As California legalizes pot, few smokers realize cannabis is often contaminated with pesticides, mold, heavy metals and chemical toxins

As of yesterday, it’s now legal for adults in California to purchase recreational marijuana. This is being hailed as a breakthrough against marijuana prohibition, but the masses of would-be pot smokers in California seem to carry a popular delusion that rests on the false idea that marijuana is safe to smoke in unlimited quantities because it’s “natural.”

As much as I disdain prohibition against any medicinal plant — and I’m convinced the “War on Drugs” was a miserable failure — I have news for all those who smoke pot: Smoking anything is a health risk because you’re inhaling a toxic stew of carcinogens produced in the smoke itself. Whether you’re smoking pot or tobacco, you’re still poisoning yourself with the very kind of carcinogens that promote lung cancer, heart disease, accelerated aging and cognitive decline.

Just because cannabis is now legal to smoke in California doesn’t mean it’s a wise habit to embrace. (There’s also a much better way to consume cannabis: Liquid form for oral consumption, as explained below…)

California, which increasingly seems to be operating in a delusional fairy tale bubble on every issue from immigration to transgenderism, believes the legalization of recreational marijuana is a breakthrough worth celebrating. “The dispensary staff cheered as hundreds stood in line outside the club, waiting to shop and celebrate,” reports SF Gate. “At some shops, the coming-out party was expected to feature live music, coffee and doughnuts, prizes for those first in line and speeches from supportive local politicians…”

Because, y’know, in a state that’s being overrun by illegal aliens, the junk science of “infinite genders” and university mobs of climate change cultists, what’s really needed is a whole new wave of lung cancer victims to add even more burden to the state’s health care costs. Genius! Gov. Brown should run for President or something…

Inhale some more pesticides and see how “natural” you feel

Sadly, many pro-cannabis consumers in California have convinced themselves that Big Tobacco is evil, but smoking pot is safe and natural… even “green.” Yet the cold hard truth of the matter it that marijuana in California is often produced with a toxic cocktail of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Yep, the very same people who buy “organic” at the grocery store are now smoking and inhaling cancer-causing weed grown with conventional pesticides. These are the same people who are concerned about 1 ppb of glyphosate in their Cheerios while simultaneously smoking 1,000 ppb of Atrazine in their weed. But science be damned, there’s a bong and a gas mask handy. Smoke up!

California pot has already been scientifically proven to be shockingly contaminated. A whopping “…93 percent of samples collected by KNBC-TV from 15 dispensaries in four Southern California counties tested positive for pesticides,” reports the UK Daily Mail, which also reports:

That may come as a surprise for consumers who tend to trust what’s on store shelves because of federal regulations by the US Agriculture Department or the US Food and Drug Administration. ‘Unfortunately, that’s not true of cannabis,’ Land said. ‘They wrongly assume it’s been tested for safety.’

I suppose all the science in the world is irrelevant when you have a mob of people who just want to get high. These are the same people who will March Against Monsanto, but they won’t even buy pesticide-free weed that they’re inhaling.

Edible cannabis products often contain toxic solvents, too

It’s not just the pesticides in weed that are a major concern: Edible pot products also frequently contain traces of toxic solvents such as hexane. Because of the shocking lack of regulation of cannabis product production in places like Colorado, many small-scale producers are using insanely dangerous solvents to extract CBD, THC and other molecules from raw cannabis plants. Those solvents include:

• Hexane (a highly explosive solvent also used by the soy industry to extract soy protein)
• IPA (isopropyl alcohol, which causes permanent nerve damage if you drink it)
• Gasoline (also used to extract heroin in Third World countries)

Anyone who thinks consuming these solvents is somehow “healthy” may have already suffered extensive brain damage from consuming those solvents. Yet edible cannabis products are almost universally looked upon as health-enhancing products, often with no thought given whatsoever to the pesticides, solvents or other toxins they may contain. (Some shops do conduct lab testing of their products, so if you’re going to consume these products, make sure you get lab-tested cannabis products.)

