Say I smoke an average sized joint of marijuana per day are there consequences?

I say yes. Anything daily is likely to become habit forming in my opinion. I know nothing about pot, so I don’t know how many “hits” someone usually does to get hi, but everyone I know who smoke’s daily sucks when they have not had their hit.

Of course.
Bad for your lungs, bad for your brain cells, bad for your motivation.
I enjoy a little marijuana on occasion but anything one does on a chronic, daily basis is not good.
Moderation is key.

There are plenty of resources that list the physiological effects of pot. Smoking in general is an unhealthy activity.

You’ll have a horrible short-term memory. If you stop smoking, it might end up coming back.

It’s a risk factor for schizophrenia, among other things.

Just have a delightful, healthy beer! Learn to make them yourself and show off to all your stoner friends how you can do something productive with your life!

Through a hookah is better for your throat, lungs. Hash burns a little more nicely.

Lets assume marijuana has 4x the tar of a regular cigarette. (A quick search shows numbers that range from 2x to 10x.)
That is equivalent to smoking about a pack and half of cigarettes per week. Smoking a pack a day increases your chance of contracting lung cancer to about 1 chance in 250. Non smokers contract lung cancer at a rate of 1 chance in 4000. I will leave it up to you to decide if smoking less than a pack a day has a linear effect on the rate ~ 1 chance in 1000 or logarithmic 1 chance in 500. Either way, we know it is worse than not smoking.

And you’ll never pass a drug test for good government, medical , or engineering job.

I wouldn’t, if I were you. Despite what many proponents of marijuana say, it isn’t healthy. A friend of mine who smokes frequently has breathing issues, which we are pretty sure come from that. Anytime you smoke anything you are breathing in burnt particles. I mean really, does that seem healthy?

Baked goods are the way to go. I make my Happy Brownies and it is the healthiest means of enjoying a little herbal pleasure on occasion. They are easy to make, look up recipes online for brownies, cookies, candies, etc.

Consequences will be happiness, silliness and immediate stress reduction.

The science is moving forward on studies. They just don’t know what we know, yet. Sometimes getting high is the best medicine on the planet.

Considering you have a newborn in the house, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

@LuckyGuy Not entirely true. And that assumes that they even bother to test; I know many users of various substances that managed long military careers.

@athenasgriffin Also note that even non-smokers will get nailed by breathing issues on certain jobs. The harm is done not by smoking, but by inhaling the byproducts of combustion. Sticking a smoldering lump of plantlife (tobacco or otherwise) to your mouth isn’t the only way to do that. Take it from somebody who lived in a berthing full of asbestos, worked in boiler rooms, foundries, and in/around too many forms of dust (including lead dust too thick to see through) and the vapors of chemicals known to cause cancer in laboratory humans. Odds are that cigarette/joint smoke is far less harmful to my lungs than my worklife.

@FutureMemory One word: ventilation.
Even outside where ventilation is great, I don’t smoke near small children. It’s not that I am worried about the harm so much as a courtesy to those that are, but still, many smokers of various substances have the same rules I do about that.

Smoking anything is just abject stupidity. Smoking any drug is just a crutch for inability to cope with life without it, or a need to be accepted by peers for what you do rather than who you are. Many studies have linked marijuana with schizophrenia. I have seen friends lose their careers because of the erratic and irrational behaviour it brings on. Do yourself a favour, and avoid it.

@Harold Do you have the same opinion of alcohol and prescription painkillers? If you’ve ever had a beer or a Tylenol, you just torpedoed your own argument.

If you will be ok with most people not taking you seriously then go for it.

Also until it becomes decriminalized you can be arrested if you do something that gets you noticed by the police and they find it on you.

When you get comfortable with it, is usually when most people get caught with it.
Doing it every day, a person gets comfortable with it.
Or, if you haven’t already, you will figure out how to be sneaky. Not a really great trait.

There’s a lot of misinformation here.

It largely depends on your lifestyle, but marijuana has empirically lower consequences than most people think.

But I live across the street where people buy marijuana by the ounce all day long for medical purposes. So I might be a bit biased and I’ll just keep reading the posts.

@Harold Addiction and occasional, recreational use of marijuana are two entirely different things. I “use” marijuana, on average, every few months for the creative aspect, not because I cannot cope with life, sooo, careful with the blanket statements.
IMO marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol. Alcohol is a highly destructive drug for many and it’s use and abuse is, by far, the most outstandingly destructive of all possible substance abuse possibilities except maybe for the poor fools hooked on meth.

Wait what is the size of an average size joint today? I may have answered too soon.

From what I’ve heard, your biggest risk is running out of good dope.

@jerv Sure there’s anecdotal evidence that someone beat the odds. Heck almost everyone knows someone who knows someone who lived to 86 and smoked since they were 6 years old. That means nothing. The fact is National Institutes of Health has been tracking the cancer numbers for many years, in the US. For people who do not smoke the odds of getting lung cancer are ~1 in 4000 per year. For individual who smoke 1 pack per day the odds are ~1 in 250 per year. By the way, half of all people diagnosed with lung cancer will die within 1 year of diagnosis. There is plenty of data tracking the tar (the primary cancer causing agent in cigarettes.) in weed. The numbers range from 2x to 10x a “low tar cigarette”. Feel free to look it up yourself as i have no further interest.

