The casual use of marijuana has become an increasingly accepted part of American life, especially given the legalization of medical marijuana by 16 states and the District of Columbia.
And now a new study conducted by researchers at UAB and the University of California at San Francisco suggests that smoking weed, at least on a casual basis, does not damage the lungs.
Pot plants under cultivation. Photo by A7Nubis.
The study has received enormous worldwide media attention and is sure to feed the ongoing debate regarding the possible decriminalization of pot.
The UAB-UCSF study, which appears in the Jan. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, made use of a large national database to compare the lung function of marijuana and tobacco smokers over a 20-year period, according to a Jan. 10 article by Jennifer Lollar at www.uab.edu/news.
The data revealed that cumulative exposure to tobacco smoke, as expected, results in a loss of air flow and lung volumes, while the opposite was true for marijuana smoke, Lollar reports.
“At levels of marijuana exposure commonly seen in Americans, occasional marijuana use was associated with increases in lung air flow rates and increases in lung capacity,” according to the study’s senior author, Stefan Kertesz, M.D., an associate professor of the UAB Division of Preventive Medicine. “Those increases were not large, but they were statistically significant. And the data showed that even up to moderately high-use levels — one joint a day for seven years — there is no evidence of decreased air-flow rates or lung volumes.”
Dr. Donald Tashkin, a pulmonologist at the University of California at Los Angeles who has studied marijuana for over 30 years and didn’t take part in this study, said it confirmed findings from several other studies, according to a Jan. 11 report by New York Times blogger Anahad O’Connor. Tashkin says that the studies show “that essentially there is no significant relationship between marijuana exposure and impairment in lung function.”
The most beautiful sight on the planet to a large part of our population. Photo of a thick marijuana joint -- or "spliff" -- by Psychonaught.
Kertesz does caution that heavy, long-term pot use may result in less satisfactory outcomes and is quick to offer other cautionary notes.
“Marijuana is still an illegal drug, and it has many complicated effects on the human body and its function,” he tells Lollar. “In our findings we see hints of harm in pulmonary function with heavy use, and other studies have shown that marijuana use increases a user’s likelihood of a heart attack, according to the American Heart Association, and impairs the immune system’s ability to fight disease, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.”
Ben Johnson and the Slate staff post a summary of the study’s results at slate.com, a report that includes a short but entertaining video. While noting that smoking pot is not risk-free, Johnson suggests that “potheads” should “dust off that giant bong’ if they want to.
Mike Hughes of the pro-weed High Times magazine, in a Jan. 11 blog post, not surprisingly welcomes the mostly sunny findings of the UAB-UCSF study but is irritated by what he calls the researchers’ “obligatory warning” of possible negative effects of pot use. “As scientific research continues to affirm that cannabis is one of the most benign substances known to man, the scientific community continues to warn about its possible dangers,” he says.
A blogger at www.economist.com – in an unbylined Jan. 12 post titled “Marijuana legalization: What evidence is it going to take?” – uses the findings of the study to point up the increasing absurdity of America’s strict pot laws.
“This is really over the top,” the blogger says, noting the surprisingly clean bill of lung health the study gives to weed smokers. “I would have expected that the researchers would have found at least some negative effects on lung function.” The blogger concludes, “How much longer are we going to continue with this nonsense?”
Jesse Chambers is a contributing editor at Weld for Birmingham and a contributing writer at B-Metro magazine. Send your feedback to editor@weldbham.com.
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