?
That's an interesting assumption. I would say it is out of place, for the people that do that. At the same time I don't think a disclaimer is necessary for about figuring out your dosage and that some people experience anxiety as a gatekeeping to discussing a product at all, because we don't do that for anything else. I think its something people should be aware of. That's up to the consumer, but I would absolutely love FDA style packaging with disclaimers about known side effects from actual clinical trials and studies. But we don't have that right now.
Straw man? You think I'm presenting a concept not previously presented and discrediting that concept in an effort to discredit the thing previously presented?
I don't think I'm saying what you think I'm saying then. That was my actual view on edibles!
There is a similarity to consuming alcohol, where one would say "know your tolerance level". There are even charts for what that tolerance level might look like! Something similar should be just as prevalent for THC "if you weigh X consider consuming Y". Sorry you had a bad experience, in 2014.
> There is a similarity to consuming alcohol, where one would say "know your tolerance level".
Sure, I guess there would be a similarity if you drank from what you thought was a new can of beer and it contained Everclear instead, but having the same taste as beer and having a delayed effect. I'll spell it out for you again: it was not 30 mg, it was several hundred mg at least, labeled as 30mg. Please stop it with the straw man.
And what difference does it make what year it was? You seem real keen on pointing that out as if it made any difference at all. If you want to make that kind of argument, cite some data that shows it matters, otherwise miss me with that. Did something happen between the 18th and the 26th year that medical marijuana was legal in California that I'm not aware of?
You keep maintaining that things haven't improved since 2014. Pretty sure this site didn't exist then: https://cannabis.ca.gov/
You can absolutely buy reputable tested products a lot more easily now. Each product on a very popular online home delivery dispensary has a license number in the description. That ties back to a company, it can be looked up on the gov website. There are registered businesses, with names attached, to sue when something goes wrong.
I'm not saying that things don't go wrong or that you didn't have a bad experience, but to say that things haven't improved since 2014... well, I think you are the one who needs to provide that data.
Eating edibles allows your liver to get a pass at the THC before your brain, and it converts it to 11-hydroxy-THC which is more psychoactive. It is also much, much easier to overdose with edibles and that is a very unfun experience. I am an extremely experienced smoker/eater/grower/etc and when I screwed up some edible calculations and overdosed I almost called 911. It is only my absolute faith that THC has never killed anyone(directly) that kept me from freaking out.
Beats me. Enough to turn my backyard into a cartoon and shortly afterwards I was paralyzed in bed with a pounding heartbeat. I knew enough to keep my feet elevated to counteract some of the low blood pressure effects.
In addition to what I said earlier, you also have to consider interactions. A friend gave one of the edibles I made to a friend who was taking some random Chinese herbal medicine and they did end up calling the paramedics.
Keep in mind no known interactions are dangerous because of the thc chemistry. It's the secondary consequences that can get you in trouble.
It can be psychologically dangerous, triggering psychosis, panic attacks, existential crises, munchies, etc. Depending on your fitness, health needs (diabetes, cardiopulmonary disease), or susceptibility to schizophrenia, thc can result in life altering or ending events. Plan ahead with appropriate sober sitters, snacks, hydration, and safe spaces if you need to retreat. Know what to do if your friend goes hamster-eyed on you.
A majority of the time, for a huge majority of users, thc will be OK, but the trick to achieving that is education and basic harm reduction. If it gets legalized federally, I hope at least 20% of the taxes go toward education and harm reduction, for marijuana and other drugs. Drugs can be awesome and empowering and fun. Ignorance kills people and ruins lives.
I knew a guy in college who was super straight laced, but went to Amsterdam and got convinced to try weed, in the form of a giant pastry, for the first time. I have no idea how much was in it but he got so freaked out that he had serious trauma and long lasting effects from it.
In fairness wouldn't this be controlled by simply providing more information about the consumable amount or creating lower dose edibles?
