Smoking cannabis may be more dangerous than doctors had previously thought and could kill up to 30,000 people in Britain each year, scientists said on Friday.

Although they are inhaled differently and the active ingredients in cannabis are not the same as those in tobacco, both produce harmful chemicals when smoked.

Each year tobacco causes about 120,000 deaths among Britain's 13 million smokers. With about 3.2 million cannabis smokers in the country, Professor John Henry of Imperial College London and colleagues at St Mary's Hospital in the capital calculated the pot death toll could be 30,000.

"If cannabis caused the same number of deaths as tobacco, given the number of smokers, then you would be seeing that number of deaths," Henry told Reuters.

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