With the stigma of pot on the decline, people are increasingly turning to vaping to get high. Here’s what you should know before you inhale.
Photo / Macey Foronda, Graphic / Chris Ritter for BuzzFeed.
Over the past decade, as cigarette smokers have switched by the thousands to vaporizers, potheads, too, have discovered vaping as a healthier and less smelly way of getting high.
Whoopi Goldberg, for example, has a vape named Sippy, which she uses to treat her glaucoma. "The vape pen has changed my life," Goldberg wrote at The Cannabist. "With each sip comes relief — from pressure, pain, stress, discomfort."
Vaporizers range from cheap bodega models with glass, metal, or plastic cartridges full of hash oil to futuristic pods with smartphone apps that retail for hundreds of dollars. Crowdfunding campaigns for newer, better vapes pop up every few months. (BuzzFeed's drugs reporter Amanda Chicago Lewis reviewed 15 vapes in 15 hours, if you're looking for recommendations.)
"Getting a new vape is almost as good as getting a new smartphone," Isaiah, a 24-year-old from Brooklyn, told BuzzFeed News. Vaping is "cleaner, cooler, more modern, healthier, more economical, tastes better, easier to handle, and I never need matches or a lighter."
Many people vape weed because of the assumed health benefits. Take Larry, a 26-year-old start-up founder in Atlanta. He isn't a regular pot smoker, but when he does he prefers vaping. "If I'm going to partake I might as well do so in a manner that doesn't increase cancer," he told BuzzFeed News.
But how safe is it, really? Here's what medical experts say.
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This is a big deal, since the biggest risk of smoking weed is the smoke itself, which contains the same kind of cancer-causing chemicals as cigarette smoke.
Smoking is associated with bronchitis and emphysema, as well as the inhalation of carcinogens, according to Marilyn Huestis, chief of chemistry and drug metabolism at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who has studied the physiological effects of vaping marijuana. "People who vaporize report decreased respiratory symptoms" compared to those who smoke weed, she told BuzzFeed News in an email.
Studies have shown that cannabis users regularly report breathing easier after switching to vapes. And the vapor itself is a lot cleaner than smoke from a joint.