It feels like these anecdotes, while very real, would equate to an unfathomable amount of smoking and so there needs to be more information to allow a consumer to understand the amount they should consume bc their body isn't physically restricting them
It's a consumer information issue, exclusively. As most US residents live in a recreational legal state, we're long passed the need for "good news only" advocacy.
Taking a dose of professionally packaged edibles closer to your weight and tolerance is what is necessary.
My current issue with the state-by-state regulation is that all the packaging lacks FDA level of standards. Arbitrary mixing of milligrams and ounces. Arbitrary information about types of thc and cbd, arbitrary serving sizes and serving size information that are very different from the breakable units in the package. ie. You thought that single gummy was 5 milligrams? Jokes on you because a serving size is 1/2 gummy, you just took 10 milligrams, buckle up!
And most notably missing is any study that says what to expect, what tiny disclaimers exist? A bunch of people say that edibles used to be good for them but now give them anxiety, why is that? Is there a time limit for some people to take edibles? Plenty of FDA approved products have time limits like "don't take this for more than 3 years" I hear that on commercials all the time, so whats the difference? Oh an actual study occurred to begin with, to the FDA's standard of review. Great.
its worth noting that "overdose" in this context means you had some temporary psychosis and anxiety for a few hours, this is closer to "ate too much" or "took too big of a dose than desired" than "overdose"
maaaany people would think something else like you needed a bunch of tubes put into you or had to be resuscitated
The 911 call, "I think I had an allergic reaction, my breathing is so slow I'm going to pass out and suffocate!" While loudly hyperventilating into the phone.
Not OP but okay. I could see anxiety acting that way and getting people in a negative feedback loop.
On the even more anecdotal side, I have heard of people having different heartbeats while super high too, even palpitations, which can be very distressing with the high not helping at all!
I think the main point is that the experience is so different that its practically a different drug.
People just need to be objective about that. Smoking barely does anything to your tolerance to prepare one for it. While using edibles increases tolerance on edibles.
Disclosure of biased background: in my recent past, I worked for a series of technology companies providing services to the legal cannabis industry across several emerging markets in US states. I have never particularly enjoyed consuming cannabis products recreationally, and very seldom partake more often than once every few years. If I do consume it, I generally prefer non-smoking methods with very low THC. I have been in the company of people who enjoy cannabis much more than I do for most if not all of my life. My interest in the issue is largely about social impact, and I’m motivated by reducing/eliminating incarceration and other punitive social consequences which I think are generally inappropriate. Okay with that out of the way…
This is all good information to have, but I hope there will be studies that help contextualize it. This is a pretty good study of real world usage at an extreme, but it doesn’t reflect what I think is typical usage—at least over the long term, and at least given circumstances which allow more acceptable usage.
Sure, there are people who sit around and do hours-long wicked bong rips with their friends or at parties. How often they do, or how much non-users are exposed, or for how prolonged a period of their lives, or how they change their behavior in more permissive environments… all of these would color the meaningfulness of this study’s findings in terms of overall health impact. As would knowing whether, and to what degree, less extreme/reduced usage and cessation reduces long term risk—and how consistent that is with similar changes to tobacco smoking activity.
I know my anecdata isn’t more than that, but it’s been my experience that:
- this usage pattern is more common in youth, generally in a party atmosphere, and generally either when scrutiny is limited more than usual or in low scrutiny environments; it tends to be something many long term cannabis users reduce or eliminate entirely as they mature
- even among long term heavy users, this sort of extended social session becomes less common in more permissive environments (e.g. decriminalized or legalized, or even “lowest priority enforcement”)
- exposure to this kind of excessive, prolonged usage is exceedingly uncommon for people who aren’t also consuming it firsthand
It’s also a strong hunch but I’d need more information to be more confident that: reduction or elimination of this usage pattern likely tracks closely with the long term health outcomes of reduction/cessation of smoking tobacco.
Why does all of that matter to me? Studies like this are good and helpful, but if they paint an incomplete picture which can exaggerate risk factors, they will be used to push back momentum on efforts to reduce the other risk factors.
