There are inherent dangers to inhaling smoke--even pot smoke--but there are steps users can take to reduce the potential harm.
Young adult smoking marijuana
Photo Credit: william casey
Photo Credit: william casey
Originally published at Spirit of Change.
The
War on Drugs is losing, and pot is winning. Here in New England, every
state has legalized medical marijuana; every state but New Hampshire has
decriminalized recreational pot; and Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts
now are poised to fully legalize pot use by adults. With cannabis use
and its social acceptance growing, it’s high time for prohibitionists to
stop fighting it and to learn to live with it. And it's time for us to
learn how to reduce the health hazards of smoking pot.
SMOKE and MIRRORS
All
drugs pose risks. Whether medicinal or recreational, whether herbal or
pharmaceutical, whether legal or illicit, every drug produces
undesirable side effects. Cannabis in itself may pose few risks, but
inhaling its vape or its smoke can compromise your health. Smoke is the
archetypal smoking gun. You might try fooling yourself, but no ploy of
smoke and mirrors can fool your lungs. Even incense, which fools the
nose, fouls the lungs.
Due to the inherent
dangers of breathing any sort of smoke, many alternative methods of
delivering cannabinoids to licensed patients now are sold in
state-supervised dispensaries. These include oral sprays, alcohol
tinctures, topical cremes, transdermal patches, sublingual strips, oil
extracts, vape oils, eye drops, lip balms, capsules, waxes, salves,
crumbles, and a whole smorgasbord of medibles (medical edibles). Despite
this cornucopia, half of all patients still choose cannabis in its
natural form as buds (flowers). Nearly all recreational users imbibe in
bud because they are banished from legal access to more healthful
alternatives (what’s wrong with this picture?). And both groups consume
that bud by vaping or smoking.
COUGHS and COLDS
Cannabinoids
contain the psychoactive and medicinal components of cannabis. Except
for the palliative cannabinoids in cannabis and the addictive nicotine
in tobacco, the smoke of the two herbs is quite similar. As smoke, both
contain ash, tar, carbon monoxide, and a host of lesser known noxious
fumes. As smoke, both can irritate the entire respiratory tract and
cause coughing, wheezing, and spitting. As smoke, both can narrow air
passages and thereby reduce lung capacity. As smoke, both can cause
cellular damage to your lungs, which lowers your resistance to
respiratory illnesses such as colds, flu, pneumonia, and bronchitis.
Studies
link cannabis smoke to lung damage, but not to lung cancer. Statistical
evidence indicates that Sixties hippies now in their sixties who
continued lifelong casual smoking of pot, but never of tobacco, show no
higher incidence of lung cancer than their peers who smoked neither.
Preliminary evidence even indicates that cannabinoids can actually
prevent or possibly reverse cancer. So among your average of 25,000
daily breaths of clean air, do not worry about cancer from 25 tokes of
cannabis smoke. Because worrying can cause more harm than smoking.
Still,
smoke of any kind can only impair, not improve, pulmonary function, so
you should observe some precautions to minimize that risk. The ten
safeguards addressed here regard: 1) The Breath; 2) Ignition Systems; 3)
Rolling Papers; 4) Pipes; 5) Water Pipes; 6) Vaporizers; 7) Seeking
Purity; 8) Seeking Potency; 9) Preserving Potency; 10) Green Diet
1. Don’t Hold Your BREATH!
Inhale
deeply if you wish, but do not hold in that inhale. Once the delicate
membranes of the cilia of your lungs are coated by the smoke-filled air,
no length of holding your breath will promote any further absorption of
the cannabinoids. Cannabinoids are quickly absorbed through the lungs.
Tars, however, are absorbed more slowly. So holding your breath only
further irritates your lungs with greater intake of those gummy tars, as
well as yummy carbon monoxide. So take it easy, breathe easily, and
don’t hold that hit!
Several scientific studies
have proven the needlessness of the breathtaking experience of holding
your breath. Ethnobotanic drug guru turned holistic health guru Andrew
Weil, M.D., too, advocates not holding your breath. If you remain
skeptical, perform some animals experiments, the animal being you.
Guided by a stopwatch, go ahead and time yourself. A lifetime of smoking
in your traditional manner might be a hard pattern to change. Yet the
Number One heath safeguard you can apply to reduce lung damage is to not
hold your breath.
