Smoking a joint is like smoking 5 cigarettes......WHATEVER!!

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The next time you hear some uninformed person trying to sell people their disinformation that smoking a joint is like smoking 5 cigarettes, please do us all the favor and inform the of the following. 1) You may have heard that one joint is equal to five cigarettes, but this is exaggerated and misleading. Marijuana does contain more tar than tobacco, but tar isn't the ingredient that leads to cancer and other diseases. Low tar cigarettes cause just as much cancer as normal cigarettes. 2) Scientists have shown that smoking any plant is bad for your lungs, because it increases the number of `lesions' in your small airways. This usually does not threaten your life, but there is a chance it will lead to infections. Marijuana users who are worried about this can eliminate the chances of infections by eating or vaporizing marijuana. Marijuana is completely safe to eat, yet tobacco is not. 3) No case of lung cancer resulting from marijuana use alone has ever been documented. Current research has proved that there are much more benefits to smoking marijuana than there are harms. 4)Marijuana smokers generally don't chain smoke, and so they smoke less. Whereas a cigarette smoker would smoke a pack a day, a marijuana smoker might have one or two joints a day. Even if marijuana was just as dangerous as tobacco, most smokers still would not be smoking as much as the tobacco smokers would be. 5)Tobacco contains nicotine, and marijuana doesn't. Nicotine is addictive. Nicotine may harden the arteries and may be responsible for much of the heart disease caused by tobacco. New research has found that nicotine breaks down into a cancer causing chemical called `N Nitrosamine' when it is burned (and maybe even while it is inside the body as well.) 6) Marijuana contains THC, the chemical that gets you high. THC is a bronchial dilator, which means it works like a cough drop and opens up your lungs, which aids in the clearance of smoke and dirt. This is why many people who suffer from asthma find marijuana as an effective treatment to control their coughing and wheezing. Nicotine does the opposite to your lungs; it makes them bunch up and makes it harder to cough anything up. If someone with asthma smoked a cigarette, their asthma would get worse. 7)There are many benefits from marijuana that you don't get from tobacco. Tobacco isn't really good for anything. People smoke mainly because they are addicted. Some say that cigarettes calm them down, and help them relax. They become relaxed and calm after smoking because they have just satisfied their craving for nicotine. They would never feel relaxed after smoking if cigarettes were not addictive. Marijuana makes you relax, but not in the same way as tobacco does. The THC is what calms you down, not some addictive substance like nicotine. 8) Even if marijuana had the same health risks as cigarettes, a lot of those risks could be reduced, or even eliminated, if marijuana was made legal. There is no way to tell if you are getting "safe" marijuana from a dealer. It could have been sprayed with all kinds of harmful chemicals. Maybe the grower wasn't very experienced and they added way to much fertilizer, therefore making the soil toxic. By making marijuana legal, better marijuana can be grown. 9)Paraphernalia laws directed against marijuana users make it difficult to smoke safely. These laws make water pipes and bongs, which filter some of the carcinogens out of the smoke, illegal. This means that these filters are hard to get, so many people aren't smoking marijuana in the safest way possible. 10) Marijuana can be eaten, thereby reducing ALL health risks associated with smoking it. The main reason why many people don't eat marijuana is because: a) you need to consume more marijuana to get high when you eat it. Many users don't have enough money to use marijuana in this way. They smoke it because they can get more out of it this way. If marijuana were legal, people could grow there own "unlimited" amount of marijuana, and could eat it instead of smoke it. b) When you smoke marijuana, you feel the effects almost instantaneously. When you eat marijuana, you need to wait 15-30 minutes before you start feeling anything. Many people would prefer not to wait. 11)Most marijuana smokers smoke the bud, not the leaf, of the plant. The bud contains only 33% as much tar as tobacco. In fact, marijuana is an expectorant. 12)Marijuana smokers do not smoke anywhere near as much as tobacco smokers, due to the psychoactive effects of cannabis. I am so tired of people condeming those of us that choose to smoke marijuana but overlook the real smoker that is killing people- and that is cigarettes!! Are you one who truly believes the marijuana is more, or even as harmful as ciggarettes/ tabacco? Or do you find yourself constantly defending the truth when it comes to marijuana? This information was circulated by a Registered Nurse I may add!!!