Incarcerating people for no good reason is not going to improve health outcomes. Continuing to do so disproportionately depending on social status (largely race and biological sex) won’t help either, for a probably unknowable set of other disparities. And it definitely won’t help addressing those disparities and the other harms they cause. Encouraging likely-to-be-safer casual users to hide their use probably won’t help either.
Not that this study, or any, should be directly held to a standard of helping all or any of those. But these are my thoughts upon reading this earnestly, and honestly glad to see high profile cannabis research happening at all.
"Levels of PM2.5 were measured before, during, and after 8 cannabis social-smoking sessions in one 20-m2 household living room"
Isn't the amount being smoked relevant? It seems to vaguely compare weed smoke to cigarette smoke without factoring in what normal usage looks like for each. How does this compare to burning incense? Seems like a poorly designed study.
84 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 47.0 ms ] threadFor that matter, what basis is there to think that firsthand cannabis smoking does not have similar long-term health consequences as tobacco smoking? The only obvious reason I can think of is that most people don't smoke cannabis all day, every day as many cigarette smokers do.
Either of these is really nasty with any kind of pungent odor, no matter if feces, cooking or smoking.
The vast majority of tobacco is consumed in the form of cigarettes, which are more of a "tobacco product" than actual tobacco. There is a plethora of additives and most cigarettes are actually composes of a nasty cardboard-like filler[0] which has been soaked in a processed tobacco broth. Whereas smoked marijuana is typically just dried plant matter.
So without saying which may be better or worse, there likely is some sort of difference. Plus the growing processes and absorption characteristics of the two plants may produce different amounts of radioactive contaminants which probably contribute to the carcinogenicity of tobacco.
0. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IBAuM1fLKRk - I bet real tobacco is less harmful but don't quote me on that.
There's many reasons filtering your indoor air would be a good idea; presence of any smoke is certainly one of them. Look at what hits the air every time you cook, for example.
If you want to use cannabis with slightly lower risk than smoking: Vape (dry flower or carts). You can even vape through a bong.
If you don't care at all about your lungs: smoke.
Smokers regularly light a cigarette every hour on average. With Cannabis, that might just reduce that to once every few hours!
Especially at lower temperature.
(I agree with you though, and I eagerly await the scientific studies that quantify Vaping cannabis vs. smoking)
Just like the second-hand smoke debates twenty-thirty years ago
It's also claimed SHS causes cardiovascular problems. Perhaps ... lots of things can do that, like food and lack of exercise. Accounted-for in studies?
Personally, I always smoke outdoors, where my SHS mixes with the exhaust of the gasoline and diesel vehicles driving by. They haven't been outlawed yet. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx#Health_and_environment_eff...]
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/6067/cdc_6067_DS1.pdf
> The research was done in the living room of an off-campus apartment of an undergraduate student who came up with the idea, according to Professor S. Katharine Hammond, who oversaw the study and co-wrote the report with graduate student Patton Khuu Nguyen. The subjects were students who supplied their own cannabis and bong of their choosing. They were not observed while partaking of the bong in the apartment. They were aware their recreational usage was being measured but remained anonymous throughout.
> The experiment ran for two months in 2018 and served as the master’s project for Nguyen. Hammond, a tenured professor who has been at UC Berkeley for 28 years, was his faculty adviser.
The statistics indicating that smoking weed doesn’t significantly raise lung cancer risk when controlling for users who also smoke tobacco, despite higher carcinogen levels in weed smoke, tells me our understanding has a long way to go.
I really wish cannabis was associated with consuming jello or chocolate, instead of smoking something.
People, even dating apps, even doctors, ask "do you smoke weed", when they mean to ask "do you consume thc and cool with that" (okay doctors may be asking about lung cancer risk from smoking and other ways to fuck up your insurance premiums)
I don't smoke anything
Gummies though? Keep the supplies filled
so, its the wrong question and wrong association
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/08958378.2012.74...
- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.7504...
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00218...
