Is Vaping Healthier Than Smoking? What 8 Years Did to My Lungs (And Wallet)

The Question I Get Asked Most

"But is it actually healthier?"

I've been asked this hundreds of times. By mates considering switching. By strangers in my DMs. By my mum, who's convinced anything involving cannabis is equally terrible regardless of delivery method. By Sarah, who tolerates my use but would prefer I wasn't inhaling anything. By my own GP indirectly, in the appointment that tipped me into switching in 2018, and again at follow-up six weeks later when she'd rather gracefully moved on from the lecture. Eight years on, she's moved on to grumbling about my knees.

It's the question that matters most, and it's the one that gets the worst answers online. You'll find:

• Marketing sites claiming vaping is "100% safe" (it isn't)
• Anti-cannabis sources claiming it's "just as bad as smoking" (it isn't)
• Clickbait conflating dry herb vaporizers with the EVALI lung injury outbreak (completely different thing)
• "Scientific reviews" quoting suspiciously precise percentages — 67% less morning cough, 73% better breathing — from studies that, when you go looking, don't say that or don't exist
• Actual research papers that require a PhD to interpret

What you won't easily find is an honest middle ground: what the evidence shows, what we genuinely don't know yet, and what eight years of daily dry herb vaping did to one person's body. This is that article. I'll give you the science — with the studies named, so you can check me — then I'll give you my experience, and I'll be clear about which is which.

First: What Are We Actually Comparing?

This matters more than people realise. When I talk about "vaping" in this article, I mean dry herb vaporisation — heating ground cannabis flower below combustion temperature, releasing cannabinoids and terpenes as vapour without burning the plant material. (New to all this? What Is a Dry Herb Vaporizer? covers the basics.)

I am NOT talking about:

• Oil/concentrate cartridges — different products, different chemistry, different risk profile. The EVALI outbreak involved contaminated oil cartridges, not dry herb devices.
• Nicotine e-cigarettes — completely different substance, different use patterns, different health considerations.
• Dabbing/high-temperature concentrates — much higher temperatures, different exposure profile.

When headlines say "vaping is dangerous," they're almost never referring to temperature-controlled dry herb vaporizers. The distinction is crucial, and it's laid out properly in Dry Herb vs Extracts vs E-Liquid.

And when I compare "vaping vs smoking," I specifically mean vaping cannabis flower versus smoking cannabis flower (usually in a spliff with tobacco, as is common in the UK). I'm not comparing vaping to not using cannabis at all — that's a different question with a different answer.

The Evidence: What Happens When You Don't Burn Things

The Chemistry Is Clear

Combustion — burning plant material — creates hundreds of compounds that don't exist in the original plant. When you light a spliff, you're not just releasing what's in the cannabis. You're creating new chemicals through the burning process itself.

The study everyone (including me) keeps coming back to is the MAPS/California NORML Volcano study (Gieringer and colleagues, 2004), backed up by a Leiden University evaluation of the same device two years later (Hazekamp and colleagues, 2006). Here's roughly what a temperature-controlled vaporiser produced compared to smoke from the same flower:

Compound	Vapour (~180–200°C)	Smoke
Tar	Near-zero	Abundant
Carbon monoxide	Near-zero	Significant
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)	One suspected PAH, at trace level	A half-dozen known carcinogenic PAHs
Benzene, toluene, naphthalene	Eliminated or dramatically reduced	Present
Cannabinoid share of output	~95% (mostly THC, some CBN)	Non-cannabinoids up to 88% of total content
Identified compounds in output	Trace volatiles, terpenes, plant oils	Over 111 identified chemicals

Vapour is mostly what you want. Smoke is mostly what you don't.

"But I Don't Put Tobacco In It" — Cannabis Smoke Isn't Clean Either

A mate once told me his pure-weed joints were basically "a herbal remedy." They're not. When Health Canada's lab machine-smoked cannabis and tobacco side by side (Moir and colleagues, 2008), cannabis smoke had around 20 times more ammonia than tobacco smoke, and hydrogen cyanide, nitric oxide, and certain aromatic amines at 3–5 times the levels. That's burning plant matter for you — the chemistry of fire doesn't much care which leaf it's burning.