2. IGNITION System Tune-Up Time
No
scientific study sheds any light upon the health hazards of incendiary
devices, commonly called lighters and matches. Still, the foul odors of
these ignition systems convince us that they are unsafe. So beware that
first toke!
LIGHTERS fueled by petroleum
distillates do not belong in your face. Butane in itself is far more
toxic than cannabis, so the fumes from its combustion surely are more
harmful, too. Avoid lighter pollution.
MATCHES are
potentially safer if you patiently wait for the flaming sulfur-tip to
burn out before you hold the match to your bud. In practice, however,
you inhale the burning sulfur when you strike the match. If you are
smelling it, then you are breathing it. Hot air rises, so ignite that
match high above your head.
PIPES can multiply the
ignition problem. Smoked leisurely, especially during solo sessions,
cannabis snuffs out easily, requiring several stokes per bowl. That's
toxic buildup. So here's a hot tip about sulfur-tip matches and butane
lighters. Use just one match or one flick, not to light your pipe, but
to light a candle.
CANDLES are true drug
paraffin-alia! Light a candle, set the tip of a toothpick afire on its
flame, and toke up your pipe with the burning toothpick, not matchstick
or candlestick. No sulfur or butane fumes in your face nor in your
lungs. Natural fiber wood to the rescue. Note that thin flat toothpicks
burn truer than thicker round ones.
SCREENS for
the bowls of pipes should never be homemade from aluminum foil punctured
with pinholes. After just one use, the foil disintegrates. Where did it
go? Into your lungs! Use the round screens sold in smoke shops made of
more durable metals. But beware a thin coating of wax sometimes applied
to assure a grip to the blade that cuts those circles. So first toast a
new screen over your candle before inserting it into the bowl of your
pipe. If asked what you are doing, just say you are screening for drugs.
3. Take an Active Role with ROLLING PAPERS
Rolling
papers of joints (cannabis cigarettes) hold the cannabis, hold back its
combustion, and aerate its smoke. The thinner the joint, the more the
aeration. But offering no psychoactive nor medicinal effect, even
paper-thin paper adds to the toxic load, especially of ash. So be frugal
with rolling papers.
Research shows that the
cannabis in the roach (the butt) filters out tars streaming from the
cannabis on the ember end, and does so more effectively than does a
water pipe. But that helps only if you throw the roach out rather than
smoke it down, which makes for a very expensive filter. So instead fill
the butt end with some other herb, for instance oregano, and discard
that.
Whatever the herb, the burning ember dangles
perilously close to fingertips and to lips, and numerous studies have
proven that burns are not conducive to good health. To prevent such
burns, use smoking tips are like filter tips without the filter. While
smoking tips are marketed commercially, you can roll your own from
strips of thin non-corrugated cardboard, such as used for packaging,
guess what, rolling papers and matchbooks. Or cut a beverage straw into
filter-tip lengths. Do not use the plastic straws sold in supermarkets,
but rather paper straws sold only in health food stores.
A
sort of exterior smoking tip not discarded with each joint is the long,
slender cigarette holder, similar to pipe stems. But then you might as
well skip the paper and go straight to a pipe.
4. PIPES are More than Just Pipe Dreams
Smoke
is hot and dry. Same as does the desiccated air of indoor heating,
smoke dries out your mouth and throat which makes you more susceptible
to colds and flu. A pipe, especially its stem, cools down the smoke. The
longer the stem, the cooler. Arm's length is long enough. That also
keeps the burning match or lighter or toothpick far from your mouth. You
inhale fewer of those fumes. And smoke never gets in your eyes.
The
long stem must be segmented for dismantling for efficient cleaning. The
inside wooden walls of the bowl and stem are very efficient tar traps,
yet another benefit of using a pipe. Even better, the sticky tar in turn
traps relatively heavy ash. Usually only the first segment closet to
the bowl ever needs cleaning, rarely the segment nearest you, an
encouraging sign that your mouth is far from the tar .
Pipes
are made of glass, metal, corn cob, stone, ceramic, and wood. Glass is
fragile and breakable and difficult to clean. Metal imparts an
unpleasing metallic taste to the smoke, and is heavy to lug. Corn cob
with its varnished outer shell burns so easily that the entire bowl is
flammable. The safest bowls are inert ceramic or stone dead stone. Smoke
shops stock soapstone and sandstone pipes, but with virtually no stems.
