Score another point for medical marijuana advocates: a new study shows that smoking pot is much less harmful to users’ lungs than smoking tobacco.
When researchers studied 20 years of data from more than 5,000 adults, they predictably found significant lung damage in the tobacco smokers: the more they smoked, the worse their air flow rate and lung volume became. But those who smoked up to one joint a day aced a lung function test: air flow rate actually slightly increased in the marijuana users, up to a certain level.
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The NIH-funded study, published in the Journal of American Medical Association, measured air flow rate (how fast you can blow out air) and lung volume (how much air you can hold) in 18- to 30-year-old adults from Oakland, Chicago, Minneapolis and Birmingham.
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Researchers caution that the findings don’t point to the health benefits of heavy marijuana use.