Take the tobacco out and you remove nicotine and a lot of the worst long-term risk. Take the fire out and you remove most of the rest of what makes smoke smoke.

Where the "95% Safer" Claim Comes From

You'll see this number quoted everywhere. Here's the actual origin: the "95% less harmful" figure comes from a 2015 expert review commissioned by Public Health England — but it was about nicotine e-cigarettes versus tobacco cigarettes, not cannabis vaping versus cannabis smoking.

The reasoning was: remove combustion, remove most of the harm, because most smoking-related disease comes from inhaling combustion byproducts rather than the nicotine itself.

Mechanistically, the same harm-reduction logic applies to cannabis — no tobacco, no combustion, sharply reduced tar and carbon monoxide. But cannabis brings different considerations: higher THC concentrations than in the past, different use patterns, mental health and dependence risks that differ from nicotine.

The honest framing: for cannabis, lab data suggest toxin reductions in the same ballpark as the famous PHE e-cigarette figure. But nobody credible is putting an exact percentage on it yet, because the long-term outcome studies don't exist.

Are Dry Herb Vaporizers Better for Your Lungs?

Short answer: yes, compared with smoking — on every piece of evidence we have. People who vaporise report fewer respiratory symptoms than people who smoke, and in the one small switching study we have, lung symptoms and a key lung-function measure improved within a month. What the evidence can't yet tell you is what decades of daily vaping does, so "better for your lungs than smoking" is solid; "good for your lungs" is not a claim anyone should make.

What Smoke Does to Your Airways

The best summary of the smoking side comes from Donald Tashkin, a UCLA lung specialist who has studied cannabis smokers for decades. His 2013 review found that regularly smoking cannabis is linked to chronic bronchitis-type symptoms — cough, phlegm, wheeze — and visible inflammation of the larger airways. Anyone who's done a decade of spliffs has probably just nodded. I certainly did.

The same review also found the picture for cannabis smoke on its own is less dramatic than for tobacco: no clear link to COPD-style lung-function decline or lung cancer in the better studies. Which brings us back to the other plant in the spliff.

The Tobacco Multiplier (Why UK Spliff Smokers Have the Most to Gain)

A Canadian population study of 856 adults over 40 (Tan and colleagues, 2009) found that people who'd smoked cannabis but never tobacco weren't at significantly higher risk of respiratory symptoms or COPD. People who smoked both were at roughly 2.4 times the odds of respiratory symptoms and 2.9 times the odds of COPD — compared with people who smoked neither, with the extra risk appearing once lifetime cannabis use passed about 50 joints on top of the tobacco.

It's one study and it's observational, so don't treat it as gospel. But it lines up with what nearly every UK spliff smoker already suspects: the combination is the problem. Switching to a dry herb vaporiser removes both the tobacco and the fire at once. If you want the week-by-week of what that actually feels like, it's in Your Lungs After 30 Days Smoke-Free.

The Lung Evidence for Vaping

Earleywine & Barnwell (2007): an online survey of 6,883 cannabis users found that vaporiser users were only about 40% as likely to report respiratory symptoms — cough, phlegm, chest tightness — as those who didn't vaporise, after adjusting for age, sex, cigarette smoking, and how much cannabis people used. Big sample; small vaporiser group (152 people); self-selected and self-reported. Encouraging, not conclusive.

Van Dam & Earleywine (2010): the closest thing we have to a switching trial. Twenty regular cannabis users who already had respiratory symptoms were asked to use a vaporiser for a month. Twelve finished without catching an unrelated respiratory illness, and those twelve showed significantly improved respiratory symptoms and better forced vital capacity (FVC) — how much air you can blow out. FEV1 (how much in the first second) improved but didn't quite reach statistical significance. Twelve people is tiny. The authors themselves called it support for a proper clinical trial, not proof.

