NO link between pot smoking and lung cancer

[paularoid]

Hhhhmmmmmm,...... mebbe I shouldn't 've quit so long ago. :p

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/26/MNGAKJ2S481.DTL&type=printable

Researchers surprised to find no link between marijuana, lung cancer
Study's findings apply even to heavy pot smokers

Marc Kaufman, Washington Post

Friday, May 26, 2006

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Dr. Donald Tashkin, a UCLA pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used Tashkin's previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous. Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than previously thought.

Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.

Tashkin's study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex and neighborhood.

They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lit up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.

"This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use," he said. "Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have real meaning."

Tashkin's group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had hypothesized that marijuana would raise the risk of cancer on the basis of earlier small human studies, lab studies of animals and the fact that marijuana users inhale more deeply and generally hold smoke in their lungs longer than tobacco smokers -- exposing them to the dangerous chemicals for a longer time. In addition, Tashkin said, previous studies found that marijuana tar has 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked to cancer than tobacco cigarette tar.

While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older than that were generally not exposed to marijuana use in their youth, when it is most frequently tried.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/26/MNGAKJ2S481.DTL

[Dee]

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k267/deemark/Retro%20Room/heyatleastitsnotcrack.jpg

[paularoid]

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/48322/


Ever since California and other states began passing medical marijuana laws in 1996, the federal government has claimed that -- as a 2003 White House press release put it -- "research has not demonstrated that smoked marijuana is safe and effective medicine." A new study, just published in the journal Neurology, definitively refutes that claim and underlines the urgent need for the federal government to change its prohibitionist policies.

Clearly, the White House and its drug czar, John Walters, should abandon their rigid, unscientific rejection of medical marijuana and start reshaping federal policy to match medical reality.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely; what's more likely is that the Bush administration will ignore the scientific data during its last two years in power, just as it has for the past six years.

The guiding principle must be to handle medical marijuana as science, common sense, and simple human decency dictate. Recent research leaves no doubt that our government's war on the sick and dying must end immediately.

[Dee]

HIV-associated sensory neuropathy is a nerve pain that affects about one-third of those infected with HIV. It usually occurs in the feet, and can include tingling, numbness, the sensation of pins and needles, burning, or sharp, intense pain. When severe, the pain may make it difficult to stand or walk.

Currently, people with HIV and chronic nerve pain commonly take anticonvulsant drugs to ease pain, but some don't respond to the medication or cannot tolerate it, leading to an interest in alternatives.

"The results of this first study indicate that cannabis may indeed be useful in the amelioration of a very distressing, disabling, and difficult to treat complication of HIV," said Dr. Igor Grant, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

However, David Murray, the chief scientist at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the study was "not terribly convincing," because of methodological problems, such as the small sample size.

"People who smoke marijuana are subject to bacterial infections in the lungs," said Murray. "Is this really what a physician who is treating someone with a compromised immune system wants to prescribe?"

Dr. Mark Ware, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal who is conducting similar experiments, defended the statistical reliability of Abrams's study.

Abrams's study is one of the first recent clinical trials of medical marijuana to be done in the U.S., where use of the drug is debated fiercely.

Canadians have been able to apply for a licence to grow and smoke medicinal marijuana since 2001.

source: Marijuana helps ease HIV nerve pain (http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2007/02/12/marijuana-nerve-pain.html?)

[Eva]

In some cases (not on a very wide scale though) marihuana is prescribed in the Netherlands to people who are in a lot of pain. Not neccesarily to smoke it though.

Eva

[Mimi]

A cousin of mine got marihuana while she was on chemptherapy and told me it was very useful to ease the pain.

Mimi

[Eva]

And marihuana doesn't make people grumpy like morfine. Although it can make people depressed, I believe.

