No Link Between Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/520524/

Newswise — People who smoke marijuana—even heavy, long-term marijuana users—do not appear to be at increased risk of developing lung cancer, according to a study to be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 23rd.

Marijuana smoking also did not appear to increase the risk of head and neck cancers, such as cancer of the tongue, mouth, throat, or esophagus, the study found.

The findings were a surprise to the researchers. “We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use—more than 500-1,000 uses—would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana,” said the senior researcher, Donald Tashkin, M.D., Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles.

The study looked at 611 people in Los Angeles County who developed lung cancer, 601 who developed cancer of the head or neck regions, and 1,040 people without cancer who were matched on age, gender and neighborhood. The researchers used the University of Southern California Tumor Registry, which is notified as soon as a patient in Los Angeles County receives a diagnosis of cancer.

<SNIP>

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Billions spent studying this utterly harmless psychoactive and medicinal herb. And nothing whatsoever has ever been found wrong with it that stood up to scrutiny.

LEGALIZE IT.

Everybody meet me at Dampkring in Amsterdam! A smoke, peace and love party! :smoke: :)

when I was there two years ago...

Rusland

there were enough comparison group members available -- those who do not and would not, for the study period, smoke marijuana.

wasn't there a fairly recent study suggesting that THC actually shrinks cancer cells?

Seems like there was.

I'm not clear if that was in vivo or in vitro though.

There's also this: "Marijuana may block Alzheimer's"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4286435.stm

There is no reason MJ should be illegal for adults. None.

I think pot makes people less susceptible to subliminal and psychological manipulation. It's just a theory, of course. No way to test it scientifically.

open minded. For the record I don't smoke pot but other then the gawd awful smell it doesn't bother me if people want to.

I noticed that a lot of the advertising ploys they use on TV were transparent as hell. The ONLY ones that had any effect at all were the food commercials, and the only effect they had was to make me go get something to eat...not even what they were advertising.

makes you think more.

That's why the powers that be find it so dangerous.

Also the big beer and liquor corprations bribe Congress people to keep it illegal.

As well as the pharmaceutical companies that don't want people to self-medicate.

Jesus cries every time you smoke MJ.

Oh wait.. http://www.cannabisculture.com/backissues/cc11/christ.html

...I've been learning a lot about him on DU lately. He was the most famous pot smoking, female whore marrying, homosexual man never to exist!

The list for MJ grows with each study. God gave us this herb, but the $$$ Pharma Cos hate it.It grows, and heals, anyone can grow it, why the pharma Cos hate it.it's like the discovered herbs in the Amazon patent it or make it illegal.

they're going to start "selling" its safety, if even indirectly asap. Of course, the stuff they don't "control" they'll still arrest people for, but the stuff they manufacture and make HUGE profits for...that will soon be more "acceptable."

For elderly people who have an option between Vioxx for pain (which now shows detrimental, deadly effects from day 1 of use)...this MJ pill is a real option. Of course there will suddenly be a lot of people with "pain," but all the elderly and dying whose every movement, every day is dibilitating, the MJ pill certainly WOULD more safely help. I hope they don't reverse themselves, and after approving it, begin sanctioning users who have (then) used it, and truly need it for pain, and daily mobility.

...Jesus was almost certainly a cannabis user and an early proponent of the medicinal properties of the drug, according to a study of scriptural texts published this month. The study suggests that Jesus and his disciples used the drug to carry out miraculous healings. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,869273,00.html>

The apostles hang out in a field looking at the clouds...

Paul: I think I see an apple...

John: I think I see a cat...

Judas: I think I see a goat...

Jesus walks up...

Jesus: dudes...

Paul: main dude...

John: the dudest...

Judas: Duderotomy...

Jesus: Good one. We're set up...

John: no way...

Jesus: way...

Paul: Dooooooooooooooooooode....

Jesus: anyone got a torch?

Judas whips out a zippo lighter with a cross on it...

Jesus: what's with the cross...

Judas shifts nerviously...

Jesus: (laughs) oh that's right, never mind...

John: who brought the munchies??

Paul: (sad) dude.

Jesus puts his arm around Paul.

