“As of January 10, 2012, a new study has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association exonerating marijuana from the bad reputation of being as harmful to your lungs when smoked as tobacco cigarettes. Researchers at the University of California San Francisco and the University of Alabama at Birmingham completed a twenty-year study between 1986 and 2006 on over 5,000 adults over the age of 21 in four American cities. Study co-author Dr. Stefan Kertesz is a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He explained that the studies measured the pulmonary obstruction in individuals with up to seven joint-years of lifetime exposure (one joint per day for seven years or one joint per week for 49 years). “What this study clarifies,” Kertesz explains in a released video, “is that the relationship to marijuana and lung function changes depending on how much a person has taken in over the course of a lifetime.”

“…findings suggest that occasional use of marijuana may not be linked with unfavorable consequences on pulmonary function.  Marijuana is designated by the U.S. government as a Schedule I drug, which declares it has no medicinal purposes.  Previous studies have shown that the drug can be used to treat multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, nausea, and pain.  It has been known to have beneficial effects on pain control, mood, appetite, and managing of other chronic symptoms.  Despite these facts, marijuana continues to be depicted as more damaging to us than it’s legal counterpart tobacco. Marijuana activists, medical patients, and recreational users alike will rejoice knowing the evidence shows otherwise.”

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