Image of walnut passed off as damaged lungs of a marijuana user

Hyderabad: Several social media users are sharing an image of a walnut and claiming it is the damaged lungs of a person who has probably smoked marijuana for over 10 years.

The Reddit post reads, “These are the lungs of a 10yr marijuana user... They are not supposed to be that colour. Smoke at your own risk.”

A social media user commented on the photo “This is nuts.”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the post is merely shared as a satire.

On performing a reverse image search, we found the same image on the website imgur.com. The caption read, “This is the lungs of a marijuana user. It’s really sad what this dope can do to your body. Please please be smart, put down the dope and pick up the hope.”

On further analysing the reverse image search results, we found the same image uploaded by a Twitter user but with a different narrative. The tweet read, “These are the lungs of a 10 year old child that grew up in a home with a gas oven. They are not supposed to look like that.”

Moreover, according to the American Lung Association, “Smoking marijuana clearly damages the human lung. Research shows that smoking marijuana causes chronic bronchitis and marijuana smoke has been shown to injure the cell linings of the large airways, which could explain why smoking marijuana leads to symptoms such as chronic cough, phlegm production, wheeze and acute bronchitis.”

Lastly, we also ran a keyword search to find out what lungs damaged by smoking marijuana look like and found an image on News Medical Life Sciences in an article titled “Smoking marijuana damages the lungs more than tobacco.”

It is evident that the viral image shows a walnut and not marijuana-damaged lungs. Hence, the claim is false.