In essence, the very same state where “progressives” have now come to believe there are an infinite number of genders — and that global warming causes extremely cold weather — have now embraced a delusional fairy tale about the imagined safety of consuming cannabis. All the news about the health benefits of cannabis only seems to have made the delusion worse: Some people now perceive smoking weed as a form of nutritional supplementation. They’ve even made it part of their holistic lifestyles, in a twisted kind of way.

But what California has actually unleashed with all this is a whole new wave of:

• Heart disease
• Lung cancer
• Cognitive decline
• Accelerated aging
• Increased health care costs state-wide

Check with your friends in California and you’ll find that they have little to no awareness of the devastating health consequences of long-term pot smoking. It’s not going to turn you into a raging lunatic as depicted in Refer Madness, but it is going to expose your lungs, bloodstream and brain to a shockingly toxic stew of cell-damaging carcinogens. That gives pot smoke many of the same health risks as cigarette smoke.

So what’s the right answer on all this? If you want to stay healthy, stop smoking cannabis. Take it in liquid form instead.

The safer option: Liquid cannabis extracts

Liquid cannabis extracts are not only far safer to consume (because they don’t contain toxic carcinogens found in smoke); they also contain a far more diverse composition of cannabinoids.

CBD-A, for example, the carboxylic acid form of cannabidiol, is destroyed by heat. This means that when you smoke cannabis, you’re not getting any CBD-A, even if it’s naturally present in the plant. The heat of the incineration destroys it before you inhale.

The same is true with THC-A and other carboxylic acid forms of cannabinoids. In fact, cannabis extracts that are heated to destroy those components are called “decarboxylated” or just “de-carbed” for short. Lighting up a joint and burning the cannabis as you inhale actually destroys many of the more medicinal components of cannabis.

Taking cannabis extracts orally, on the other hand, gives you the full complement of all the cannabinoids, terpenes and other constituents… without the health risks associated with inhaling smoke.

The cannabis extract brand that we test and certify in our lab to meet or exceed label claims is called Native Hemp Solutions. It’s a whole-plant extract that maintains the natural cannabinoids and other constituents found in the living plant. Because it’s not an isolate, its molecules work synergistically to provide a more profound effect.

Liquid forms of cannabis are vastly superior to cannabis smoke in terms of their synergistic phytonutrients (chemical constituents). While smoking marijuana provides a more rapid assimilation of THC into your bloodstream, the oral form of cannabis extracts actually provide a vastly more diverse array of nutrients, many of which are being studied for therapeutic use.

That’s why I don’t smoke cannabis. In fact, the only cannabis I consume is high-CBD, near-zero-THC liquid forms. That’s because I don’t want to give myself lung cancer or heart disease as a side effect of consuming a cannabis product.

Smoking pot isn’t harmless: Think rationally about the way to ingest cannabis molecules

The bottom line here is that I want to encourage you to think carefully about the vectors through which you introduce cannabis molecules into your body. Smoking pot is rapid but carries long-term health risks due to carcinogenic smoke that you’re inhaling. I’m thrilled that California finally decriminalized this healing plant, but the fanfare surrounding the change in the law almost seems to be a celebration of smoking, which is a truly hazardous habit no matter what you’re smoking.

Oral forms are vastly superior in terms of ingesting the full array of nutrients, and some people on the extreme end of the spectrum actually use cannabis suppositories for a rapid effect that doesn’t involve damaging the lungs. Personally, I’m happy with taking CBD oils as a dietary supplement for the simple reason that I don’t ingest cannabis to get high; I ingest it for its health supporting effects.

Now, let us hope Jeff Sessions and the feds can finally get around to ending marijuana prohibition, too. It’s time to end the senseless war on this promising natural herb, but we must also think carefully about the ways we ingest it.

Read more news on medical cannabis at MedicalMarijuanaUpdate.com.