The article begins by talking about the danger of cigarettes coming mainly from Tobacco grown using fertilizer which contains calcium phosphate. If you don't want to read all of that.
Basically, if you smoke, you should pick up an organic line of cigarettes (American Spirit for example), as they are not grown using calcium phosphate fertilizer.
I have pasted the specifics about Marijuana below:
Many people think smoking marijuana is just as harmful as smoking tobacco, but this is not true. Those who hold that marijuana is equivalent to tobacco are misinformed. Due to the efforts of various federal agencies to discourage use of marijuana in the 1970's the government, in a fit of "reefer
madness," conducted several biased studies designed to return results that would equate marijuana smoking with tobacco smoking, or worse.
For example the Berkeley carcinogenic tar studies of the late 1970's concluded that "marijuana is one-and-a-half times as carcinogenic as tobacco." This finding was based solely on the tar content of cannabis leaves compared to that of tobacco, and did not take radioactivity into consideration. (Cannabis tars do not contain radioactive materials.) In addition, it was not considered that:
1) Most marijuana smokers smoke the bud, not the leaf, of
the plant. The bud contains only 33% as much tar as tobacco.
2) Marijuana smokers do not smoke anywhere near as much as tobacco smokers, due to the psychoactive effects of cannabis.
3) Not one case of lung cancer has ever been successfully linked to marijuana use.
4) Cannabis, unlike tobacco, does not cause any narrowing of the small air passageways in the lungs.
In fact, marijuana has been shown to be an expectorant and actually dilates the air channels it comes in contact with. This is why many asthma sufferers look to marijuana to provide relief. Doctors have postulated that marijuana may, in this respect, be more effective than all of the prescription drugs on the market.
Studies even show that due to marijuana's ability to clear the lungs of smog, pollutants, and cigarette smoke, it may actually reduce your risk of emphysema, bronchitis, and lung cancer. Smokers of cannabis have been shown to outlive non-smokers in some areas by up to two years. Medium to heavy tobacco smokers will live seven to ten years longer if they also
smoke marijuana.
Cannabis is also radically different from tobacco in that it does not contain nicotine and is not addictive. The psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, THC, has been accused of causing brain and genetic damage, but these studies have all been disproven. In fact, the DEA's own Administrative Law Judge Francis Young has declared that "marijuana in its natural form is far safer than many foods we commonly consume."
Tags: