Feds' Top Pot Researcher Says Marijuana Should Be Legal

Los Angeles, CA: A University of California researcher who has performed US-government sponsored studies of marijuana and lung function for over 30 years says that pot should be legal.

In an interview with the McClatchy newspaper chain, Donald Tashkin of the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, said: "t this point, I'd be in favor of (marijuana) legalization. I wouldn't encourage anybody to smoke any substances. But I don't think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance. Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm (than marijuana)."

Tashkin said that when he began his work thirty years ago, he "opposed ... legalization because thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects." However, he now admits that his decades' worth of scientific research revealed an opposite conclusion.

In 2006, Tashkin led the largest population case-control study ever to assess the use of marijuana and lung cancer risk. The study, which included more than 2,200 subjects (1,212 cases and 1,040 controls), reported that marijuana smoking was not positively associated with cancers of the lung or upper aerodigestive tract – even among individuals who reported smoking more than 22,000 joints during their lifetime.

"What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect," Tashkin told the newspaper chain, noting that cannabinoids cause "cells die ... before they age enough to develop mutations that might lead to cancer."

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. For more information on marijuana smoke and cancer risk, please see: http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6891. A literature review of cannabinoids' anti-cancer properties is available at: http://www.norml.org//index.cfm?Group_ID=7008.

Here is the link to the full story:

&cate_rss=news_Health

:smoke:

The debate is over.. I'm so sick of waiting, just freaking legalize it already.

Thanks for the thread, Fly by night.

is worse than the initial substance. i bet tobacco in and of itself is not the problem causer. I could be wrong, but i tend to think that all that other crap is worse than anything else. But i am no expert. at the very least, marijuana isn't any worse than any other thing we have like alcohol or tobacco.

is also quite bad - it does contain the very poisonous substance, nicotine.

the real harm comes from the dioxins caused by the bleach used to make the brown wood fibers white, then there are the pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers made from petroleum products and other various vile things used in the industrical grow/processing of the tobacco and then you have the fillers.
This year we decided to try to grow our own organic tobacco..what is left over makes a good and pretty save insecticide for our organic garden.
I figure it like this, I need to stop smoking , the additives are also addictive, if we can switch to our own home grown. We eliminate the other chems, then maybe I can kick the habit. I have tried Chantix/wellbutrin and had some really bad side effects and man are they terrible. I will leave out the graphic descriptions but major Grand Mal seizures were almost the the easy part.

To address the other things we inhale. If you live in the city you have auto and truck exhausts, many cities have incinerators at hospitals or even garbage. I lived near one in fla..oh gawd the smell. Then you have the power plants that burn coal.
We lived 130 miles downwind from coal fired plants and I could smell the coal smoke and tobacco is mild compared, and on very hot days all that combines then ozone develops..you also have mercury, arsenic that are release from burning fossil fuels.
We are starting a little eco farm and trying to use less energy, a goal being nearly fossil fuel free in the next ten years. We have already cut our carbon foot print from 12 tons to 3.
I live in the country now and I can breath!

I used half dose/half the time chantix. It was rip-your face off hard after thirty five years of smoking with a few lame quit attempts.

After two full months of not inhaling a tube of burnt floor-sweepings-and-glue with some tobacco dust the devil monkeys release their grip.

It is only after that time I can exclaim, eighteen months later, that quitting was a piece of cake. It wasn't, but I can see that the fear of running out of cigs is in fact worse than running out. The craving passes after five minutes, the memory or fear of the craving compels the next pack purchase (or ashtray reduction/reroll if desperate).

Nice thoughts about organic tobacco but, after smoking some American Spirits (which are very good if memory serves nyuck nyuck)they are just more satan-cock suck sticks of death.

If I did it, anyone can do it. For decades I was not interested in testing how weak I am.

The important thing is the time--

as long as you don't get in trouble. Who knows what the laws are. But it's interesting that it is a good insecticide. I have no doubts the carcinigens and toxic crap we all inhale everyday just from the air. I live in the country, and we are downwind from a dairy farm which also liquifies the cow poop and spreads it over their fields. man does it stink!! but i grew up around farms, so.... Lord knows what else they spray on those fields.

