I am not sure whose comments are targeted at me. But I will respond to those I perceive as such.
0. Shane, I do not seek anyone's sympathy; yours the least. I do not smoke pot. I also did not see anyone claiming that lungs like smoke...
1. Injection as a form of delivery is inferior to inhalation as a form of delivery to the lungs.
2. Inhalation can be done through smoking the burning plant or in terms of delivering THC in nebulized form.
3. The THC should be delivered in a therapeutics dose to the lungs.
4. THC has psychoactive effect regardless of form of delivery, however it may be possible that the effect is removed while keeping the original therapeutic effect in the derivative.
I) I don't think 1 can be argued against. But what I think is not necessarily correct so I am interested to hear arguments in the contrary.
II) Because of 1, 2 and 3 it follows that an inhalation is the better way to deliver THC to the lungs while keeping the psychoactive effect minimized.
III) If 4 is achieved an injection method would be viable. That of course matters only if the derivative has no new dose dependent side effects.
In a previous comment I did mention that the first line of thought will be to create a derivative that is therapeutic but not psychoactive (and this may be very hard to do). While the psychoactive effect is present I do not see what the point of arguing inhalation vs injection vs eating is. All of those will have psychoactive effects. The people who want to use marijuana recreationally do not really care about the method of delivery (at least in my knowledge). And they would not mind THC inhalators either, I think.
In the end the cost vs risk vs benefit evaluation will be the important one. If the derivative that is not psychoactive is too expensive... well I am sure most patients will prefer regular THC as it is rather cheap. I think THC inhalators should be easy and cheap to prepare though, thus removing the risks coming from smoke itself.
Rime, I don't get your point. Both deliveries are liked by recreational users. Both have the psychoactive effect. Smoke or oil doesn't matter to them. But it matters to the lung cancer patients as explained above - better of course if in inhalation form.