British Lung Foundation Warn Of Risk With Cannabis Use

Experts at the British Lung Foundation (BLF) are warning that the public dangerously underestimates the health risks linked to smoking cannabis.

A survey of 1,000 adults found a third wrongly believed cannabis did not harm health.

And 88% incorrectly thought tobacco cigarettes were more harmful than cannabis ones - when the risk of lung cancer is actually 20 times higher.

A new report published by the BLF says there are established scientific links between smoking cannabis and tuberculosis, acute bronchitis and lung cancer.

Experts have explained that part of the reason for this is that people smoking cannabis take deeper draws and then hold them for longer than when smoking tobacco cigarettes.

This means that someone smoking a cannabis cigarette inhales four times as much tar as from a tobacco cigarette, and five times as much carbon monoxide, the BLF says.

Some studies also suggest cannabis increases the chances of developing mental health problems such as schizophrenia.

Almost 40% of the under-35s surveyed - the age group most likely to have smoked it - thought cannabis was not harmful.

However, the BLF have warned that regular cannabis smoking increases the chances of developing lung cancer by as much as an entire packet of 20 tobacco cigarettes.

"It is alarming that, while new research continues to reveal the multiple health consequences of smoking cannabis, there is still a dangerous lack of public awareness of quite how harmful this drug can be,” BLF chief executive, Dame Helena Shovelton, said.

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