Good luck with the endeavor. And I hope you can kick the habit. My husband took chantix and it worked for him. I was really worried about side effects, but luckily he didn't have any that I could see. he is off of it now and has been smoke free for like eight weeks now. keep up the fight. you'll beat it, i'm sure.

why is all the news that's fit to print..on foreign news sources? I ask?

There are a lot of things the corporate news don't want us to know. You should know that by now. This is just one of them.

It's completely indistinguishable at this point.

....that we see at the "liberal" websites are from foreign press & media? A perfect example it the polling on a single payer health insurance program. In polls a majority (I have seen from 60% to 73%) approve of a single payer system, and what do you read in the papers or see on TV? The ONLY one on TV I have seen actually supporting single payer is Ed Schultz, Maddow & Olberman are probably for it, but I haven't heard them stand up like Schultz has.

Only Schultz has single payer as an agenda. Yet, like you point out, 60% to 73% want single payer.

It is like when the MSM jump to get Richard (The Dick) Cheney and Newt Gingrich's opinions on every issue even though the GOP is way in the minority. The media has an agenda!

"DUH!!!"

My dad told me that in the 50's his doctor would have him inhale smoldering cannabis when he had an asthma attack. He said it worked really well.

Ahh, the good old days, before drug scheduling screwed everything up.

The good ole days, indeed.

:smoke:

tobacco works in the opposite fashion- as a vascular constrictor.

:sarcasm:

Maybe I should be high all the time.

Can you imagine going to parties? "I research marijuana."

"Dude..."

"Seriously. I research marijuana."

:kick:

...which I continued with for probably around five years, when I quit.

Reason: to quote from the OP - he "opposed ... legalization because thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects."

I had seen the Doctor on local teevee, and he was trumpeting his bias against the humble, yet powerfully good, herb.

I knew his study was biased. He had a predetermined result for his study. Pot was BAD!

Turns out I THOUGHT his study was biased, and I was wrong.

Or, perhaps more likely, somewhere in-between...?

Maybe after three decades of data collection, he could do nothing but admit the TRUTH!

...I would like to explain the extent of my experience.

Once you have "signed up" for the program, you fill out a form on paper, answering basic screening questions, such as, "how much pot would you say you smoke _daily _weekly _monthly" "do you smoke cigarettes _yes _no _daily how many?..." etc.

More such screening questions follow.

So you are put into a group, such as, for example:

(And this is a hypothetical situation)

Pot smoker: 3 times a week

Cigarettes: No, or maybe once a month.

Other Tobacco: Cigar, once a week.

Drink: _yes _no _socially

Location: Greater Los Angeles area smog basin.

or

Location: Big Bear, CA (in the mountains, generally away from the smog)

...and so on.

Then, periodically, you go in and blow into medical diagnostic measuring devices, they take sputum samples (spit), they take your basic blood pressure and so on.

In my case, in the Tashkin study, no actual "in laboratory smoking" of marijuana was done by me or anybody else I know who signed up for the study. So, therefore, if the subjects of the study were properly screened, honest in their responses to general questions about their basic habits, and data-mined by periodic testing/surveying, it would seem to provide a true record of the subjects' experience through thirty years' time, whether they suffered ill effects or not (or even positive effects, as Tashkin suggests).

On Edit: Subject

over amount smoked, strength (dosage), effects of other chemicals in marijuana (e.g., pesticides).
Nonetheless, this study was excellent, given the restrictions the government imposed.

In general, researchers are still troubled as to why no link with lung cancer. Either there's an effect that's difficult to find, or whatever causes lung cancer with tobacco isn't in marijuana. The latter has support from the fact that over the last 4-5 decades, the likelihood of lung cancer with smoking has been increasing - probably from the manipulations and additives the tobacco companies have done.

Better research is coming out of European countries where they can provide the marijuana.

... inhibits cancer formation.

