Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/142271


Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
By Fred Gardner, O'Shaughnessy's . Posted August 28, 2009.

New research shows here seems to be something in pot that actually undermines cancer, instead of causing it. -- and the media are doing their best to ignore it.


Editor's Note: There is a groundswell of attention in the news to marijuana's role in causing and preventing various types of cancers. Last week, AlterNet published an article from the Marijuana Policy Project about a new study finding that pot smokers have a lower risk of head and neck cancers than people who don’t smoke pot. Earlier this year, the corporate media pounced on a study suggesting that men who had been using marijuana at least once per week and who had started smoking pot prior to age 18 had an elevated risk of testicular cancer known as nonseminoma, which makes up fewer than half of one percent of all cancer cases among men.

Head, neck and testicular cancers are of course quite serious ailments to deal with, but what about cancer of the most obvious organ at risk with pot smoking, the lungs? Where's the science on that? The article below by Fred Gardner, editor of the medical marijuana research quarterly journal O'Shaughnessy's, shares the results of a major medical study the media completely ignored, and his conclusions are quite blunt on the matter: Smoking pot doesn't cause lung cancer. In fact, the study found that cigarette smokers who also smoked marijuana were at a lower risk of contracting lung cancer than tobacco-only smokers.

***

Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer

by Fred Gardner

One in three Americans will be afflicted with cancer, we are told by the government (as if it’s our immutable fate and somehow acceptable). Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. and lung cancer the leading killer among cancers.

You’d think it would have been very big news in June 2005 when UCLA medical school professor Donald Tashkin reported that components of marijuana smoke -- although they damage cells in respiratory tissue -- somehow prevent them from becoming malignant. In other words, something in marijuana exerts an anti-cancer effect!

Tashkin has special credibility. He was the lead investigator on studies dating back to the 1970s that identified the components in marijuana smoke that are toxic. It was Tashkin et al. who published photomicrographs showing that marijuana smoke damages cells lining the upper airways. It was the Tashkin lab’s finding that benzpyrene -- a component of tobacco smoke that plays a role in most lung cancers -- is especially prevalent in marijuana smoke. It was Tashkin’s data showing that marijuana smokers are more likely than non-smokers to cough, wheeze, and produce sputum.

Tashkin reviewed his findings in April 2008, at a conference organized by “Patients Out of Time,” a reform group devoted to educating doctors and the public (as opposed to lobbying politicians). Some 30 MDs and nurses got continuing medical education credits for attending the event, which was held at Asilomar, on the Monterey Peninsula.

,,more..

:smoke:

but....

lol

phewy to it all.... do it or dont

Watch "Run from the Cure: The Rick Simpson Story"

:hi:

My former down stairs neighbor, who abhorred tobacco, but was an MJ afficionado used to hack her lungs out every day. I heard her through the floor all the time. She was otherwise a healthy twenty year old. Now I'm not against MJ use but against using it through smoking. There are misters now that don't blow smoke into your lungs that has to be bad for you if you use it regularly.

"I discovered that marijuana relieves (and even prevents) asthma quite by accident."
more at link...

link

I think it was the delivery of the herb with smoke myself. I'm not challenging you. I want to know what you think.

You're possibly right there about the delivery method. I think inhaling the oils from a nebulizer would be much better. But that would require a way to separate the oils from the plant which is explained how to do in the video "Run from the Cure: The Rick Simpson Story".
Coughing is a common thing when smoking MJ. Coughing is the way the body clears stale air from the lungs when you have emphysema.
Research of MJ is needed to further discover all the benefits.

Smoking tobacco results in airways being constricted. However, smoking marijuana cause airways and blood vessels to dilate. This why the bloodshot eyes, because, the blood vessels are all dilated.

There are other benefits such as improved peristalses and other body functions.

It seems like a pipe or bong would be better than rolling a joint because of the paper. :shrug: Then again, I'm not a fan of smoking anything because it makes my chest hurt. I'll stick with abusing my liver instead.

Anyone smoking the mass equivalent of a pack a day of pot for extended periods would probably have similar effects to tobacco.

(Of course, they'd probably have a rather more interesting time of it.)

The nurse listened to my lungs and said boy they sound great.... My doctor says the same thing... I have never smoked cigarettes and have never had any issues breathing. I know that I am just one man ..but if I had smoked cigarettes for 30 years, I don't think that my doctor would be saying the same thing.

Just my 2 cents..

pppfffftttt...


:hippie:

He hates to say it...but he does.

good news eh?

:hippie: