Smoking Tobacco with Marijuana is more Dangerous
Published on May 4, 2009 4:26 AM
Smoking tobacco is harmful for smokers’ health but smoking both tobacco and marijuana are about three times more harmful, found British researchers. They added that such people are more likely, than non-smokers, to develop serious lung disease.
Teens are especially at risk for addiction because they generally become addicted to substances faster than adults and rarely receive early intervention because signs of their drug use are frequently passed off as typical teenage behavior. Research shows that marijuana use is three times more likely to lead to dependence among adolescents than among adults.
Researchers reported that those who smoke or smoked both cigarettes and marijuana were 2.9 times more likely to develop serious disease. They showed that only 38 of the 856 participants now smoke both marijuana and tobacco. But 160 participants (18 percent) were either current or previous users of both.
In general, COPD is a progressive disease and is the fourth-leading killer in North America, behind cancer, heart disease and stroke.
In the study, researchers found that participants with COPD had a greater likelihood of getting other illnesses, such as asthma, heart disease and high blood pressure.
Researchers also found that marijuana smoking alone did not appear to cause COPD. Experts have found that one marijuana joint is equal to the effects (on lungs) of 2.5 to five cigarettes. The study was designed to estimate the influence of chronic obstructive lung disease among adults over the age of 40 in the general population and its associations with smoking.