The two links at the bottom of the OP (under Paul Armentano's name) are excellent reviews of the chemotherapeutic potential of cannabis.

I posted an OP on this subject last week. Here is the link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5831628

allow the kind of well-done research that needs to be done.

At this point I wouldn't recommend use of marijuana simply for "chemotherapeutic benefits". There is no consensus currently among researchers that these exist. We may get there eventually - but with cancer treatments, there are lots of treatments that have some theoretical basis and perhaps even seem promising in small, early clinical trials (where researchers are allowed to hand-pick who participates) but then in larger, randomized trials, no benefit is seen (which suggests the researchers may have hand-picked people who would have shown some improvement/increase in life without the experimental treatment).

Even if eventually the bulk of evidence (from WELL-DESIGNED studies) supports such benefits, such benefits may be lesser or greater depending on the variety of marijuana and how it's grown.
Additionally, pesticides & fertilizers are very often used to grow marijuana and they themselves can be carcinogens - thus "organically grown" marijuana should be the goal.

For those who currently use marijuana for medical purposes, how much of it is grown using organic practices? It's difficult to achieve this, given federal laws. Non-organic marijuana may help reduce nausea from chemo, or reduce chronic pain, but it's being achieved with the price of exposure to fertilizers & pesticides.

Marijuana available from a medical dispensary probably has a lower risk than that purchased on the street (but as with produce - know thy producer, & his/her practices!).

Dood!

365 days a year.
Assume person smokes 22,000 over 40 years. That's 1.5 per day.
More likely, it was over 30 year max.

Over the last 30 years. Maybe the last ten...

:smoke:

Things took a turn for the interesting when the mescaline finally kicked in on Saturday ;-)

:headbang:

Thank you for posting this, Bernie. We can add this in with Wendy Chapkis & Richard Webb, authors of Dying to Get High: Marijauna as Medicine




One day soon we'll have some sane drug laws in this Country. Marijuana is the number one cash crop in Tennessee. Why does our state government allow this product to go untaxed year after year?

Have you ever checked out this site?: http://www.scientificfactsofpot.com/studies.htm There's some very interesting reading there....


Hope all is well with you, my friend....


Peace,

Ghost

I was honored to be asked by that peer-reviewed professional journal to write a review of Wendy's book, which I was very happy to do. It is an excellent book. Anyone here who is interested in the extraordinary lengths that sick folks have had to go to to access cannabis -- and the inhumane lengths to which the DEA has gone to stop them -- should read the book.

BTW, when the editors of Contemporary Sociology asked me for my professional affiliation to list with my review, I was stumped. After all, almost all of their reviewers are academics whose professional affiliation is the university where they teach of the research institute where they work.

But then it dawned on me. My review will be published with the following "professional affiliation":

Bernard H. Ellis, Jr., MA, MPH
Federal Bureau of Prisons number 16502-075

If anyone here would like to read my Contemporary Sociology review before it is published, PM me with your outside email address and I'll send it to ya'.

If we never stop fighting, we cannot lose.
We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Things are looking up on the decriminalization front, too...



Draconian drug laws have run their course, especially in the case of marijuana. Millions of lives, families & jobs destroyed over an arrest for possession of a green plant. It's time to stop the insanity.


Peace,

Ghost

I sure wish that I was...

I am stuck in Qatar for a week without my goodies....

job applications are a bitch.

But I found a job last week and tomorrow I score a gram. And tomorrow night I will party like it's 1999

on weed, but I do not have any objection to the pot screening that is done for jobs. The main reason being that if you cannot stop smoking weed for a month or so to prepare for a drug test, then you can indeed lack the kind of self control that an employer would want. If they do have the self control to do what is necessary to pass the test, then the potential employee probably will be less likely to have their performance inhibited by smoking too much weed.

I have smoked a ton of weed, by the way - but when necessary and $$ was at stake, I always reined it in. You saying that you cannot do the same? Hell, if I had an employee pass the test, then they can be seen smoking in front of me afterwards during their time off and I would not mind. Just show me a modicum of self control and you are good to go - if you cannot even stop smoking for a short time to pass a silly drug test, then you do have a problem! Pretty simple logic really.