Abrams and colleagues (2007): a controlled inpatient study at San Francisco General Hospital with 18 participants found vaporising delivered as much THC as smoking (plasma levels were actually higher in the first hour) while essentially eliminating exposure to carbon monoxide and other combustion gases. Fourteen of the 18 said they preferred the vaporiser.

A 2015 review in the Canadian Journal of Respiratory Therapy (Loflin & Earleywine, titled — I'm not making this up — "No smoke, no fire") pulled these threads together and reached the same careful conclusion I have: everything points the same way, but the studies are small and short.

The mechanism makes sense: if you remove tar, particulate matter, and combustion byproducts from what you're inhaling, your airways have less irritation to respond to. Coughing, mucus production, and inflammation decrease.

Can Vaping Still Irritate Your Lungs?

Yes. Vapour is warm, dry, and still something you're pulling into your lungs. Dry throat, the odd cough on a big hit, and harshness at high temperatures are all normal — and if you've got asthma, COPD, or any existing lung condition, that's a conversation for your GP or prescribing clinic, not a vaporiser review. The practical fixes are boring and they work: lower temperature, smaller draws, a water pipe adapter if you want cooler vapour, and a clean device (I Hate Cleaning Too covers that).

What the Long-Term Data Shows (And Doesn't)

Here's where I have to be honest about the limits.

You'll sometimes see the big US CARDIA study (Pletcher and colleagues, 2012 — 5,115 adults followed for 20 years) quoted as proof that vaporiser users' lungs are fine. It isn't. That study looked at smoked cannabis: it found occasional and low cumulative use wasn't linked to worse lung function, with hints of decline at the heaviest use. It didn't separate out vaporiser users at all.

What we do have: strong mechanistic evidence (remove combustion → remove combustion toxins), short-term respiratory symptom improvement data, and cross-sectional studies suggesting better respiratory profiles in vapers vs smokers.

What we don't have: definitive proof that 30 years of daily dry herb vaping won't cause problems we haven't anticipated, clear thresholds for "safe" frequency or temperature, or long-term data on cannabis-only populations (most studies mix vaping methods and include tobacco users).

The honest position: everything we know suggests dry herb vaping is substantially less harmful to your respiratory system than smoking. But "substantially less harmful" is not the same as "harmless," and we can't yet quantify the long-term risks with precision.

Benefits of Vaporizing vs Smoking: What's Real and How Sure We Are

Health is the headline, but it isn't the whole list. Here's every benefit I'd actually stand behind, with an honest grade for how solid the evidence is.

Benefit	What's behind it	How solid?
No combustion toxins	Tar, CO, PAHs, benzene largely absent from vapour at sensible temperatures (Gieringer 2004; Hazekamp 2006)	Strong (lab)
No tobacco	Removes nicotine and the tobacco side of the spliff entirely — the biggest single change for most UK smokers	Strong
Fewer respiratory symptoms	Less cough, phlegm, and wheeze in vaporiser users and switchers (Earleywine & Barnwell 2007; Van Dam & Earleywine 2010)	Moderate (small studies)
Less flower for the same effect	Nothing lost to sidestream smoke or ash; see The Bioavailability of Vaporising vs Smoking	Moderate
More effect per gram	In a Johns Hopkins crossover trial (Spindle 2018), the same dose vaporised produced stronger effects and higher blood THC than smoked	Moderate — and a reason to start low
Flavour you can actually taste	Terpenes released at controlled temperatures rather than burned; see Terpenes and Temperature	Experiential, well-supported
Less smell	No smoke clinging to clothes, hair, curtains; see Do Dry Herb Vaporizers Smell?	Experiential
Control	You choose the temperature, so you choose the experience; see The Temperature Guide	It's the whole point of the device
AVB leftovers	Already-vaped bud still holds usable cannabinoids; ash doesn't	Experiential

What's not on the list: claims about cardiovascular outcomes, cognition, or "improved therapeutic efficacy" that you'll see in some older write-ups. I went looking for the studies behind them. Some said something quite different; some I couldn't find at all. If a benefit needs a made-up percentage to sound convincing, it isn't one.

