Welcome to the Nutrition Facts podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. I'm thrilled

that you've decided to join me today because the more I learn about the latest

in nutrition research, the more convinced I am that this information can make a

real difference in all our lives. And I like nothing better than sharing it with

you. I've been looking into the research on cannabis lately and there's a lot of

of it out there. In our first story, we examined the evidence that regular

cannabis smoking causes acute lung inflammation, but what is a long-term

consequences? There is unequivocal evidence that habitual or regular marijuana

smoking is not harmless and causes respiratory symptoms in airway

inflammation. If you take biopsies from the airways of those who smoke crack,

cannabis or tobacco, convert to non-smokers, there were significantly more

damage in the lungs of crack smokers, marijuana smokers, and tobacco smokers.

And the levels of damage seems comparable, especially between the marijuana

smokers and tobacco smokers, which is remarkable since the tobacco smokers were

smoking about a packet a day, whereas the marijuana smokers were only smoking

about 20 joints a week, rather than 25 cigarettes a day, and those smoking crack

were just doing like a grammar to a week. So to see similar rates of damage

between marijuana smokers and cigarette smokers, suggest each joint is way

worse than each cigarette. And indeed, we've known for 30 years that

smoking three or four joints is the equivalent of smoking a packet day of

cigarettes in terms of bronchitis symptoms and acute lung damage.

How is that possible? Well, maybe the way they're smoked.

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