They made the rules, and you buy 'em, a done deal. What if you had to show "self-control" by not having sex for the month before the interview? Or by going to church every Sunday?

What, you can't show a 'modicum of self-control' by keeping your hands off of your lover for a month, as the State demands? Next applicant, please...

You really do live in a fascist country, my friend, when you don't even REMEMBER what freedom is!

I suppose it depends on the job.

WTF does it matter that he smokes grass?

Half the fuckers in the financial sector (yes..stat pulled out of my ass) have a 3 martini lunch.

The number is probably closer to 0.5% rather than 50%. Your number is based on a false stereotype. I never knew one person to have a drink on the job unless you want to count the beer cart that came around at 5pm on Fridays. Lunch usually entails running downstairs grabbing something at the incredibly overpriced deli ($16 for lunch?) and running back up to eat at your desk so you do not miss anything.

If someone works for me and does their job properly, then I don't care and it's none of my business, frankly, what they do on their break. If they are a screw-up, then the reason for that doesn't matter. They might get one or two warnings, and if they don't shape up then they're gone.

I don't want one screw-up. It is bad enough that someone incorrectly thought something was good to buy but went down in value - it is worse when someone wants to buy and accidentally presses the sell button - that is a fireable offense.

Actually, I do agree with a lot of what you just said, but we are talking about the hiring process where you do not know how someone will perform. If someone cannot get it together for a stupid drug test, then I think it is statistically significant that such people will be more likely to make a few screw ups at work.

So, to get hired, you just have to "fake good" for a month. After you're hired you can smoke 'em if ya got 'em, as long as you don't get caught. Seems a little hypocritical. Or, if you're subject to random tests, then it isn't really "only a month" of self-control but a career-long invasion of your privacy. If the job involves operating heavy machinery, then by all means test peoples' reflexes, NOT what's floating around in their bloodstream. Any number of non-drug reasons can make you unsafe, such as the "uniquely American" experience of working three jobs, so you're so tired you can't remember your name. Do they REALLY care about safety, or about keeping people in line?

Before I read Dr. Andrew Weil's "The Natural Mind," I thought that cannabis was just another form of "herbal booze," & was probably worse. He opened my eyes to the fact that people CAN'T tell if you've been smoking, if you're an experienced user. It's only paranoia that has a smoker thinking otherwise, but once that veil is lifted... In my case, and in folks I know who smoke, we can smoke a phat one, use a little Visine, and I assure you, no one can tell. Weil explodes the myth of the stoner-as-fuckup, referring to cannabis as an "active placebo," meaning, I guess, that it causes psychophysiological changes that give you "permission" to "be high," like a post-hypnotic suggestion. In other words the DRUG doesn't get you high, YOU do! He insists that you can learn to access those other states without drugs, and that the high is more sublime. Since it is more natural & doesn't involve your body trying to chop up molecules that aren't supposed to be there, there is less "noise" in the nervous system.

I don't know... I've been meditating semi-religiously for years, but nothing compares with the experience of primo bud. If anyone can teach me to access these states w.o. drugs, I'm all ears.

Do yourself a favour & read the book "Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts," just as a start.

And tokers, if your company OWNS you, then switch to drugs which are undetectable once metabolized, like hooch or ACID! :sarcasm:


Above all,

Peace Be With You.

I am really not emotional about it, but I guess I am just a pain in the ass that hates not getting the last word. haha

Sure..after you are hired, smoke 'em if you got 'em. I would not approve of ongoing tests during employment. I do not have any moral problem at all with people who smoke pot and I think it should be legalized 1000% - it would reduce the profit motive for criminal trafficking and the bloated prison population, but the main reason would be because it is not bad for people overall and can, in many cases, be very beneficial. If I were a hiring manager, I would not want to hire someone that I do not know who needs to smoke all the time though - and I would not want to hire an alcoholic - but someone who does either socially and in a very controlled way is totally fine with me. If I know the person I am hiring, I probably would not care what their drug tests said. They have already been vouched for in that case.

