Papers and articles comparing smoking flower versus vaping raw flower (no concentrates)

[TwistedGray]

I am having a near impossible time finding an article that compares smoking raw flower (blunts, joints, bowls, bongs, or similar) compared to vaping raw flower (Volcano, Arizer line, and similar devices) in terms of health impacts. My wife and I have been having an ongoing debate about whether it is better, from a health perspective (primarily lungs), to smoke cannabis or vape it. The only thing I have found is this published paper which seems like it only touches on the subject comparing the two methods of consumption - https://jpharmsci.org/article/S0022-3549(16)32033-0/fulltext.

I prefer vaping because of the lower temperature; I always run my equipment on the lowest effective setting. I really enjoy getting the strains flower by means of heating and baking the oil as compared to burning it. It's more enjoyable from that perception, but it also doesn't burn my throat and lungs if I were to inhale longer or draw harder. It can eventually bother my throat if I go back to back to back sessions with the vape, but it's what I prefer for the vast majority of times.

Anyways, my wife says that she read or heard an article about comparing the two and remembering that they said smoking was actually better because vaping releases incredibly small particles. She cannot find the article nor remembers the source, and I've been digging around Google for a while and my search terms are leading me to a dead end.

I did email the author in that article, so we'll see if anything comes of that...or whether or not I'll get a bounce back notification later tonight.

Happy Vaping!

 

[Shit Snacks]

Any argument that smoking could be more healthy than vaping sounds like utter nonsense to me? Smoke is smoke, it is carcinogenic, particles can be filtered by other means like water and cooling and hemp fiber many others... Certainly not all vapes are equal, and I think one with the most purity would be best like the ones I prefer myself, but yeah there is not at all enough actual science or articles about any of this stuff, what there is is so little that it's hard to even draw any conclusions from it... But yeah I just don't think there is any argument for smoke being healthier?? Though there is argument that like edibles is the best way to consume??? No lungs at all

 

[badbee]

This question comes up a lot, like once a week or more. No, unfortunately there are very few good scientific studies on Cannabis and virtually nothing on vaping it. It is highly doubtful that smoking would be healthier than vaping. Vaping deposits lipids (fatty substances) into your lungs, which isn't ideal, but smoking produces some pretty hard core toxins and carcinogens, along with lipids. Healthy lungs can deal with the lipids.

 

[florduh]

but smoking produces some pretty hard core toxins and carcinogens, along with lipids.

That's the rub. Smoking involves all of the "dangers" of high temp vaping, along with a whole bunch of even bigger dangers.

 

[invertedisdead]

You said "no concentrates," but vaporized flower is a concentrate.
The THC percentages of the mobile phase are as high as dabs.

From In Vitro Validation Of Vaporizers:

~55-85% THC, just like dispensary dabs. Just to highlight how important this is, the cannabis material used in the experiment had 4.61% THC.

So I still follow in my foot steps of the late Herbivore21 here.

Theoretically, for the cleanest vaping experience, you don't really want to be using flower, as most of the load, by weight, is unvaporizable. We know this from the physical mass of AVB left after a session.

By extracting or concentrating before vaporizing (hash, dry sift, rosin) you bypass almost the entirety of that plant material that will otherwise oxidize, degrade, thermolyse, or char when exposed to high heat. Theoretically, residual pesticides, unflushed nutrients, etc. also lurk inside this fibrous cellulose plant matrix...

The only comparison I've really seen between smoked vs vaped flower is a test that compared the Volcano to a doobie.

 

[TwistedGray]

From In Vitro Validation Of Vaporizers...

Thanks, I'll read the paper later tonight or tomorrow. For everyone else, here's the link to the full paper referenced above - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147286

 

[DamnGentleman]

You said "no concentrates," but vaporized flower is a concentrate.
The THC percentages of the mobile phase are as high as dabs.

From In Vitro Validation Of Vaporizers:

~55-85% THC, just like dispensary dabs. Just to highlight how important this is, the cannabis material used in the experiment had 4.61% THC.

Thanks for sharing this article. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding something, but don't these numbers relate to the percentage of cannabinoids extracted from the sample? In other words, "x% of the sample's total THC was extracted and found in the vapor" rather than "the vapor was x% THC."

 

[kel]

Good question...