As for the jobs, I personally know of a driver who was involved in a accident 3 months ago that was not her fault. Someone hit her. Because she was a driver as standard procedure she was required to pee in a cup. She failed the test and was fired the next day when the results were reported. Done, finished, career over. I hope she got a lot of pleasure out of that joint because it was more expensive than we can imagine.

The OP asked the consequences of one joint per day and I answered.

Well, as long as marijuana is still illegal, you do run the risk of getting arrested. Otherwise, science has shown that pot is much less damaging to human physiology than is alcohol.

@jerv I have never touched alcohol in my life, and have the same opinion of it. Nor have I had prescription pain killers, except post operatively. I guess my foot is safe…....

Well @Harold that’s great! Good for you living a squeaky clean life, I mean that, sincerely. However, again, you cannot classify everyone that has a drink or two or a little marijuana on occasion as being somehow less than. I think everyone agrees light use and abuse are an apples and oranges dichotomy.

Smoking anything is bad for your lungs. While smoking pot may destroy your lungs (2008), this more recent article suggests otherwise:Moderate Marijuana Use Does Not Impair Lung Function (January 2012).

Surprisingly pot smokers are not at increased risk for lung cancer (2008). This is contrary to @LuckyGuy‘s reasonable calculations.

There are a whole host of side-effects of cannabis, from depressing the cellular immune system to causing gynecomastia in men. The cannabinoid receptor system is a hot research topic – let’s hope it gets better funded in the future once marijuana is legalized.

I doubt anyone can answer this properly as surely everyone has a different reaction to pot or anything.
Personally I wouldn’t touch it, not even on an occasional basis, as the research and stories abound all stating the good, the bad and the strange.
Long term no-one knows what the result will be.

no.

I think smoking anything impairs lung function. And every day? Lungs weren’t designed for accepting burning shit inside them I don’t care what any think tank comes up with. So does that mean smoking nothing is only slightly more safe? I wish.

@woodcutter – Marijuana has been known to treat Asthma dude. It opens up aveoli in the lungs and increases oxygenation to the blood. Among other things, ya know.

Ah, @Coloma B. Toklas!

@gambitking link that for us please. I hope you didn’t read that in “High Times”

@woodcutter: I found this article at Medscape. org (education for doctors & nurses): Effects of Smoking Cannabis on Lung Function: Effect of Cannabis on Airflow Obstruction (link might require sign-up).

Cannabis has long been recognized as a bronchodilator. Indeed, newspapers in New Zealand (and presumably many other countries) carried advertisements for imported cannabis cigarettes as a treatment for asthma in the late 1800s.[101] Hence, inhaling cannabis appears to predate inhaled adrenergic bronchodilator therapy by at least half a century.[14] There appears to be no doubt that smoking cannabis does have acute bronchodilator effects: in a recent systematic review, 11 out of 12 studies demonstrated a bronchodilator effect of cannabis.[10] However, this acute bronchodilator effect is modest and does not appear to be sustained with continued use over 6–8 weeks.[15] It has been shown to be of slower onset than salbutamol, which has greater bronchodilator effects at 5 min compared to tetrahydrocannibinol.[16] The potential short-term therapeutic effects also need to be weighed against the adverse effects of increased bronchitis and exacerbations of asthma that have been associated with regular cannabis use. Consequently, cannabis is not currently considered to have a therapeutic role in acute bronchospasm (although this is occasionally claimed by cannabis users to justify their habit) and the acute effects will not be considered further in this article…

In summary, there is currently no convincing evidence that smoking cannabis causes airflow obstruction. This may be surprising and appears to conflict with the consistent evidence for increased resistance to airflow in the large airways…

This supports @gambitking‘s claim of treating asthma, even if not recommended as long-term medical therapy.

It’s a similar situation with glaucoma (ocular hypertension): Should You Be Smoking Marijuana To Treat Your Glaucoma? (from glaucoma. org)

…although marijuana can lower the eye pressure, recommending this drug in any form for the treatment of glaucoma at the present time does not make sense given its side effects and short duration of action, coupled with a lack of evidence that its use alters the course of glaucoma.

@gasman That is interesting. I have to assume these studies took into account the delivery method as there are some ways more detrimental than others. I learned long ago that inhalation of smoke will paralyze the cilia in the bronchi. These cilia are what carry stuff up and out of the lungs where they can be coughed out. If this is done daily, then it is believable the cilia will remain disabled until cessation, thus ruling out daily use. Sound about right?

So at best it is a trade off? Depending on what makes one feel the worst?

It’s true about the cilia – aka the “muco-ciliary escalator” – being damaged by smoke. Don’t know what kind of smoking apparatus (if any) was used – no doubt varies from one study to another.