Jesus: it's cool my brother.

And like that, endless Doritos spill from Paul's napsack...

All except Jesus: DUDE!!!!

practice science!

but yeah, no cancer receptors for 420 in the lungs. That's why cigarettes are so much more dangerous IMO than pot ever will be.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

It used to be prescribed to those with asthma.

Contrary to widely-held, wrong beliefs, it does not cause cancer and will not kill you.

...it could be the cure for AIDs, cancer, and the mumps and it would still be illegal. Its just based on nonsense at this point.

will come from perfectly legal cigarettes and perfectly legal air pollution, but NOT the harmless wonderful weed that has been the only drug I have never regretted.

Let me add to that shout: LEGALIZE IT.

But let's not forget the dangers, as illustrated by the "classic" film, "Reefer Madness"!!!

Buying weed here in SF is as easy as 1-2-3, and there haven't been any negative effects. All one has to do is obtain a 'card' from one's MD and that's it! I love my card.

I actually need to go back to the eye doctor, as they were concerned I might have glaucoma (YES, I really AM serious).

PM me and I'll give you the 411....

If you smoke weed, you'll laugh uncontrollably and play the piano faster, faster FASTER!!!!!

The Sweet Pill that Makes Life Bitter!

I never understood that...but then again they didn't get anything else right either.

For one thing, it would be free. For another, it would make people more relaxed, which is very bad for politics. And for another still, you need to be lucid when you're going to church.

to not be lucid.

But don't smoke it just before driving to church -- or anywhere else.

...at least 20 percent more bed space.

messed reasons to send someone to prison, this has to be #1.

baked off my @rse and I had quite a religious experience, let me tell ya.:smoke:

understand medical applications a lot better than we do right now.

Research (done outside the Corporate States of America, of course) have shown tantalizing promise that marijuana REDUCES TUMORS (cited were brain tumors).

I mean, fucking DUH already.

EDIT: if '500 - 1000' uses led to cancer, I'd have been dead years ago.

It won't stay lit!

1) It auto-extinguishes when you've reached the stage where you forgot that you were smoking. :smoke:
2) Do you have any idea what's in tobbacco ciggies that make them stay lit? That's the crap that really kills you!

:evilgrin:

But it IS indicative that a better study is needed. The problem: drug laws preclude a better study, e.g., a longitudinal one.

cause cancer if it was grown the way tobacco is here.

Marijuana has real health benefits and one of the greatest is a reduction in intracellular inflammation. It can be an irritant to the lungs but that is in an acute way on the more shallow surfaces, not in the cells themselves.

What I will say now will sound like the latest conspiracy theory, hard to believe but it's easy to confirm by looking up Polonium 210. You can even add "American Lung Association" to the search if that makes it more believable.

Polonium 210 is not a natural part of tobacco, it is due to the fertilizer because phosphate fertilizers are used in growing tobacco. This leads to a high level of Polonium 210 when the tobacco is smoked and in research the only single ingredient in tobacco found to cause cancer is Polonium 210

People living near phosphate fertilizer plants are twice as likely to develop lung cancer and osteoblastic leukemia.
Calcium phosphate fertilizer is a problem in itself but it's use in growing tobacco is insane because the burning and inhalation makes the threat all the greater. That over simplifies it though.

In any case if marijuana was grown with this fertilizer the threat would be much greater. If tobacco were grown without it the threat would be much less.

making the same claim a few years ago!

Here there is no huge industrial enterprise with a reason to lie. Just the opposite; The Prison-Industrial Complex very much opposes any "good news" about marijuana as legalization would destroy them.

Remember; 1 in 134 Americans are in prison, and a very large proportion of those are in prison for marijuana offenses.

Prisoners are big business. The United States holds more prisoners than any other country in the world, including China. That's in total number and as a percent of the population.

We can't decriminalize pot, it would be a financial disaster for many good Republicans who profit off of other's misfortune. They are, by their very nature, more important to America than 10,000 pot smokers. Don't expect legalization any time soon.

