Cannabis or Tobacco. Or Worse?

Original posting, January 2006

The active constituent in cannabis resin is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). This is an organic chemical compound. It is very unlike nicotine, but being an organic chemical compound is destroyed by heat: burning. The same argument applies to cannabis as to cigarette smoking. It is just another psychoactive drug. Many will use tobacco as the medium to ingest the cannabis active (THC) by inhalation.

• At the red heat tip of a burning cigarette, any residual nicotine will be destroyed, but the region just before this, between the tip and the filter end, any inhaled hot air will draw any volatile vapours towards the user resulting in inhalation and absorption of the undamaged nicotine. As a cigarette burns it destroys this active until inhaled. The vapours may contain unadulterated nicotine, but will also have all sorts of degradation products contained within it.

This suggests that cannabis is a much more potent drug than nicotine. But, nicotine is a class A drug and operates differently to cannabis - a class C drug. The effect of the nicotine seems virtually nothing by comparison to THC.

Confused? - DA


There is no parallel to alcohol in that whisky or beer is only the method to ingest the common constituent (alcohol). THC and nicotine are very, very different. Nicotine is a mind bending-drug as it distorts thinking. The belief that this poison is good for you. The delusion. It’s a killer. Anyway, if you haven’t had nicotine for a while and then ingest some by inhalation it will make you very dizzy - even make you feel very unwell. Sick. You will get used to it. You will just need more of it next time to get any desirable effect. The satisfaction. The craving going away. Staving off the desire for the next ‘fix’. It’s all part of the addiction problem. It’s how it works. Gets its hooks into you. You’re well on your way down that bottomless pit.

THC is a mind-bending drug. Because it’s so different to nicotine, it cannot safely be compared. Better? Worse? Semantic argument. Certainly dangerous. If the amount of nicotine inhaled from one cigarette were to be injected, it would kill very quickly.

Injectables (parenterally administered) go directly into the system and are only metabolised by the liver on the path to being neutralised then eliminated from the body.

Even from the first moment, the body is attempting to get rid of it. That should tell you something very meaningful.