Any intoxicants during work hours should always be totally prohibited. Someone who cannot quit for a couple weeks probably has questionable control is all I was saying. If all testing were outlawed for employment purposes I would not care that much - I am not too emotional about it as I said. There is sound reasoning in your suggestion of testing reflexes instead of for drugs. Come up with the proper test and I am probably fine with it.

When I had drug tests for my first job after grad school, I just quit cold turkey for a short time and it was no big deal at all. Once I started working, I pretty much quit altogether because work was too intense for the party boy lifestyle I had enjoyed allllll throughout grad school. Suddenly I had to be at work at 630am instead of sleeping until noon 350 days per year! haha...things changed real quick - no more drugs, rarely drink more than 2 drinks in any evening, and got a long term girlfriend. There is no way I could sustain any partying and do a good job at work - I did see some people who would rip until 3 or 4am Thursday Night/Friday Morning and be on the desk at 630am - they're fucking crazy! I did that a couple times and it was pure hell. Never again!

Now I really have almost zero interest in doing any drugs (almost zero - if I hit Burning Man again, I might reconsider). Kind of a "Been there, done that" thing for me. I liked drugs a lot when I first tried them for the element of surprise. Like when I did acid - you hear about it, but you do not expect THAT when it happens! I had positive experiences there and with shrooms, mesc (funniest was in college when my crazy friend was looking in the phone book and found a juggler that came and entertained us at the peak of our trip at 330 am. I have never laughed so hard in my life!), but once the element of surprise was gone, it was less interesting. Same with E - that was the hands down best and a very valuable experience to say the least...but you can never replicate your first time and the utility of the drug dwindles each time it is done and it wears out its welcome. Pot was nice too, but it just doesn't do much for me anymore - the element of surprise simply does not exist like it once did, though I definitely feel high - it is just not interesting anymore. Cocaine is a waste of time - no interesting introspective moments that I can take away from it at all - very very superficial drug. K - VERY VERY interesting, but only really "works" a couple times. Incredible introspective moments there. I am, however, addicted to my own adrenaline and do enjoy the rush of risks and exciting situations. Hence tripping around Cerro Torre in South America does far more for me than any drug can do at this point.

It's not about self-control either. It's about privacy.

Tuff shit for them. I make a great employee. They lose! :smoke:

much requires it - and a lot of people smoke it. They jumo through the hoops and pass the test. No big deal.

testing represents? Whether or not some one can stop toking for a couple weeks or mask the tests is not really the issue in employment screenings, it is the screenings themselves.

She has been fighting cancer for five years. Two months ago, she gave up the fight. Having been given a prognosis of 1-2 weeks, she told everyone "goodbye," and got herself on hospice care.

Lo and behold, she's feeling better now, able to hike and put in a garden for the summer. She credits her well-being to medical marijuana, which has controlled her nausea and enabled her to gain ten pounds.

Sure, she'll still die-- she still has cancer-- but she's living longer and feeling better than anyone would have expected. That's a win in my book.

at age 65. She refused hospice' offer of medimar. This anti-law, anti-authority, pro freedom republican woman refused even over multiple requests to at least give it a shot, because she was still living in the Reefer-Madness fifties, and hating the pot smoking hippies of the sixties. Pot smoking is bad, let me just die, she seemed to say. Sad. It could have made a difference if we were only allowed to hear the truth and make an informed choice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjhT9282-Tw&feature=PlayList&p=BC82DDF8BA3E00D4&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=52

I really think there is truth in it..

Bless her!!

:hi:

:thumbsup:

That's a paraphrasing of what that doctor said.

One would think that aspect would be more fully investigated by the government and its medical researchers. If this is true, it's huge.

And Mary Jane is not, that is why alcohol is legal.

This debate is so tiresome because there is nothing to debate anymore.

Fucking legalize it, already.

and I would unanimously come to the same conclusion!