Welcome to the "Land of the Free"!

if anything, it HELPS you breathe easier, EVEN when smoked.

and because it does this, and because coughing usually ensues at some point, pot may actually help in keeping the lungs CLEANER.

due to fusion in my spine, my ribs don't move enough to allow my lungs to expand fully- but i've been a chronic chronichead for over 30 years now...and pot definitely helps me breathe easier.

btw- i've never been a regular tobacco smoker, although in the past i did have a cigarette once in a while if i was out at a bar with friends who smoked.
BUT- because of my pain meds, i haven't been able to drink alcohol for over 6 years now, and no end in sight(seeing as the end will mean death).

There was an ad from the ONDCP that claimed that marijuana led to suicidal thoughts and schizophrenia. I was pissed that a respectable publication like The Nation printed an ad that rates up with Reefer Madness as one of the most ridiculous pieces of propaganda. Sadly enough several other organizations signed on to the ad as well.

That would probably be due to the drug laws and general harassment, not the substance itself. How do you measure that anyway?

On edit - The questions are rhetorical, I understand you don't agree with the claims either.

They must be confusing it with alcohol.

:sarcasm: Easy to do. ;)

One's the only known "crimogenic" drug, the other makes people have interesting conversations and eat a lot.

It can definitely make you depressed

are quitting smoking cancer sticks.

herb?

Who told you about me:evilgrin:

How about the brazillions gained and saved by legalization? Nah that would solve problems and makes sense, f**king moonbat liberals

Great news...though I was kind of surprised they consider 500-1000 times "heavy use." I think that just about covered my freshman year at university.:smoke:

I used to see all the time? Always had a glazed look in your eyes, always munching on snacks, a little paranoid, and got straight A's? If so, cool! :toast:

why the hell did i quit then???

lol

i guess it's time to embrace good ol mary jane once again

I thought for sure that marijuana was cancerous given the sticky, black resin that would build up after only a few nuggets of greenbud. I guess that stuff is less toxic than it looks. Whew.

And one less worry on my stoned head.

wait... that was the CIA, too.

:smoke: + :tinfoilhat: = :crazy:

Had nothing to do with lung cancer.

Not lung and I think it originally started as skin cancer on his foot IIRC. So freakin sad. Bob was such a beautiful spirit!

Now if I can only think of a way to celebrate this article's good news.... :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke: :smoke:

i'd been told that about the CIA by a professor in grad school. i enjoyed the conspiracy angle - puts bob in the same pantheon with malcolm & martin luther.

It was removed, but he refused more intensive treatment at the time. No skin cancer can be ignored, but melanoma can metastasize.

Which happened in his case. I think he tried more treatment then, but it was too late.

there have been studies done on this.

But, I do feel that people have to make their own decisions.

It's like saying one of the risks of getting high is getting high. You may forget something that you were saying or what was just said (if you're lucky enough to get that high ;-) but the effects of this fade when the high fades. I've conducted my own "studies" believe me.

has been shown to be potentially permanent.

"As people age, they normally lose neurons in the hippocampus, which decreases their ability to remember events. Chronic THC exposure may hasten the age-related loss of hippocampal neurons. In one series of studies, rats exposed to THC every day for 8 months (approximately 30 percent of their lifespan), when examined at 11 to 12 months of age, showed nerve cell loss equivalent to that of unexposed animals twice their age.67, 68, 69"

http://www.nida.nih.gov/ResearchReports/Marijuana/Marijuana3.html#hippo

Understand that the anti-marijuana industry has a huge stake in doctoring results to show problems with it.

From my own experience of regular, and I do mean regular, smoking I haven't noticed an impact at all. In fact when I was younger I was more arts oriented,definitely more spatial and right-brained and as I have aged (and smoked) I think I've actually become smarter with more left-brain areas. I work in IT now, trained and educated myself to be able to run a small corporate network and I have an incredible information retention capability. I've also seen studies that it actually helps create new brain cells (don't have a link so don't ask). Everyone has their vices and their risks that they take. If I'm wrong, so be it. We all die. This is how I want to live. I smoke for inspiration, fun, and stress relief. It also makes sex just fabulous! I doubt will ever see it legalized in my lifetime. I just shudder to think of all the people in jail right now because of it. It's shameful.