I found this, just for tobacco, but interesting:

IQOS exposure impairs human airway cell homeostasis: direct comparison with traditional cigarette and e-cigarette

While cigarette smoking still remains one of the most pressing global health issues of our time, newer forms of smoking device have been introduced across the globe in the last decade [1]. Electronic nicotine/non-nicotine delivery systems commonly known as electronic cigarettes (eCig) heat a...

openres.ersjournals.com

Empirically, I can provide direct personal first hand experience testament to the transformation that has taken place over the last 600 or so days since I quit smoking tobacco, I really do mean transformative experience, I am 100x fitter and healthier. I also started an exercise programme, before I stopped smoking to help me on my way and have made other lifestyle changes, so it's not just stopping smoking.

The good news is that your lungs seem to start to heal immediately after stopping smoking:

LUNG REGENERATION IN ABSTAINING SMOKERS - PubMed

Smoking modifies morphological and physiological parameters of the lungs. Due to the irritation of airways, the natural self-cleaning ability of the lungs is impaired. The mucus accumulates in the airways and various infections develop, leading to chronic bronchitis. After the cessation of...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Whether this happens if you continue vaping, I don't know but I absolutely feel better, my lungs don't hurt as much, I can breathe more easily, I can run for miles only breathing through my nose (see the athlete vaporists thread) and anxiety levels have dropped dramatically. So I would say a strong yes to vaping being less harmful. But who knows???

I kept searching and eventually found this:

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onlinelibrary.wiley.com

This links to a whole bunch of studies which may be helpful.

I don't know how well you understand publications like this, I don't know you... but for anyone reading who isn't used to working with publications like this I advise against reading a paper and using it for bias confirmation - if you do this you are almost always likely to succeed hehe that's not to say you would be wrong, just that things are often not as simple as they may seem and you should take your time and carefully consider other perspectives before making any conclusions.

Edit: I LOVE this... especially the photo showing the different devices - again lots of linked papers.

Cannabis vaping: Understanding the health risks of a rapidly emerging trend

Abstract. The rapid emergence of youth vaping has completely changed the landscape of adolescent substance use in Canada and has become a pressing public h

academic.oup.com

 

[Vaporware]

Also remember that when you smoke you also vaporize. The actually burning portion creates the smoke, but the heat created there is pulled through the rest of the flower vaporizing it (at a high temps near the lit portion). That not only releases everything that a vaporizer does and everything that burning flower does, but also compounds that vaporize at high temps.

You may be interested in some of those compounds, but some of them are clearly harmful. I doubt that anyone would actually *want* to inhale them, and I see no benefit and a lot of downside to breathing in the part that’s actually burned. I don’t think things like THC survive those temps.

It’s very common for people who want to continue doing something that’s harmful to find or make up reasons that the alternatives are bad or that it’s okay for them to continue, and those who are on the fence are often swayed by these bad arguments from other people.

I hope you can get through to your wife because I see no reason to think that smoking might be better for you, but I do wish that there were a lot more good studies on these subjects.

 

[invertedisdead]

Thanks for sharing this article. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding something, but don't these numbers relate to the percentage of cannabinoids extracted from the sample? In other words, "x% of the sample's total THC was extracted and found in the vapor" rather than "the vapor was x% THC."

I see what you're saying - I interpret it as the effective THC percentage (vapor) versus the potential percentage, after accounting for the condensation losses which would dilute the vapors THC concentration, as the cannabinoid density of the vapor would be higher when experiencing less losses.

 

[Cannabiker]

That Volcano study @invertedisdead references really convinced me years ago. I'm keeping @kel's warning about confirmation bias in mind, but this seems pretty straightforward regardless of bias:
"Vaporizers decarboxylate cannabinoid acids at about 200°C and release neutral, volatile cannabinoids, which enter the systemic circulation via pulmonary absorption from the vapor [22]. The non-pyrolytic vaporization avoids the formation of hazardous combustion products, such as tar, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), carbon monoxide, and other carcinogens (e.g. benzene) [22–25]. Gieringer and co-workers demonstrated the advantages of cannabis vaporization compared to smoking and showed that the formation of combustion products is suppressed almost completely. However, the release of cannabinoids into the vapor is dependent on the device used [23–25]. Thirty-six to 61% of THC present in cannabis was found in the vapor using the Volcano Medic® vaporizer at 226°C. Only 3 non-cannabinoids were found in the vapor. In contrast, about 150 chemicals were identified in the smoke of combusted cannabis, among them 5 PAHs, known as strong carcinogens [25]. Fischedick and co-workers performed a comprehensive comparison between cannabis smoke and cannabis vapor using Volcano Medic® [26]. They demonstrated the absence of pyrolysis products in the vapor at 200°C and that the efficiency of volatilization is higher with the vaporizer than the cigarette."

