Caffeine is one of the few stimulants that seems to be beneficial to the human health. Moderate use is linked to a lower likelihood of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver and endometrial cancers, Parkinson’s disease... Certainly more beneficial than smoking cannabis (in most cases together with tobacco). Damage to the lungs is one of the first thing that comes to my mind.

Most of the beneficial effects are because of the complex chemistry of roasted coffee and not solely because of Caffeine. AFAIK cannabis has also a multitude of complex phytochemical elements that are beneficial to human health.

Vaporization of cannabis without tobacco makes lungs a moot point though.

Does it? Smoke is still smoke

Smoke is different from vapor. When you vape cannabis, you're not actually combusting anything, just heating the plant matter enough that some of the particles on the flower are converted to vapor and inhaled.

I am a dire pothead who only uses their Pax2, but please don't frame accepting "plant vapor" into your lungs as a totally harmless thing. It's still heated organic material that your lungs arn't made to accept.

It's better than smoking, but we need to be responsible and admit that it's not exactly without risk or harm.

The person you're responding to never said it was without risk, just that vaping isn't the same as smoking- and the scientific literature backs this statement up.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30049223/

> Conclusions: Single-dose inhalation of vaporized cannabis had no clinically meaningful positive or negative effect on airway function, exertional breathlessness, and exercise endurance in adults with advanced COPD. Clinical trial registered with www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03060993).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456813/

> The majority of studies suggest that vapourizers adequately reduce risk of pulmonary symptoms (5,14–16), although complete safety may require a regulated source of plant material, rather than ‘street’ samples, which produce ammonia (17).

> The findings suggest that vapourization reduces the delivery of toxic byproducts associated with the use of smoked cannabis. A subsequent experiment addressed exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) (14). The researchers found a statistically significant difference between the increase in CO exhaled following smoking cannabis versus vapourization. The amount of exhaled CO showed little to no increase following vapourization compared with large increases following smoking, which would be expected for inhalation of a combustion product. These findings give further evidence that vapourization reduces exposure to gaseous combustion toxins.

This isn't to say there is no risk, but if someone is going to consume cannabis it is amazingly clear that vaporizing it is safer than smoking it.

> smoking cannabis (in most cases together with tobacco)

In most cases? Where in the world? In Canada at least, frequent cannabis smokers and frequent cigarette smokers are nearly disjoint groups.

Yes, this is a big difference between North America and Europe. I've never understood why (and consider it to be a big mistake), but for some reason most potheads in Europe mix their weed and hash with tobacco.

There are definitely places where "spliffs" (weed+tobacco) are the norm, but it's definitely atypical.

Spliffs are the norm most of Europe. An entire continent is hardly atypical.

A big difference is that caffeine is a stimulant, or "upper". Stimulants have a very different role socially. They are little good as excuses: No one is going to claim the reason they hit on the boss' wife at the Christmas party was because they got too high on coffee, or that the reason they got low grades in college was that they spent all day in their room drinking red bull.

No, sorry, cannabis and caffeine are not the same. Not the underlying substances, not the internal biological changes, not the effects.

No one laughed out their brains after drinking a pot of coffee.

Pun intended.

No, it’s not. If you are really comparing weed and coffee either you never tried weed or you are posting in bad faith.

When I drink a lot of coffee I can still function 100% normally (and because of ADHD, even better than my usual) and I am in no way impaired. That cannot be said about cannabis. They are not the same.

Your subjective experience as a caffeine addict is not really applicable. Caffeine definitely impairs me. I can't sleep, can't sit still, can't poop, can't focus on anything. Weed, on the other hand, keeps my thoughts focused and doesn't interfere with sleeping or bowel movements. See? Our personal experience is irrelevant to the discussion.

Nope. Not a caffeine addict. My wife once challenged me to go without caffeine for 30 days. No problem. Not even a headache.

You are not using the same meaning of "addiction". I'm most definitely an addict, of various substances. Can easily put them down for months or years, that's not proof that I'm not an addict. The addiction is the part where I keep coming back even though I can quit.

They are both drugs, but the side effects of caffeine are a lot less bad per usage compared to weed per usage. Perhaps I should phrase that a bit better, but I hope you see what I'm getting at.

Got a source for that?

Caffeine can have pretty "bad" effects - issues with sleep, headaches, panic attacks, and all sorts of cardiovascular issues (increased heart rate, sweating, etc).

Nicotine and caffeine are both mild stimulants and have nootropic effects. Weed hasn't done anything for me besides give me bad panic attacks and making me feel like I'm detached from reality. It does not have the same kind of nootropic and cognitive-enhancing effects of caffeine, not at all.

Like David Lynch, I'll stick to the coffee and cigarettes (even if the latter will probably kill me eventually, at least I can think straight)

Personal anectode but might help:

I also have anxiety and panic attacks triggered. Though when it's over and I can think calmly, I ALWAYS see those panic attacks are my subconscious' way of telling something wrong with my life/where I'm going etc. and I need to fix things. When everything's on track I never have panic attacks regardless of the amount of substance.

In that sense it's actually telling me, in a brutal yet true way, to fix my life, by facing me feelings or thoughts that I've been subconsciously running away from.

Might not be the same case with you, surely, but this is my 2 cents.

You might try rosemary and sage oil for your panic attacks after weed (should help if this is caused by AK1 gene).