If they don't like the message, they will attack the source of the message. That will either be you or the authors of the study you cite.

Chronic filling of your lungs with smoke from burning plants isn't like breathing other kinds of smoke. This is magical smoke, and unlike every other kind of smoke, it heals and nourishes lung tissue as it is inhaled and forced into contact with alveoli.

Chronic exposure of your neurons to powerful neurotransmitters derived from burning plants isn't unnatural or unsafe at all. These are magical neurotransmitters, and unlike other chemical manipulators of normal brain cells, these will improve and nurture brain cells, even though it thwarts normal membrane function and overrides natural feedback control loops.

BTW, I'm in favor of decriminalized marijuana, and wish it would displace alcohol as a social drug. But what I'm really in favor of is people learning and using natural and healthy ways of feeling good. It serves no progressive purpose to pretend that marijuana is not harmful - only with open eyes can people decide whether the risks are worth taking.

Peace.

I don't think you can.

Argument by analogy, which is what you are doing, proves nothing.

I offer my opinion, and you can take it or leave it. Doesn't bother me either way. If I posted links, you'll just trash them; quit wasting my time.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into.
-Jonathan Swift

I'm glad I'm not the one who has to pretend breathing SMOKE into one's LUNGS has no untoward effects on health.

LOL

...and your pretending is just what YOU are doing. There are few studies to support your assertions. I've been studying this for about 30 years now, and the preponderance of evidence is for the harmlessness of marijuana.

So, you can have your act of faith if you like that it is impossible for the smoke of a burning leaf to be harmless, but it will be an act of faith.

I have more reason to believe that coffee will harm me, and you know what a contentious debate THAT is.

which is that no matter what I post, you'll have a way to dismiss it.

Let me get my popcorn, first.

Ok, here we go. These took two minutes to find.

Comparison of tobacco and marijuana smoke (gas phase analysis, and particulate analysis)

http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/Drugs/THC/Health/smoke.components.html

First on the list is carbon monoxide, which is about one part in 25 by volume in mj smoke.

Presumably you've studied the preferential binding of carbon monoxide to hemoglobin over oxygen, and know that it stays bound for as much as half a day. Which means that no oxygen can be transported by that heme. Ever hear of committing suicide by sitting in a car in a closed garage? Carbon monoxide poisoning.

Gases: I assume you've also heard about the mutagenic effects of cyclic hydrocarbons. Let's pull a couple of chemicals off the list in the link...benzene (remember the Perrier scare?), toluene (glue-sniffers' delight), nitrosamines (uh oh, the stuff they once used to keep sausage meat pink). Other chemicals like acetone (nail polish remover). HCN - that's cyanide. Care to defend the inhalation of that?

Particulates: cresols. Sound familiar? Cresols are a major component of Creosote, the stuff they paint on telephone poles so that no living organism can attack them. Napthalene. That's the active ingredient in mothballs...which kill moths. Anthracenes. The name has a familiar ring, right? Same root as anthracite, or coal. Basically, it's coal tar.

Each substance I listed is roughly present in marijuana smoke at levels comparable to those in tobacco smoke. Perhaps tobacco smoke is not harmful? And I'm only scratching the surface. In your researches, I'm sure you've become familiar with the Maillard Reaction, which causes the synthesis of swarms of organic chemicals, many of them toxic, when proteins are subjected to heat in the presence of sugars (mj contains both), and then these chemicals are in turn oxidized through charring. Have you heard about the problems with grilled meats and barbecues? The actual number of organic chemicals in mj smoke exceeds a thousand. See if you can name just ten.


Here's an article in that fascist right-wing rag The New Scientist, citing findings of the British Lung Institute, another known political front. An excerpt: "Smoking pure marijuana is at least as harmful to lungs as smoking tobacco, a report from the British Lung Foundation concludes. And in some key ways, it may be more dangerous."