What We Don't Know (The Honest Uncertainty)

I could write an article that only includes the reassuring evidence. That would be dishonest. Here's what the science hasn't resolved.

No Long-Term Outcome Data

I've said it already, but it bears repeating: we don't have 50-year studies. We're making educated projections based on toxicology and mechanism, not observing actual lifetime outcomes. The same was true for cigarettes in the 1950s. We turned out to be right that burning things and inhaling them is bad. But intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that we're still in relatively early days for vaporisation research.

Temperature Thresholds

The cleanest vapour chemistry sits in the moderate range. As you push toward 230°C — especially with dried-out material late in a session — you're approaching partial combustion: visible browning, charring, and the reappearance of smoke-like compounds, benzene among them.

Device Quality Matters

Studies on cannabis vaping devices (mostly oil cartridges, but the principle applies) have found metal leaching — nickel, chromium, lead, copper — from device components into vapour, sometimes above health-based limits. This research is strongest for cheap, unregulated oil cartridges. But the underlying mechanism — heated metal parts and solders contaminating the airpath — could apply to poorly made dry herb devices too.

Practical implication: a well-made device from a reputable manufacturer with medical-grade materials and proper temperature control is meaningfully different from a bargain-bin no-name import with questionable quality control. What to look for — glass, ceramic, stainless steel, and what to avoid — is covered in Vaporiser Materials & Airpath Safety.

Cannabis Itself Has Effects

Vaporisation eliminates combustion toxins. It doesn't eliminate the effects of cannabis. THC affects heart rate, blood pressure, cognition, and mental health. These effects exist regardless of delivery method. If you're concerned about cannabis's impact on anxiety, memory, motivation, or dependence — those concerns remain whether you smoke or vape.

The comparison is always "vaping vs smoking the same substance," not "vaping vs not using cannabis at all."

The EVALI Clarification (Why That Scare Doesn't Apply Here)

In 2019–2020, headlines screamed about "vaping-related lung injuries" sending people to hospital and killing dozens. The short version: EVALI was linked to vitamin E acetate — a thickening agent added to illicit THC oil cartridges, primarily in the United States. The CDC found that 82% of patients reported using THC-containing products, and vitamin E acetate turned up in lung fluid from nearly all the patients tested.

What EVALI was: a contamination crisis in the illicit oil cartridge market. What EVALI was not: evidence that dry herb vaporizers are dangerous. Dry herb vaporizers heat plant material. There's no liquid, no carrier oil, no cutting agents, no vitamin E acetate. The full breakdown is in Are Dry Herb Vaporisers Safe?

What 8 Years Did to My Body

Right. Enough studies. Here's n=1 data — my personal experience switching from spliffs (cannabis + tobacco) to dry herb vaporisation.

The Starting Point (2018)

Before switching, I'd smoked spliffs daily for nearly two decades. Cannabis mixed with tobacco, multiple times per day. I was thirty-four and genuinely believed that the morning cough, the wheezing stairs, the throat-clearing — all of it — was just "what bodies do now."

System	Baseline at 34
Respiratory	Productive morning cough; occasional wheeze on exertion; shortness of breath climbing stairs; regular throat clearing; frequent minor chest tightness
Cardiovascular	Could barely run for a bus without gasping; avoided stairs when lifts were available; accepted "getting older" as the reason — at thirty-four

The First Month

The first week was rough. I've written about this in detail in Your Lungs After 30 Days Smoke-Free, but the summary:

• Week 1: Increased coughing, more mucus than before. My body was apparently clearing out accumulated gunk. Unpleasant but apparently normal for people quitting smoking.
• Week 2: Coughing started to subside. Throat felt clearer. First hints that something was actually changing.
• Week 3: Morning cough noticeably reduced. Could take deeper breaths without triggering a coughing fit.
• Week 4: Morning cough essentially gone. Hadn't wheezed in two weeks. Climbed stairs without thinking about it for the first time in years.

