Inhaled Cannabis Linked to Risk for Asthma, COPD

TUESDAY, Sept. 30, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Inhaled cannabis use is associated with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to a study published online Sept. 4 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Alison S. Rustagi, M.D., Ph.D., from the San Francisco VA Health Care System, and colleagues examined whether inhaled cannabis is associated with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, independent of tobacco cigarettes in a cross-sectional analysis of population-based data for adults aged 18 to 74 years who participated in the 2016 to 2020 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys.

Overall, 23,035 of 379,049 participants reported inhaled cannabis use. The researchers observed an association for inhaled cannabis use with asthma overall and among the 221,767 participants with no lifetime tobacco cigarette use (adjusted odds ratios [95 percent confidence intervals], 1.44 [1.26 to 1.63] and 1.51 [1.18 to 1.93] for daily use, respectively). An association was also seen for inhaled cannabis use with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease overall (adjusted odds ratio, 1.27 for daily use; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.10 to 1.46), while the odds of disease were elevated, but not significantly so, among those with no lifetime tobacco cigarette use (adjusted odds ratio,1.54 for daily use; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.92 to 2.57).

“The message about smoking tobacco being bad for you has gotten out there, but for cannabis, it”s much less clear,” Rustagi said in a statement. “If people are looking to reduce their likelihood of developing a chronic lung disease, they should not start using cannabis. And if they already smoke cannabis, they should do it less often.”

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