As soon as there is a chart showing how pot commercialization and its profits outgrow the current profits they get from the private prison/war on drugs complex, then I guarantee you that pot will be as common place as fast food. Heck, I betcha some luminary will figure how to combine the supply of pot and munchies at a large scale.

This has not been a country of the people, by the people, for the people for a while now. Basically this is a country for the corporations, paid for by the people. Plot the number of legislations passed in the pass couple of decades which had corporations as main beneficiaries in detriment of the common good, vs. legislations that put the good of the people before any corporate interests.... and weep.

as well as many other law enforcement agencies. Lots of $$$ in a drug bust, even with weed. Confiscate assets with no one on the outside really knowing where the money goes.

Has a pretty good issue (July/Augest) on bullshit marijuana laws and the bullshit 'war on drugs' in general.


On the cover of the magazine it says;


Totally Wasted

We've blown $300 billion.
Death squads roam Mexico
Cartels operate in 259 US cities
This is your war on Drugs

Any Questions?"

R&R for the post.

Just sayin'. ;)

...sky still blue, Pope still wearing a silly hat.

The sensibel approach to pot has been obvious for years: Legalise and regulate it like any other adult pleasure. Experts have been saying it for years but the state just keeps on sticking it's fingers in it's ears.

And I don't even smoke pot.

or any other substance that can cause impairment. If you fall under DOT rules or are safety sensitive in some way at work, a condition of being hired or saying hired will be substance abuse testing. That's never going away for such folks. Alcohol leaves the system and one can test clean and sober the day of the test even after a night of party. With bud, on the other hand you basically cannot work in any industry where there exists random testing because it stays in your system so long. Unfair but true. Nonetheless it should be legalized and taxed.

president. What would really be interesting is to know who in the administration smokes pot. We all know it is done. Don't ask, don't bogart. Hypocrites all!

:shrug:

"secret plan" guy beat McGovern 49 states to 1, and got the troops out faster than McGovern, who they made fun of because of his time frame, promised to. Nixon was also the most fervent, anti-communist idiot at the time, yet responsible, good or bad, for opening relations with China? I think it was Eugene McCarthy who said something like we should vote for the one who has the power to change things rather than the one who says he wants to make the change.

And in the case of legal pot, President Obama isn't even someone who has supported the minimal change of decriminalization, lame as that is. In spite of the fact that he smoked it as a youth, and KNOWS that its effects are a non-issue, his advisors, like Assholerod, only look to see if it will get votes, or not, and base their decision on that. It's all about re-election, even if they have to support the failed, Elliot Ness tactics of the prohibition era. Do you not see the folly of Obama's commitment to the drug war in Mexico. The profit guarantees the drug trade, and the violence in America's cities that are preventable.

Just look at the health care issue today. Obama is not going to get REAL health care reform, but if you could convince the Republicans that it would be to their benefit, like China or Vietnam, it would happen tomorrow. The Democrats are pussies, fearing their own shadows.

Think of it as an ill-advised Obama re-election, inauguration plan: No balls, no balls!

It's like they are doing a preemptive drug thing to prevent possible election time attacks by the GOP, or something.

what they mean by "legal". Amphetamines are legal to possess, sell or use if you have a prescription or DEA license for them, but not if you don't. Alcohol is legal to possess and use if you're over 21, but not if you're underage. Oregano is legal for anyone...any 12 year old can go into a grocery store and buy it.

It's hard to make policy judgments about proposals like this unless you know exactly what level of "legality" is being proposed.

with a request to forward it as well.
This study should be sent out because you know dang well msn media wont do the job.

pot? Or that any of his top advisors smoke pot, or know people who smoke pot? Or Michelle's friends or business buddies? Advisors' kids, perhaps?

Pot smoking is so wide-spread that to deny knowledge of pot smoking by acquaintances or friends or their kids is to admit lying. Let's have an amnesty day where anyone who smokes pot can admit it, without any retribution. Only, first, there better be universal health care for the numerous people who will be shocked and have heart attacks by learning who and how many Americans smoke pot!

just kidding... I'm waiting for my salad right now.