That leaves wood as the safest option for pipes.
Wood
as a natural fiber even imparts an agreeable aroma to the smoke.
Despite a plethora of pipes sold in smoke shops, segmented long-stemmed
wooden pipes are more likely found in Asian Indian import stores. For a
demonstration of short tokes from a long-stemmed segmented wooden pipe
lit with toothpicks, view this Wall Street Journal (yes, Wall Street
Journal) two-minute “instructional” video:
5. WATER PIPES and The Big Bong Theory
Water
pipes, also called bongs, are used in the belief that the water cools
and moistens the otherwise hot and dry smoke. Just hearing their
bubbling sound can be reassuring to your ears that you are doing a favor
for your lungs. The power of suggestion is strong, but chemical
analysis of the smoke proves that while water pipes do cool the smoke
they really do not moisten it.
Although smoke
bubbles passing through the water gain no moisture, the water does trap
some particulate matter (ash), some water-soluble toxins such as
hydrogen cyanide and hydrocarbons, and some tar. Most smokers fill their
water pipes with cold water. Cold water cools the smoke, yes. But
research shows that hot water better traps the tar. So here’s a hot tip!
Fill your water pipe with hot water, not cold.
Studies
conducted with cannabis found that water pipes filter out
proportionately more cannabinoids than tar, more than anyone would have
suspected. Thus to compensate for the lost cannabinoids, bong users end
up smoking more and therefore inhaling more, not fewer, tars. As this
cancels out any potential benefit of using a bong, better to ban the
bong.
6. VAPORIZERS Don’t Go Up in Smoke
So-called
vaporizers do not create true vapor, but instead produce smolder, the
semi-smoke that lingers from a snuffed out candle. The words
smolder and smolderizer lack an appealing ring to them, so marketers
coined the words vape and vaporizer. Cannabis burns and smokes at
temperatures above 460 degrees F (238 degrees C), but volatizes and
smolders between 266 and 446 degrees F (130 to 230 degrees C).
Vaporizers volatize the herb, rather than burn it. While manufacturers
promote their many vaporizers with much tripe and hype, vaping indeed is
widely acknowledged to be less harmful than smoking.
In
our new millennium, the latest model vaporizers offer features such as
adjustable temperature controls, automatic shutoffs, and
battery-operated portability. Depending upon the brand of vaporizer,
analysis shows that compared to cannabis smoke, cannabis smolder
delivers far less carbon monoxide and none of the tar or noxious gases
such as benzene, toluene, and naphthalene. But there’s a catch.
THC
is the crucial cannabinoid that produces cannabis’ psychoactive
effects, but many models of vaporizers deliver low proportions of the
available THC. Most models instead deliver high proportions of the
available cannabinol (CBN) and cannabidiol (CBD), which provide many of
cannabis’ medicinal effects. Thus most vaporizers are more useful to
medical marijuana patients who then can vape less, but less appropriate
for recreational potheads who then must vape more.
Vaporizers
still can make you cough, especially if you are a novice vaper.
Nevertheless the right models potentially can spare your lungs. Much
depends upon what brand of vaporizer you’re using and what sort of
relief you’re seeking. While many cannabis users still voice a clear
preference for the effects of smoke over smolder, advocates for
vaporizers suggest that such diehard smokers simply have tried the wrong
models. Among many variables, this much is certain. Neither smolder nor
smoke benefits human lungs. So even the best (and most expensive) of
vaporizers are not total panaceas.
7. Seek PURITY
If
given the choice, go organic. Compared to a melon or a mango fertilized
with chemicals, sprayed with pesticides, and preserved with fungicides,
an organically-grown fruit should taste better, and usually does. Ditto
for organically-grown cannabis. Chemical fertilizers such as ammonium
nitrate, which in its isolated form is the active ingredient in homemade
bombs, can truly blow your mind.