Funnily enough, that's almost exactly the one-month window Van Dam and Earleywine used. I wasn't in their study. But I'd have been a textbook participant.

The First Year

By month three, the morning cough was completely gone. Not reduced — absent. Something I'd accepted as permanent had simply stopped. By month six, I noticed I could run. Not marathons, but actually run — for the bus, up stairs, playing football with mates' kids — without feeling like my lungs were failing.

Years 2–8

The improvements from year one have held. Some things I've noticed:

• Respiratory: no morning cough (still, eight years later); no regular throat clearing; no wheeze during exertion; deep breaths fill the whole chest; cardio capacity dramatically better at forty-two than at thirty-four.
• What Sarah's noticed: "you don't cough anymore" (said with mild surprise), "you smell better" (no smoke smell on clothes, hair, fingers), "you can actually do things now" (referring to physical activities I'd have avoided before).

The Honest Caveats

This is one person's experience. I changed two variables simultaneously: I stopped tobacco AND switched to vaporisation. The improvements could be:

• Entirely from quitting tobacco (most likely explanation for the dramatic changes)
• Partly from removing cannabis combustion (plausible contribution)
• Unrelated to either (unlikely given the timeline)

I can't isolate the vaporisation benefit from the tobacco cessation benefit. Most people in the UK who switch from spliffs to vapes are making the same combined change — quitting tobacco and cannabis combustion at once. That's also why the Tan study above is the one I find most relevant to my own story: it's the combination that does the damage, and it's the combination I got rid of.

What I can say: my lungs are dramatically better than they were. The science suggests removing combustion from both substances is responsible. The timeline matched the switch exactly.

The Efficiency Reality (Your Wallet)

Health isn't the only consideration. Let's talk money.

The Extraction Difference

Studies on dry herb vaporisers show THC recovery rates of roughly 55–83% of available cannabinoids, depending on device and technique. Compare to joints, where significant cannabinoid mass is lost to:

• Sidestream smoke (the stuff curling off while you're not inhaling)
• Pyrolysis (destruction through burning)
• Roach loss (whatever you don't smoke)

Real-world joint efficiency is estimated at 25–30% — meaning most of what you paid for goes into the air or ash.

The practical translation: most evidence suggests 25–40% less flower needed for the same effect when vaping versus smoking. The full breakdown, with sources, is in The Bioavailability of Vaporising vs Smoking.

My Actual Numbers

Period	Cannabis	Tobacco
Before (spliffs)	~2–3g per week	Daily, mixed with cannabis
After (vaping)	~1–1.5g per week for equivalent effect	Eliminated

That's roughly 40–50% reduction in cannabis consumption, plus complete elimination of tobacco spending.

Annual savings calculation: cannabis ~£50–75/month saved (UK prices), tobacco ~£40–60/month saved — total ~£100–125/month, or £1,200–1,500/year. Over eight years: £8,000–10,000 saved.

I've broken this down in detail in The Maths of Vaping: What Switching Actually Saved Me. The short version: it pays for itself almost immediately, then keeps paying. Want to see how much you could save? Use our savings calculator.

The AVB Bonus

Your "waste" from vaping isn't waste. AVB (already vaped bud) still contains cannabinoids — studies suggest it can retain a third or more of original THC content at moderate vaping temperatures. That's free edibles. I save all my AVB, infuse it occasionally, and get additional use from material I've already vaped. With smoking, your waste is ash. Literal ash.

(See The Lazy Person's Guide to AVB for what to do with it.)

The Framework I Use

Harm reduction, not harm elimination.

If you're going to use cannabis — and I am, for chronic pain and ADHD management — vaporisation is meaningfully better for your respiratory system than smoking it.

If you're currently smoking spliffs with tobacco, switching to vaping removes two sources of combustion toxins simultaneously. The health case for switching is strong. Blame the right plant.

If you're not currently using cannabis, the health case for starting — even via vaporisation — is different and involves different considerations.

