Health & Wellbeing

Cannabis

Smoking a joint is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes.

As the World Health Organisation (WHO) predicted that tobacco use could kill more than a billion people around the world this century, further news emerged of the dangers of smoking cannabis.

Scientists from New Zealand have now concluded that smoking a joint is equivalent to smoking 20 cigarettes in terms of lung cancer risk.

Writing in the European Respiratory Journal last month, the scientists said cannabis harms the airways more than tobacco and its smoke contains twice the level of carcinogens compared with tobacco cigarettes.

The method of smoking also increases the danger, since joints are usually smoked without a proper filter, increasing the amount of smoke inhaled. Joints are often smoked more deeply and for longer, which deposits more carcinogens in the airways.

Cannabis smokers end up with five times more carbon monoxide in the bloodstream than cigarette smokers,” Dr Richard Beasley said. “There are higher concentrations of carcinogens in cannabis smoke. What is intriguing to us is there is so little work done on cannabis when there is so much done on tobacco.”

“Cannabis smokers end up with five times more carbon monoxide in the bloodstream than cigarette smokers,” Dr Richard Beasley said. “There are higher concentrations of carcinogens in cannabis smoke. What is intriguing to us is there is so little work done on cannabis when there is so much done on tobacco.”

Recent research has shown that rates of tobacco smoking are higher among HIV positive people than the rest of the population and large number also smoke cannabis often as an aid to relaxation or to boost appetite.

Whereas there has been a great decline in deaths among people living with HIV in Britain since the successful advent of antiretroviral therapies, there has been an increase in the number of cases of fatal cancers, including lung cancers.

There are an estimated 2 million regular cannabis users in the UK and several recent studies have highlighted the dangers to mental health of long term cannabis use as well as damage to gums, the throat and lungs.

Hospital admissions for mental or behavioural disorders due to the use of cannabis have increased by 65 per cent in England alone over the last 10 years, Health Minister Rosey Winterton revealed in the House of Commons last year.

Now the British government is considering whether to reclassify cannabis as a class B drug, having downgraded it to a class C substance in 2004.