It’s sometimes said that the most dangerous thing about marijuana is getting caught with it. And as an ever-increasing number of Americans comes around to the benefits of (at least) decriminalizing the drug, that sentiment rings truer and truer.
Decriminalization would likely have robust effects on the criminal justicesystem, state economies, and business owners, among other things. But for a drug so heavily associated with the practical details of ingestion––namely, smoking––health concerns linger in the air.
As a number of media outlets noted this week, however, there is a surprising body of evidence about smoking pot that could be worth revisiting: marijuana has been found, in decades of pulmonary research, to be much safer to smoke than tobacco, and even has been linked to decreasing the risk of developing lung cancer.