One blunt is how many cigarettes

Or, perhaps, referring to how adding tobacco masks the smell of the pot. Both marijuana and tobacco smoke can damage your lungs and increase your risk for several serious conditions.

Joints are the simplest of the bunch. Sometimes people roll them with a crutch, which is basically just a stiffer bit of paper to hold the weed in place. Joints, spliffs, blunts, pipes, bongs — they all carry risks. People have been making pot brownies and steeping marijuana leaves for tea for ages. These days, you have more options in areas with legalized cannabis, including gummies, lollipops, and capsules.

Cannabidiol oil, or CBD oil, is derived from cannabis. You can apply CBD oil to your skin to relieve pain or add it to food and drinks. You can also find CBD oil capsules.

Sprays are a newer way of using marijuana. The catch? Even if all tobacco filler is removed from the cigar product in the process of making blunts, nicotine may be present in the wrapper of the cigar product. This preliminary analysis quantified the nicotine content in wrappers of cigar products commonly used for blunt smoking. Unlike for cigarettes, there's evidence of certain health benefits from marijuana, such as easing chronic pain.

And marijuana can be used without smoking it. Most states now have legal medical pot programs; 10 states and the District of Columbia have approved recreational use. At the same time, studies have shown crossover between marijuana and tobacco use. And while smoking cannabis may be less dangerous than tobacco to lung health, pot doesn't get an entirely clean slate.

Some health officials and anti-smoking activists also worry about inserting legal marijuana into the growing world of vaping, given uncertainties about the smoking alternative's long-term effects. While cigarette smoking is the top risk factor for lung cancer, some of scientific evidence suggests there's no link between marijuana smoking and lung cancer.

That's according to a federal report that rounded up nearly two decades of studies on marijuana, research that's been limited by the federal government's classification of marijuana as a controlled substance like heroin. While cigarette smoking is a major cause of heart disease, the report concluded it's unclear whether marijuana use is associated with heart attacks or strokes. But there's strong evidence linking long-term cannabis smoking to worse coughs and more frequent bouts of chronic bronchitis, according to the report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

The report also looked at other effects, finding a mix of possible risks, upsides and unknowns. For example, the report said marijuana can ease chemotherapy-related nausea and adults' chronic pain but also found evidence the drug is linked to developing schizophrenia and getting in traffic crashes. In recent weeks, studies have echoed concerns about high-potency pot and psychosis and documented a rise in marijuana-related emergency room visits after legalization in Colorado.

Tobacco and marijuana use can also go together. Blunts—marijuana in a cigar wrapper that includes tobacco leaves—have gained popularity. And studies have found more cigarette smokers have used pot, and the other way around, compared to nonsmokers. Sterling McPherson, a University of Washington medical professor studying marijuana and tobacco use among teens. The National Academies report found pot use likely increases the risk of dependence on other substances, including tobacco.

To some public health officials, it makes sense to legalize marijuana and put some guardrails around it. Whereas with marijuana, "we see this as an opportunity to address the harms of criminalization while also regulating cannabis. But health department opinions vary, even within the same state: New York's Association of County Health Officials opposes legalizing recreational weed. Vaping—heating a solution into a vapor and inhaling it—has been pitched as a safer alternative to smoking.

Whenever you smoke tobacco, you increase your risk of cancer and other diseases. This is true whether it is in the form of a blunt or in the form of a cigarette. In terms of quantifying whether or not blunts are worse than cigarettes, if you are choosing to smoke one over the other, there are a few different factors to keep in mind:. Anyone who has ever puffed on a blunt knows that it is difficult to chain-smoke these beasts.

While over 11 million Americans consume between 10 and 19 cigarettes each day , it takes a concerted effort to smoke more than three. In fact, a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that three blunts per day was the average number smoked by avid consumers.

The study also found that blunt consumers were less likely than tobacco consumers to light up during the workday. Smoking a blunt might mean that you inhale more tar and hot ash into your lungs than you would with a cigarette. Cigarettes have filters, which may not do much for protecting you from cancer, but they do minorly prevent some of the tar and burning plant matter from entering your lungs.

In contrast, blunts are quite crude. You light them and take large inhalations without any protection between your lungs and burning embers and waxes. The smoke from cigarettes and cigars should be held in the mouth and then exhaled. With a blunt, consumers inhale deeply into the lungs, a full diaphragmatic inhale.

Smoke from blunts is also held for longer before the exhale, likely around three or four seconds. During this time, there is a greater risk that your lung tissue is exposed to potentially harmful toxins and abrasive, hot plant materials.

Further, research suggests that cannabis is not equally carcinogenic. While cannabis smoke does contain many of the same toxins as tobacco smoke, the cannabinoids in the cannabis plant behave quite differently than the nicotine found in tobacco.

To simplify a complicated topic , cannabis compounds have been found to have anti-cancer properties. Nicotine, however, may actually promote cancer growth. Carbon monoxide is a toxin produced during combustion that competes with oxygen in the blood.

This is why you have carbon monoxide detectors in your house. If your home fills with too much carbon monoxide, it adheres to your red blood cells and deprives your body of oxygen, which eventually leads to death. As you inhale smoke, you inhale more carbon monoxide. Temporarily, at least. Over time, too little oxygen can be problematic for your heart.

A study conducted by researchers at the New York Psychiatric Institute found that blunts increased the health risks of marijuana consumption.