- https://www.epj-conferences.org/articles/epjconf/pdf/2017/12...
- https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l5275
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3925716/
- ...and plenty more
I would expect that dry herb vaping would be more or less equivalent to liquid vaping (but of course this would depend on temperature, contents of the liquid, etc), assuming that no combustion occurs.
Edit: I should say that this is not my specific area of expertise. This is a fairly active area of research, and while I am somewhat interested I am not following it super closely.
I don't remember the details, but I have heard dry vape lauded as a safer alternative, since there are no additives or solvents involved, meaning you only have to worry about pesticides and fertilizers.
There aren't longitudinal studies on this really though, and no amount of inhaling not air into your lungs is safe.
the consumer protection on hookahs is absolutely broken, as the warnings practically don't exist and a lot of people that avoid nicotine cigarettes use hookahs think theyre unrelated and benign, health wise.
Its still interesting how too big of a dose and sleeping in heat has you in perpetual fear of edibles nearly 10 years later
As opposed to the correct dose
Like I absolutely think your experience is valid, it seems out of place to share a scary anecdote in a thread that assumes people are taking something within their tolerance range
It's not at all out of place. You don't know what you're getting with an edible. The point being that these pseudoregulations aren't enough to keep you safe, even in a state like Kalifornia.
Medical Marijuana had been implemented since 1996 there
Is it out of place to suggest edibles in such a way that implies that there's no danger to them?
That's an interesting assumption. I would say it is out of place, for the people that do that. At the same time I don't think a disclaimer is necessary for about figuring out your dosage and that some people experience anxiety as a gatekeeping to discussing a product at all, because we don't do that for anything else. I think its something people should be aware of. That's up to the consumer, but I would absolutely love FDA style packaging with disclaimers about known side effects from actual clinical trials and studies. But we don't have that right now.
If you're saying what I think you're saying, you certainly missed the entire point and it's not worth discussing this in the context of a straw man.
I don't think I'm saying what you think I'm saying then. That was my actual view on edibles!
There is a similarity to consuming alcohol, where one would say "know your tolerance level". There are even charts for what that tolerance level might look like! Something similar should be just as prevalent for THC "if you weigh X consider consuming Y". Sorry you had a bad experience, in 2014.
Sure, I guess there would be a similarity if you drank from what you thought was a new can of beer and it contained Everclear instead, but having the same taste as beer and having a delayed effect. I'll spell it out for you again: it was not 30 mg, it was several hundred mg at least, labeled as 30mg. Please stop it with the straw man.
And what difference does it make what year it was? You seem real keen on pointing that out as if it made any difference at all. If you want to make that kind of argument, cite some data that shows it matters, otherwise miss me with that. Did something happen between the 18th and the 26th year that medical marijuana was legal in California that I'm not aware of?
You can absolutely buy reputable tested products a lot more easily now. Each product on a very popular online home delivery dispensary has a license number in the description. That ties back to a company, it can be looked up on the gov website. There are registered businesses, with names attached, to sue when something goes wrong.
I'm not saying that things don't go wrong or that you didn't have a bad experience, but to say that things haven't improved since 2014... well, I think you are the one who needs to provide that data.
This is the perfect time to derail a conversation in the classic HN way on why the form of argument is inaccurately labeled
In addition to what I said earlier, you also have to consider interactions. A friend gave one of the edibles I made to a friend who was taking some random Chinese herbal medicine and they did end up calling the paramedics.
It can be psychologically dangerous, triggering psychosis, panic attacks, existential crises, munchies, etc. Depending on your fitness, health needs (diabetes, cardiopulmonary disease), or susceptibility to schizophrenia, thc can result in life altering or ending events. Plan ahead with appropriate sober sitters, snacks, hydration, and safe spaces if you need to retreat. Know what to do if your friend goes hamster-eyed on you.
A majority of the time, for a huge majority of users, thc will be OK, but the trick to achieving that is education and basic harm reduction. If it gets legalized federally, I hope at least 20% of the taxes go toward education and harm reduction, for marijuana and other drugs. Drugs can be awesome and empowering and fun. Ignorance kills people and ruins lives.