Read it for yourself.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3039


Here's an obviously hysterical lie-filled article from The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, summarizing evidence from a number of studies. Findings are broken out into key areas: immune system suppression, respiratory illness, effects on cognition and memory.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/evidence99/marijuana/Health_1.html


Here's what Nazi Canuck doctors up North have to say. Can you believe the gall of a group that calls itself Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada? Obviously, there are deep motives here that have nothing to do with, umm, health. Excerpt: "Like tobacco smoke, marijuana smoke causes severe lung damage." said Dr. Atul Kapur. Dr. Kapur is an emergency medicine physician in Ottawa and president of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada.

http://www.smoke-free.ca/eng_home/news_press_Jan23-2002.htm


Munch...munch...munch


:popcorn:


All that said, I'm going to restate my earlier position, that I support decriminalization of marijuana, and would prefer to see it used instead of alcohol, as long as someone is going to use a drug anyway. But that decision should be made with the help of facts, not with the suppression of them.

Peace.

As you are no doubt aware, CO (Cabon Monoxide) is a deadly chemical.

Carbon monoxide is not detectable by odor and headache should be taken as a warning that a dangerous concentration is being inhaled.

In sudden exposures to high concentrations, weakness and dizziness may be the only symptoms preceding collapse.

The amount of carboxyhemoglobin formed in the blood is dependent on concentration and duration of exposure, ambient temperature, physical exertion, health, and individual metabolism.

Symptoms are usually not noticeable until the carboxyhemoglobin level reaches 10%.

At 10-40%, symptoms may include increasingly severe headache, dyspnea on exertion, decreased manual dexterity, impaired judgement and memory, irritability, emotional instability, dizziness, fatigue, drowsiness, confusion, nausea, vomiting, palpitations, and impaired vision and hearing. With continuing exposure, there is a progressive worsening of all symptoms.

At 40-60%, anginal pain, incoordination, hallucinations, lethargy, syncope and collapse, and increased respiration and pulse may occur.

At 60-80% there may be decreased respiration, blood pressure and pulse, and deepening coma with intermittent convulsions and incontinence of urine and feces. Rarely, there may be a pink or red skin discoloration, but cyanosis or pallor is more common. Other reported signs and symptoms include increased temperature, dilated pupils, perspiration, muscle spasms, hyperreflexia, aching limbs, and retinal hemorrhage or venous engorgement.

Above 70-80%, rapid death from respiratory or cardiac arrest usually occurs. Death may also be caused by myocardial or cerebral infarction. Cerebral edema may also occur. In non-fatal cases or when death is not immediate, primary or secondary effects of tissue hypoxia and some atypical reactions may develop.

About 2% of marijuana smoke is carbon monoxide. In an inhaled "hit" of marijuana smoke, about 10% of the volume of gas in the lung is smoke, the rest is sidestream air.

So, a 2% concentration amounts to about 2000 ppm total CO.

Which would be an alarming amount if you smoked it for 20 solid minutes with each breath, as at that concentration it would cause headache and nausea.

But that is not how the drug is consumed. A typical use of marijuana involves three to four partial lungfuls of smoke, diluted by even more sidestream air (which is called incorrectly carburation) usually over the course of 20 minutes or so. The total exposure is quite small, and even in chronic users of chronic never rises to the level that would have any alarming effects. *Even* if you accept the government study with ultra-low-potency marijuana that found that getting high on ditchweed makes you smoke so much that it has five time the effect on carboxyhemoglobin levels that smoking a single cigarette does, that would be equivalent to a five cigarette a day habit, a level not associated with any problems due to carboxyhemoglobin. In reality, "street" marijuana is at least a dozen times as potent as the government marijuana, and correspondingly less would be consumed by a user.

In this, cigarette smokers are much worse off. Tobacco is an addictive substance that requires an ever increasing dose to achieve its psychoactive effects. Four pack (80 cigarettes) a day habits are not uncommon, and habitual smokers have carboxyhemoglobin levels of from 4% to 20%, at the upper range, this would be a level that could be expected to have real health consequences and significant symptoms.

So, like almost all substances you expose your body to, Carbon Monoxide is a problem only at certain dosage levels. At the dosage levels found in Marijuana smoke it is no problem whatsoever.