Be especially
vigilant for pesticides. Cannabis is a costly crop to risk loss to
insects, so some gardeners insure against losses with heavy doses of
insecticides. That is as true for indoor cultivation as for outdoor. Is
your cannabis on drugs? If you do not purchase yours at a state-licensed
dispensary whose product is routinely analyzed for contaminants,
conduct some crude drug testing at home. Crush a raw bud between your
fingers. Its aroma should be pleasing and should stir your imagination
with images of the verdant rainforests of Hawaii, not the petrochemical
refineries of New Jersey. Still, the proof is in the puffing.
The
varying aromas of the smoke from different strains is subtle, and smoke
from any source tends to numb nasal passages. So don’t expect to smell
it while you’re smoking it. Instead, trust your throat, lungs, and
brain. If just a little puff causes you to cough or gives you a
headache, don't blame the cannabis, blame the chemicals.
8. Seek POTENCY
Coughing
while smoking? Then you’ve just smoked too much. Coughing after
smoking? Then you’ve been smoking too often. And what you’ve been
smoking may be of low potency. To reduce lung irritation, seek high
power flower which medicates you or elevates you with less huffing and
puffing. Sift out twigs and seeds, and save low potency leaves for modes
of delivery other than vaping or smoking. The more potent your smoke,
the less you will toke. Simple arithmetic.
The new
math of medicinal marijuana has opened new horizons. Over decades,
cultivators hybridized strains with higher levels of THC but unwittingly
bred out the cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN). As the CBD and CBN
provide relief of many medical ailments, their low potency accounts for
mixed results in human trials. With marijuana’s medicalization,
dispensaries now provide patients with access to cannabis with higher
levels of CBD and CBN. Stay tuned as research rapidly advances regarding
the ABC’s of THC and CBD and CBN.
9. PRESERVE Potency
To
assure it retains its potency, you must properly store your herbal
remedy or recreational therapy. If purchased illicitly, the herb
probably came bundled in a plastic zipper-type food storage bag. Such
bags are waterproof, but not airproof, else a sweet aroma would not seep
out of the bag. If odor is leaking out, then air is leaking in.
Place
that bag inside an “oven bag,” marketed for roasting dead meat. Such
bags indeed are airproof. But bags do not protect the delicate herb from
being crushed which exposes it to oxidation and therefore loss of
potency. To keep the bud whole, stash it inside a rigid airtight
container such as a glass jar. Next, store the jar in a cool, dark
place. Refrigerators are fine, freezers even better. Kept frozen, herbs
retain their potency for years. (I speak from years of experience.)
10. Green Diet
Some
tobacco smokers consider “a good cigar” worth savoring after dinner and
dessert. A more healthful chronology would be the after-smoke dinner.
Include in your diet ample fresh fruits and raw vegetables rich in
antioxidants that both prevent and reverse the cellular damage caused by
free radicals released in smoke. From among fruits, berries are best.
Among veggies, choose the Brassicas such as broccoli, cabbage,
cauliflower, collards and kale.
If you do not
always eat a wholesome diet, then resort to nutritional supplements,
though bitter pills to swallow. Two common combinations are especially
helpful: a vitamin B-complex, and the ace vitamins A,C, and E. These are
the skin vitamins, and the lungs are but skin turned outside-in.
An
undervalued nutrient is water. Drink it straight, not diluted as a
beverage. When you are fully hydrated, your respiratory tract stays
moist and your mucus thin. And drink especially after smoking, when
moisture in mouth and throat need to be replenished. A dry mouth and
parched throat increase susceptibility to tooth decay, gum disease, and
respiratory infections.
If
water is not available, chew on a dark green leafy vegetable. A sprig
of parsley, for instance, decorates a dinner plate, but its real
function is to cleanse the palette. Its chlorophyll also freshens the
breath. If you are outdoors, chew on a leaf or blade of grass. No
greenery nearby? Oh yes there is. What do you think you’ve been smoking?
The Gateway Theory
And
chew on this. The theory that cannabis is a gateway drug leading to
addiction to cocaine and heroin has been resoundingly disproven, whereas
in states still stuck in the 20th century the possession of cannabis
still acts as a gateway to courtrooms and jail cells.
Smoking
cannabis deserves much to commend when compared to smoking tobacco or
drinking alcohol or popping pills. But smoking cannabis has less to
commend when compared to breathing fresh air. Not smoking is better than
smoking. But if light up you must, then follow some precautions to
assure your good health, and you also will lighten up. So don’t get
coughs. And don’t get caught
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