It feels like these anecdotes, while very real, would equate to an unfathomable amount of smoking and so there needs to be more information to allow a consumer to understand the amount they should consume bc their body isn't physically restricting them
It's a consumer information issue, exclusively. As most US residents live in a recreational legal state, we're long passed the need for "good news only" advocacy.
Taking a dose of professionally packaged edibles closer to your weight and tolerance is what is necessary.
My current issue with the state-by-state regulation is that all the packaging lacks FDA level of standards. Arbitrary mixing of milligrams and ounces. Arbitrary information about types of thc and cbd, arbitrary serving sizes and serving size information that are very different from the breakable units in the package. ie. You thought that single gummy was 5 milligrams? Jokes on you because a serving size is 1/2 gummy, you just took 10 milligrams, buckle up!
And most notably missing is any study that says what to expect, what tiny disclaimers exist? A bunch of people say that edibles used to be good for them but now give them anxiety, why is that? Is there a time limit for some people to take edibles? Plenty of FDA approved products have time limits like "don't take this for more than 3 years" I hear that on commercials all the time, so whats the difference? Oh an actual study occurred to begin with, to the FDA's standard of review. Great.
maaaany people would think something else like you needed a bunch of tubes put into you or had to be resuscitated
On the even more anecdotal side, I have heard of people having different heartbeats while super high too, even palpitations, which can be very distressing with the high not helping at all!
People just need to be objective about that. Smoking barely does anything to your tolerance to prepare one for it. While using edibles increases tolerance on edibles.
Also cut your edibles with CBD. A 1:1 mix is good to prevent the “overdose” scenario
This is all good information to have, but I hope there will be studies that help contextualize it. This is a pretty good study of real world usage at an extreme, but it doesn’t reflect what I think is typical usage—at least over the long term, and at least given circumstances which allow more acceptable usage.
Sure, there are people who sit around and do hours-long wicked bong rips with their friends or at parties. How often they do, or how much non-users are exposed, or for how prolonged a period of their lives, or how they change their behavior in more permissive environments… all of these would color the meaningfulness of this study’s findings in terms of overall health impact. As would knowing whether, and to what degree, less extreme/reduced usage and cessation reduces long term risk—and how consistent that is with similar changes to tobacco smoking activity.
I know my anecdata isn’t more than that, but it’s been my experience that:
- this usage pattern is more common in youth, generally in a party atmosphere, and generally either when scrutiny is limited more than usual or in low scrutiny environments; it tends to be something many long term cannabis users reduce or eliminate entirely as they mature
- even among long term heavy users, this sort of extended social session becomes less common in more permissive environments (e.g. decriminalized or legalized, or even “lowest priority enforcement”)
- exposure to this kind of excessive, prolonged usage is exceedingly uncommon for people who aren’t also consuming it firsthand
It’s also a strong hunch but I’d need more information to be more confident that: reduction or elimination of this usage pattern likely tracks closely with the long term health outcomes of reduction/cessation of smoking tobacco.
Why does all of that matter to me? Studies like this are good and helpful, but if they paint an incomplete picture which can exaggerate risk factors, they will be used to push back momentum on efforts to reduce the other risk factors.
Incarcerating people for no good reason is not going to improve health outcomes. Continuing to do so disproportionately depending on social status (largely race and biological sex) won’t help either, for a probably unknowable set of other disparities. And it definitely won’t help addressing those disparities and the other harms they cause. Encouraging likely-to-be-safer casual users to hide their use probably won’t help either.
Not that this study, or any, should be directly held to a standard of helping all or any of those. But these are my thoughts upon reading this earnestly, and honestly glad to see high profile cannabis research happening at all.
Isn't the amount being smoked relevant? It seems to vaguely compare weed smoke to cigarette smoke without factoring in what normal usage looks like for each. How does this compare to burning incense? Seems like a poorly designed study.