Do you love rolling a joint or filling a bowl, lighting up, and getting super high from smoking marijuana?

I do too, but there’s a big problem: smoking marijuana can harm or even kill you. It’s not the marijuana itself—combustion is the villain, not cannabis.

The recent deaths of two marijuana grower friends, along with the death of legendary cannabis seed breeder Subcool, prompted this warning about the hazards of combusting marijuana.

Subcool died early in 2020 just before COVID hit, in part due to respiratory diseases. He smoked a half ounce or more of cannabis per day in the early years of his cannabis seeds career and developed emphysema and other symptoms of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

The simple fact is that inhaling smoke from any burnt material, including cannabis, is dangerous. Smoke contains hundreds of poisonous combustion products like benzene.

This dangerous chemical is already excessively present in our environment from combusted fossil fuels, fire smoke, gasoline stations, industrial pollution, lubricants, rubber, pesticides, detergents, dyes, and many other common items.

Land, air, and water are often polluted with benzene.

Indoors, benzene and other toxic chemicals off-gas from glues, paint, furniture wax, and other materials. Indoor air is often more polluted with benzene than outdoor air, especially if residents smoke tobacco or cannabis indoors.

Benzene sabotages your cellular metabolism. It causes bone marrow to not produce enough red blood cells, which leads to anemia. It damages your immune system by decreasing blood levels of antibodies and white blood cells. It can cause leukemia and other cancers.

Women who intake high levels of benzene may experience irregular menstrual periods and decreased ovary size.

Studies indicate benzene toxicity in pregnant women could lead to low birth weight, skeletal problems, and bone marrow damage for fetuses and babies.

Cannabis smoke also contains high levels of other toxic chemicals, including ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHS).

Our environment is already overloaded with these chemicals, which come from industrial civilization. PAH pollutants are mutagenic, carcinogenic, and immunotoxic to humans and other animals.

These toxins are especially bad for people who use marijuana medically and are already struggling with health issues.

Some people have been told that inhaling combusted marijuana through water filtration is healthier. Sadly, the opposite is true. Although the user perceives the smoke as “smoother,” the water mostly filters out THC–the main thing that gets you high. Users still get lots of tar and particulates, and less THC.

It’s easy to see combusting marijuana isn’t good for you, especially if you’re using dispensary weed or any weed grown non-organically without strict hygiene. Marijuana buds may be tainted with agricultural chemicals, molds, and mildews that harm your lungs. One reason we grow marijuana is to ensure that the flowers we consume are 100% clean. You can’t be sure of that at all when you get weed from retail outlets or sloppy black market growers.

The way to safely inhale cannabinoids and terpenoids is to vaporize organic whole marijuana way below combustion temperatures, or use a natural hashish product such as dry sift, rosin, or bubble hash.

Be aware that chemically-produced dabs, cannabis concentrates, and vape cartridges are not anywhere near as safe as vaporizing whole buds, and often contain high levels of toxins.

The key for your health is to use a precision vaporizer and organic whole cannabis, with the vape set no higher than 390°F. This temperature volatilizes THC, CBD, THCA, CBDA and most cannabis terpenoids, but doesn’t create benzene and other toxins.

If your vape bowl temperature is higher than 390°F, your bud is approaching the borders of combustion territory. Benzene, for example, is released at 401°F.

Using a vaporizer below combustion temperatures gives you very different inhalation and psychoactive experiences than combusting cannabis.  Most people never cough when using a quality whole-bud vaporizer.

Also, the high is so much better, because the toxic effects of combustion poisons, such as headaches, mental fog, coughing, and a burned out feeling, are absent when you vape marijuana.

The stark reality is that putting a flame to cannabis and inhaling smoke delivers toxins into you, even if you’re using a water bong.

And if you’re smoking blunts or joints, you’re smoking paper, or tobacco blunt wrappers, which equals…more poisons.

It isn’t just your lungs and throat you’re hurting when you inhale smoke, it’s your liver and other essential organs. Sure, if you only get high a couple of times a week, combusting marijuana isn’t likely to do you serious harm.

But you get a way better high, and avoid health harms, when you use a quality vaporizer like the Storz & Bickel, which you can read about here. When you want a pure high and no respiratory problems, vape whole marijuana!