Is bong smoke really as harmful as secondhand cigarette smoke?

Even as marijuana is increasingly legalized and decriminalized in many states, including New York, it’s still a herculean task for scientists to research its effects.

Consider the recent example of a study about the dangers of secondhand cannabis smoke. About a week ago, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley released these findings, earning the attention of several news outlets. But the study’s launch was initially delayed by about four months.

The team then had to work around several restrictions due to marijuana still being classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). This label puts pot in the same category as heroin. These legal constraints make it more challenging to study the health impacts of weed even as it becomes more accessible in states like New York and New Jersey.

The Berkeley study alleges that secondhand bong smoke might be just as harmful as tobacco because of how much particulate matter gets released into the air. But given the heavy restrictions on marijuana research, this takeaway might not be completely valid. They would need a whole different class of experiments to support this idea fully.

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