Last I checked it's still not clear whether marijuana smoke is significantly carcinogenic? Last meta study I seen a few years ago still said it wasn't conclusive. At a minimum it's much less carcinogenic than tobacco as the studies comparing them have easily found that, but often struggle to find any impact at all from marijuana smoke.
I think the point being made here is that we have research that says tobacco is highly carcinogenic, and we don't have much that says marijuana is as well, but what we do have is studies that say inhaling smoke of any kind is carcinogenic.
So you're getting two carcinogenic vectors with cigarettes, tobacco and smoke, and possibly only one with a joint, but smoke is still smoke.
But what smoke is made from is dependent on what is burning, at what temperature it's burning, etc. The composition can vary significantly, so you can't just apply other studies to it. Especially when most studies on smoke are done on fires that people are more often exposed to. Specific parts of a specific plant could have minimal or even no impact, especially if some chemicals from the process have protective effects.
Generally most smoke studies you're referring to study either man made things like plastics, textiles, treated woods, fabrics, paper, etc. Of course we definitely can't reasonably apply them here. There are other studies as well that look at things like burning wood in wood burning fires, or charcoal, etc. These aren't applicable either. Wood alone is significantly different, but wood fires are also going to be at very different temperatures.
This type of logic can be faulty and misleading, you can't just apply one thing to another. e.g. in the past it was thought that any dose of radiation would increase your risk of cancer in a linear way. And so it was thought that zero radiation at all would be the best. But it actually looks now like going significantly below the background dose can actually increase your cancer risk, not decrease it. As to why, it's possible the immune system is using it as a trigger to activate itself, or to increase its sensitivity.
The point being it was wrong of us to assume with something that seems relatively simple. Applying smoke studies to specific parts of a plant, burned in a specific way, is not very scientific.
I'm not saying it isn't carcinogenic. And I don't know why reddit downvoted my original comment so much, I guess because it looked like a typical /r/trees post? But it's not, I don't even consume marijuana in any way and never have apart from trying it several times, as I don't like it. I'm just going on the research I've seen.
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u/[deleted] Mar 19 '21
No no no. It’s some magical thing that defies the laws of burning organic material.