 

[kel]

Ahhh... you kinda just did what I was trying, and probably failing to explain to try and avoid doing; that is all about the compounds, there are other aspects, for example, there's nothing in there about the damage caused by the temperature of the vapour... Those temperatures are easily still high enough to cause irritation and damage the extremely delicate alveoli in our lungs. See what I mean?

I think I might have found a lead to the paper that says vaping cannabis worse than smoking tobacco or cannabis, but it's unclear:

Vaping marijuana associated with more symptoms of lung damage than vaping or smoking nicotine

Adolescents who vape cannabis are at greater risk for respiratory symptoms indicative of lung injury than teens who smoke cigarettes or marijuana, or vape nicotine, a new University of Michigan study suggests. The result challenges conventional wisdom about vaping nicotine, says the study's princ

news.umich.edu

 

[Vaporware]

I haven’t read that study, but the article says:

“Adolescents who reported vaping marijuana were roughly twice as likely to report ‘wheezing and whistling’ in the chest than those who did not.”

From my experience never smoking but vaporizing flower and occasionally cartridges/concentrates over the past 7 years, I have *only* had symptoms like that from taking huge hits, and because that was accidental I would not repeat those hits and it would quickly subside.

I suspect a lot of young people are overdoing it a lot and if they took smaller hits and didn’t try to cough their lungs out that issue would basically disappear.

I don’t know if that’s directly related to the increased risk of respiratory infections or if this was even a good study, but I’ll try to check it out later. Thanks for posting it!

 

[invertedisdead]

Ahhh... you kinda just did what I was trying, and probably failing to explain to try and avoid doing; that is all about the compounds, there are other aspects, for example, there's nothing in there about the damage caused by the temperature of the vapour... Those temperatures are easily still high enough to cause irritation and damage the extremely delicate alveoli in our lungs. See what I mean?

I think I might have found a lead to the paper that says vaping cannabis worse than smoking tobacco or cannabis, but it's unclear:

Vaping marijuana associated with more symptoms of lung damage than vaping or smoking nicotine

Adolescents who vape cannabis are at greater risk for respiratory symptoms indicative of lung injury than teens who smoke cigarettes or marijuana, or vape nicotine, a new University of Michigan study suggests. The result challenges conventional wisdom about vaping nicotine, says the study's princ

news.umich.edu

I don’t have access to the study but this line seems extremely suspicious.

“neither e-cigarettes nor cigarettes had a significant association with all five respiratory symptoms in the fully adjusted models”

How could smoked cigarettes not have an association with the respiratory symptoms?

“I thought that e-cigarettes (vaping nicotine) would be the nicotine product most strongly associated with worrisome respiratory symptoms,” she said.

That sounds agenda based to me, and not science based... I’d suggest to check her other recent works and draw your own conclusions... warning: hyper wokeness incoming if you do even a minor dive...

“Wave 4 from a national probability sample (N = 14,798) of adolescents (12–17 years) using Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study data was used for this study. Retention rate was 88.4%.”

This is a big one, their sample group is under 18 which means, in almost all cases, not eligible to purchase regulated/tested cannabis. I don’t have the full article, but I could assume the PhD’s never questioned the sketchy black market product as the cause for respiratory symptoms... I mean, how good of an oil pen are these 12 year olds seriously getting? This is why we have no data on cannabis vaping, cause these totally absurd and pointless studies are funded by <insert adjective> organizations like the NIH and FDA.

This is also how the study was able to bypass the negative effects of smoking cigarettes....

 

[TwistedGray]

I don’t have access to the study but this line seems extremely suspicious.

“neither e-cigarettes nor cigarettes had a significant association with all five respiratory symptoms in the fully adjusted models”

How could smoked cigarettes not have an association with the respiratory symptoms?