The ONLY reliable methodology for proving harm to human subjects in the smoking of marijuana is a population outcome study such as that in the original posting on this thread. Better would be a lateral cohort study, of course, but that is unlikely to be approved in the current "Reefer Madness" political climate.

Verbatim, too - but only the part that interests you...and then don't attribute it, leaving a reader to think these are your own words.

www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/carbonmonoxide.html

Doesn't do much for your credibility, I have to say. And you've ignored everything else I cited.

Meanwhile, I agree that carbon monoxide harm varies according to dose...as is true with every toxin. However, if you look at the *actual gas analysis of mj smoke* that I posted, you'll see that even in this purloined post of yours, your estimates of CO load per dose are way low. Why am I not surprised?

Frankly, CO is one of the lesser problems of smoke inhalation at the levels typical for mj use. As I see it, the real problem is in the cyclic hydrocarbons and in the peroxides and superoxides, whose free radicals rip with frenzy into lung cell membranes and structural proteins. Every lungful of smoke contains uncounted billions of these radicals, which means with every lungful billions of repairs must be performed by the cells that touch the smoke. Sooner or later, a repair is not done properly by the enzymes the cell deploys to patch things up...if the damage affects a nucleic acid, then the real fun begins. Check out Nick Lane's acclaimed science book Oxygen for a sense of the damage caused by free radicals on living cells, and a hell of a lot of other insight into living processes, as well.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198607830/sr=8-1/qid=1148530143/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4247228-4282534?%5Fencoding=UTF8

And that MSDS is found in a number of places on the net, I got that from NIST. I don't assume that the contents of an MSDS ever need to be called out as a cite in an overview such as this one.

The Lyceum CO numbers are WAY HIGH for Cigarette smoke, too. Cigarette smoke and Tobacco smoke have approximately the same concentration of CO, around 2%. This makes me doubt the entire table on lyceum, a site not known for its accuracy or in-depth research.

cites;

http://www.maine.gov/dep/air/monitoring/carbonmonoxide.htm

http://faculty.washington.edu/djaffe/ce3.pdf

I re-iterate my last point.

There is no proof from careful studies of human exposure to heavy marijuana use that shows an increased risk of cancer!

So, you can say that the study I cited in the OP is a lie if you want, but I believe that it will stand scrutiny based on all of my prior reading on this matter.

Also, I have a very good friend who is a Phd. pharmacological researcher who is certain that it is harmless or nearly so based on all of the data she has reviewed. (And it was the subject of her dissertation.)

I think that's an importatnt thing to keep in mind when evaluating these data.

You bore out my predictions perfectly. I also said it would be a waste of time to discuss this with you because you have not arrived at your beliefs through neutral analysis of the evidence. You've selected a little bit here and there, where it fits what you want. You followed my prophecy so perfectly that I had to read your posts twice to make sure you weren't being ironic.

I'm seriously glad to read about the missing link between cancer and mj smoke in the O.P. But cancer is not the real problem with smoke inhalation. Degenerative lung tissue changes, immunosupression, atheriosclerosis, and free-radical damage are what concern me.

I did not say the the study in the O.P. was a lie - those are your words. I said the idea that chronic inhalation of smoke from burning plant matter carries no health risks is a fantasy.

Physically, I don't have a vested interest in the argument, because I don't smoke. However, as I said multiple times, I firmly support the choice of anyone to smoke who makes an informed decision. What I don't support is the suppression of harmful evidence, or the spreading of the pop-science myth that somehow breathing mj smoke regularly is magically harmless.

I cited all kinds of reliable information that would raise concerns in any neutral-minded observer, all of which you ignored, except for carbon monoxide. Even then, you rephrased my argument (which is that mj smoke contains a substantial amount of CO, and CO is a toxin) so that it sounded like I was arguing that one could die of CO poisoning from smoking mj. Duh, of course not. As for all the other nasty things in mj smoke - not a word. You did, however, attack the analysis because it had been reprinted on Lycaeum. However, downthread, another mj smoker cites Lycaeum as a good source in *support* of smoking. Guess I'm not smoking enough. :-)

The reprint on Lycaeum is an excerpt from a standard medical reference text, A Primer of Drug Action, 5th Edition, by Robert M. Julien (New York : W.H. Freeman, 1988). You didn't even read far enough on that one single post to see the attribution line. So the whole ad hominem attack against Lycaeum is irrelevant, too. Unless you care to attack the laboratory analysis presented in a standard text in its fifth edition. Heh.