My position after eight years: I breathe better, I cough less, my cardiovascular function is dramatically improved, and I've saved thousands of pounds. The science suggests this isn't coincidence. I'm confident the switch was right for me.

But I won't tell you it's "safe." Because I don't know what happens after 30 more years, and neither does anyone else.

If You're Considering Switching

Here's what I'd recommend based on everything above:

• Quality matters more than price. A well-made device with proper temperature control and clean materials is meaningfully safer than a cheap import with questionable manufacturing.
• Temperature matters. Stay in the 170–200°C range for the clearest harm-reduction benefits. Running everything at maximum heat erodes the advantage.
• Technique matters. Proper grinding, packing, and draw technique maximise efficiency and minimise waste. Start with Your First Vaporizer Session.
• Dose matters. Vapour hits differently per gram. Load less than your spliff habit tells you to.

Quick Answers

Is vaping healthier than smoking?

For cannabis flower, dry herb vaping is very likely less harmful than smoking because nothing burns: lab studies show tar, carbon monoxide, and most carcinogenic combustion products are largely absent from vapour. It's harm reduction, not harm elimination, and there's no long-term outcome data yet.

Are dry herb vaporizers better for your lungs?

Compared with smoking, yes. Vaporiser users report fewer respiratory symptoms (Earleywine & Barnwell, 2007), and a small one-month switching study found improved symptoms and lung capacity (Van Dam & Earleywine, 2010). The studies are small and short, so "better than smoking" is supported; "good for your lungs" is not.

What are the main benefits of vaporizing over smoking?

No combustion byproducts, no tobacco, fewer respiratory symptoms, less flower needed for the same effect, fuller flavour, far less lingering smell, precise temperature control, and reusable AVB. The table above grades how strong the evidence is for each.

Is smoking a joint without tobacco just as good as vaping?

No. Cannabis smoke on its own contains high levels of combustion toxins — in one lab comparison, around 20 times more ammonia than tobacco smoke (Moir, 2008). Dropping the tobacco helps; dropping the fire helps more.

Can a vaporiser still irritate your throat or lungs?

Yes, especially at high temperatures or with big draws. Lower the temperature, take smaller draws, keep the device clean, and speak to your GP if you have an existing lung condition.

Are dry herb vaporizers safe?

"Safer than smoking" isn't the same as "safe." Device materials, heating, batteries, and the EVALI question are covered in depth in Are Dry Herb Vaporisers Safe?

Studies Mentioned

• Gieringer, St. Laurent & Goodrich (2004). Cannabis vaporizer combines efficient delivery of THC with effective suppression of pyrolytic compounds. Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics.
• Hazekamp et al. (2006). Evaluation of a vaporizing device (Volcano) for the pulmonary administration of tetrahydrocannabinol. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
• Abrams et al. (2007). Vaporization as a smokeless cannabis delivery system: a pilot study. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
• Earleywine & Barnwell (2007). Decreased respiratory symptoms in cannabis users who vaporize. Harm Reduction Journal.
• Moir et al. (2008). A comparison of mainstream and sidestream marijuana and tobacco cigarette smoke. Chemical Research in Toxicology.
• Tan et al. (2009). Marijuana and chronic obstructive lung disease: a population-based study. CMAJ.
• Van Dam & Earleywine (2010). Pulmonary function in cannabis users: support for a clinical trial of the vaporizer. International Journal of Drug Policy.
• Pletcher et al. (2012). Association between marijuana exposure and pulmonary function over 20 years. JAMA.
• Tashkin (2013). Effects of marijuana smoking on the lung. Annals of the American Thoracic Society.
• Loflin & Earleywine (2015). No smoke, no fire: what the initial literature suggests regarding vapourized cannabis and respiratory risk. Canadian Journal of Respiratory Therapy.
• McNeill et al. for Public Health England (2015). E-cigarettes: an evidence update.
• Spindle et al. (2018). Acute effects of smoked and vaporized cannabis in healthy adults who infrequently use cannabis. JAMA Network Open.
• CDC (2020). Update: EVALI outbreak characteristics. MMWR.