“I thought that e-cigarettes (vaping nicotine) would be the nicotine product most strongly associated with worrisome respiratory symptoms,” she said.

That sounds agenda based to me, and not science based... I’d suggest to check her other recent works and draw your own conclusions... warning: hyper wokeness incoming if you do even a minor dive...

“Wave 4 from a national probability sample (N = 14,798) of adolescents (12–17 years) using Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study data was used for this study. Retention rate was 88.4%.”

This is a big one, their sample group is under 18 which means, in almost all cases, not eligible to purchase regulated/tested cannabis. I don’t have the full article, but I could assume the PhD’s never questioned the sketchy black market product as the cause for respiratory symptoms... I mean, how good of an oil pen are these 12 year olds seriously getting? This is why we have no data on cannabis vaping, cause these totally absurd and pointless studies are funded by <insert adjective> organizations like the NIH and FDA.

This is also how the study was able to bypass the negative effects of smoking cigarettes....

What you quoted says "a significant association with all five" with the keyword being ALL. Is it possible, and I have not clicked on anything, there was one variable where it had an association with it but not a significant one?

 

[invertedisdead]

What you quoted says "a significant association with all five" with the keyword being ALL. Is it possible, and I have not clicked on anything, there was one variable where it had an association with it but not a significant one?

It’s possible that nothing had a significant association without being able to read the study. That would make the article
Clickbait, which wouldn’t really be unheard of. Short answer is it’s hard to say. Need more info! But strange presumptions, in my opinion. I don’t remember any scientific studies concluding definitively that e-cigarettes were worse than smoking, so to me, the authors presumptions are in question regarding the supporting data.

It seems like there was one almost identical to this that came out in 2020 with similar lack of information.

I mean, if one truly wanted to study cannabis vapor users, I think this place would be a pretty good place to start.

 

[kel]

Agree with all of the criticisms above... it sounds like a load of BS to me too.

but just for fairness, I did smoke cigarettes as a teenager into my late 20s before noticing any negative effects.

Ahhh the joy and folly of youth!!!!

edit: that's not 100% true, I just remembered there was a period in my early 20's when I switched from rollies to smoking a couple of packs of Marlboro a day, that didn't last long before I switched back to rollies

 

[stinkytofus]

Dont need an article to tell you that smoking ash is more harmful than vaping heated air

 

[C No Ego]

to clear some of this up- a recent article stated that vaping was worse because it actually delivers way more THC than smoking provides and the article was a " no drugs at all/THC is illicit drug !!! " type of piece so getting more THC , more efficiently and cleanly to them is worse than less THC in a smoke comparison .
Also, some of them do no differentiate between carts/ pens vapor and dry herb vapor and the small particles of damage are the internal pieces of cheap $10 pen vapes falling off and finding their way into the vapor path ( coils disintegrating)

 

[wastedpotential]

to clear some of this up- a recent article stated that vaping was worse because it actually delivers way more THC than smoking provides and the article was a " no drugs at all/THC is illicit drug !!! " type of piece so getting more THC , more efficiently and cleanly to them is worse than less THC in a smoke comparison .
Also, some of them do no differentiate between carts/ pens vapor and dry herb vapor and the small particles of damage are the internal pieces of cheap $10 pen vapes falling off and finding their way into the vapor path ( coils disintegrating)

Yup. It is very difficult to interpret these studies, as all “vaping” is not the same.
Too many times vaping is viewed as the e-cigarette liquid, whether cannabis or nicotine. Not many think of the vaping of flower.

vaping liquids have so many different variables in it, depending on product and manufacturing.

Vaping flower that has been certified “free of toxins” is the best way to keep negative elements out of your lungs. I don’t think I need a study to understand that.

 

[C No Ego]

Yup. It is very difficult to interpret these studies, as all “vaping” is not the same.
Too many times vaping is viewed as the e-cigarette liquid, whether cannabis or nicotine. Not many think of the vaping of flower.

vaping liquids have so many different variables in it, depending on product and manufacturing.

Vaping flower that has been certified “free of toxins” is the best way to keep negative elements out of your lungs. I don’t think I need a study to understand that.

even better = vaping flower free of toxins in an clean air path dry herb vape , one that does not channel heated air over electronic circuit boards etc....