My original point was that breathing burning plant smoke into one's lungs introduces a variety of toxic substances into the lungs and bloodstream, and that this cannot fail to be harmful in some ways. Any harm is dose-related, and may be small enough to be worth the effects of smoking. However, each person should decide this with good information, not just the information selected by other mj smokers to support their habit.

One more thing to consider. When you buy your stash, whose hands does that money end up in? In many cases, it ends up in the hands of some of Earth's most ruthless people. Even if you buy yours from the cool hippy down the street, vast numbers of people do not. Handing cash to bad people is not my idea of progressive behavior. That's one of the biggest reasons I support decriminalization. I hope we see some progress on that soon. Probably, though, it will take getting a Democratic Congress elected first, and cleaning the pretender out of the White House.

Peace.

I always wondered... now I know more. Thanks Ben.

This has been known for quite a while. Where have you been?

The brain has specific receptors for the "magical neurotransmitters" called canibinoid receptors.

From this article:
http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Drugs/THC/Health/mj.brain.html

On edit: I see that BenBurch said that lycaeum is not a reliable source. Oh well I've lost the urge to debate this further. Here's a grain of salt to have while you read these quotes.

"The primary question, though, was how do cannabinoids work on the brain? By 1986, scientists were already on the slippery slope that would lead to the discovery of the cannabinoid receptor. The triennial reports from the National Institute on Drug Abuse summarizing research on marijuana had begun to omit references to research on marijuana-related brain damage and instead focus on brain receptor research. A comprehensive article by Renee Wert and Michael Raoulin was published in the International Journal of the Addictions that year, detailing the flaws in all previous studies that claimed to show brain damage resulting from marijuana use. As Hollister independently concluded, "Brain damage has not been proved." The reason, obviously, is that the brain was prepared in some respects to process THC. "

"Marijuana is distinguished from most other illicit drugs by the locations of its brain-receptor sites for two predominant reasons: (1) The lack of receptors in the medulla significantly reduces the possibility of accidental, or even deliberate, death from THC, and (2) the lack of receptors in the mesocorticolimbic pathway significantly reduces the risks of addiction and serious physical dependence. As a therapeutic drug, these features are God's greatest gifts."

You can inhale the vapors of THC (with a vaporiozing device) without any carcinogens and of course when it is eaten there are no toxic effects whatsoever. Many study's of inhaled problems are always focused on the marijuana "cigarette" disregarding the filtration many people have with water bongs etc.

My eyes are very much open thank you.

Yes, I'm sure inhaling smoke isn't good for you.

But I haven't seen any studies about COPD and marijuana smoking. Have you?

They've been trying for years...

Try getting NIDA to fund a study looking at marijuana's benefits. Fat chance!

Whenever I see your name I think about blowing up the moon.

"Let's do this!"

I absolutely love the episode where they blow up the moon. Those guys were way ahead of their time. Love love love me some Bob and David! :hi:

From personal experience, I scored BETTER on ADHD tests AND I.Q. tests after getting baked.

And, as noted below, no unbiased (read: nongovernmental) study supports your assertion. Plus, there has been research that suggests some of the temporary forgetfulness is actually beneficial - thinking of it as defragging the mental hard drive.

non-ADHD. ADHD sufferers often contend that caffein relaxes them, and THC helps them "hyperfocus". It's just a difference in the wiring.

Nonetheless, there are still no reputable independent studies that back up the other poster's assertion.

When I drink coffee, I get sleepy. But after a couple bingers, I' m wide awake.

Brings a whole new meaning to Wake and Bake!

just kidding.

It's certainly not as harmful as many other drugs. In some cases, it serves a useful purpose.

As I say, everybody has to make that choice for themselves.

This has already been concluded. Now the government will issue another statement saying it's evil and harmful and this report goes down the memory hole and we start all over again.

:-)