No other drug has been so infused in American culture as Marijuana. Perhaps because—like alcohol—it's experienced extreme ends of social acceptance and rejection. Early on, marijuana use was portrayed with highly exaggerated effects. Propaganda films like Reefer Madness helped to spread claims that use of "demon weed" led to promiscuity, rape, and homicide.
But today with a greater understanding of the drug and its effects, public perception has completely changed to the point that 41% of Americans have tried the drug and some states have actually legalized it.
A recent study has came to the conclusion that marijuana does not harm the capacity of the lungs. It was previously suspected by medical experts that marijuana was harmful to the lungs. This new study has now been accepted by the journal of the American Medical Association.
According to the study, although pretty much most marijuana smokers tend to inhale profoundly and maintain the smoke in for as long as they can before exhaling, the lung capacity didn't degenerate. Even among those who smoked a joint a period for seven years, or formerly every week for 20 years.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and University of Alabama at Birmingham, all in the United States.
The researchers said they knew tobacco smoking induces lung damage, to move to respiratory issues such as chronic obstructive pulmonary infection. Nonetheless, they wanted to be clear whether smoking marijuana are also welcome to have similar results as tobacco.
The researchers carried out their research by assessing and measuring the function of the lungs multiple times. They achieved this goal by testing this in more than 5,100 men and women during a 20-year period.
The data used in the study was from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults. Repeated measures of smoking and lung function were collected by the researchers. This spanned from March 1985 to August 2006. Around 54% of the participants (more than half), claimed to already be current marijuana smokers, cigarette smokers or both. Their current usage before study began was merely a joint or two a few times every month.
The consequences of marijuana and tobacco were calculated separately by researchers. Broken down into people who used only one or the other, and in people who smoked both tobacco and marijuana. Researchers also took other factors and variables into consideration when testing. Like air pollution in cities as an example.
The healthiness of the lung was tested in the participants by the researchers. This test was done by seeing how well they could blow air in and out. Healthy adults can usually breath around a gallon of air in 60 seconds.
The results of the test were very intriguing. It showed that some of the participants could breath more than a gallon of air per second. Although this study focused on lighter smokers of the substances, these results were participants who smoked more than a joint a day for seven years.
Some of the participants did struggle to exhale half a gallon of air. These were found to be the cigarette smokers. These test results concluded that smoking marijuana improves lung function. It also shows that cigarette smoking shatters the lung.
Although the research concluded positive results, it is advised that people do not take this as a green light to start smoking marijuana. A lot of other factors should be taken into consideration before smoking the plant.
"Marijuana is a complicated substance, and for people who are thinking about what they've done in the past or are thinking about applying marijuana or believing it can help medically, their decision should not be based on lung circumstance. It's not a decision about lung health, it's all the other issues: health risks of craving, an increase in the chance of having accidents and social functioning" co-author of the study, Dr Stefan Kertesz said.
Dr Kertesz can also be found at the University of Alabama, Birmingham and Birmingham Veterans Affairs Medical Centre as a researcher and primary health care doctor. He also added that the extra strength in the lung of marijuana smokers may have came from another factor. This factor being the way marijuana is smoked. The habit of deeply inhaling, holding, and then slowly releasing the smoke of the marijuana.
He said: “It’s a tiny increase; it’s not a big increase to lung health. So be careful not to say that, ‘Oh, wow! Lungs work better on marijuana.’ That would be totally inaccurate.”
Dr. Donald Tashkin, a professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles also commented on the study. Dr. Donald Tashkin has studied the relationship between lung function and smoking maijuana for more than 30 years.
“This is a well-done study involving more subjects than in the past. The public should take away it’s a confirmatory study, but larger and longer than previous studies demonstrating, once again, that smoking marijuana does not impair lung function, unlike tobacco,” Dr Tashkin said.