Eva

[sky]

I always thought it was "how" it smoked that affected how much it harmed your lungs. I was told somewhere, sometime, by someone, but I can't rememeber now who that person was, that when you smoke pot the smoke you inhale was hotter than cigerettes-- but if it was smoked through like say a water bong or something like that-that it wasn't as bad for your lungs because the smoke would be cooled. But that could have very well been total crap!
Sky

[Darlene]

posted by Dee:
HIV-associated sensory neuropathy is a nerve pain that affects about one-third of those infected with HIV. It usually occurs in the feet, and can include tingling, numbness, the sensation of pins and needles, burning, or sharp, intense pain. When severe, the pain may make it difficult to stand or walk.

Currently, people with HIV and chronic nerve pain commonly take anticonvulsant drugs to ease pain, but some don't respond to the medication or cannot tolerate it, leading to an interest in alternatives.

"The results of this first study indicate that cannabis may indeed be useful in the amelioration of a very distressing, disabling, and difficult to treat complication of HIV," said Dr. Igor Grant, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.


I have diabities associated sensory neurpathy in my hands but mostly in my feet. It really hurts and sometimes I fall! I am on several anticonvulsant drugs that help some. Marijuana? Hummm I wonder if that will help my neuropathy? Maybe I should give that a try. Or not! He He

[DaveM]

Increasingly, it seems to me that what may be an extremely useful medicine has been buried under nearly a century of government propaganda. We all know how wonderful governments are about admitting when they are wrong....

And yet, after a century in which marijuana did not drive people insane, cause them to kill their parents, alter their genes, give them cancer, lead them to "harder stuff", condemn them to a life of juvenile deliquency, or turn them into communists, our government stays the course. Silly. Silly. Silly.

[Dee]

I've also known people with HIV who have used it to quell nausea (caused by their medications) and increase appetite.

[Eva]

I was told somewhere, sometime, by someone, but I can't rememeber now who that person was
Sky honey, what were you smoking when this person was telling you this!? :eek: ;)

Eva

[Rkitko]

Increasingly, it seems to me that what may be an extremely useful medicine has been buried under nearly a century of government propaganda. We all know how wonderful governments are about admitting when they are wrong....
Not to mention the associated "hemp" issues. Growing hemp in the US is prohibited by law simply because it is the same species as marijuana, even though the industrial forms of hemp in cultivation don't contain sufficient amounts of THC. Allowing it to be grown legally could certainly alleviate a lot of problems since it's a strong fiber. When I buy paper for my printer, I try to find 90% hemp 10% post consumer recycled paper. Great stuff.

[paularoid]

And think of all the oil that could be extracted from it to make biodiesel.

[Dee]

I have diabities associated sensory neurpathy in my hands but mostly in my feet. It really hurts and sometimes I fall! I am on several anticonvulsant drugs that help some. Marijuana? Hummm I wonder if that will help my neuropathy? Maybe I should give that a try. Or not! He He

From what I've heard about it Darlene, marijuana is supposed to alleviate neuropathy symptoms regardless of the cause. Would it shock you to know I never smoked it for medicinal purposes? :p Truth be told, I haven’t smoked it very often in my 47 years either.

[ponytail]

Truth be told, I haven’t smoked it very often in my 47 years either.

You're 47? :eek: I thought you were thirtysomething. Is there a portrait of you aging in a closet somewhere?

Quite some time ago, I found a recipe for a mix of legal herbs that, if you smoke it, pretty much has exactly the effects of marijuana. I can't vouch for medicinal effects, though. It's a harsh smoke, so you need to smoke it through a water pipe. The mixture is called "Yuba Gold" (the book didn't explain the significance of the name, if any). I have tried it -- it is very much like marijuana.

The recipe is:

4 parts damiana leaf
4 parts scullcap
1/2 part lobelia herb
4 parts passionflower herb
1 part spearmint leaf

Beware of the lobelia. Use only a pinch of it -- its folk name is "Gag Root," and using it in anything but a very small quantity can make you nauseous or worse.

[sky]

Exactly Dee,

I was a teen when someone told me that--it was probabaly about 24 years ago.
Sky

[Bat]

You're 47? I thought you were thirtysomething. Is there a portrait of you aging in a closet somewhere?


Hee hee..yes, Jack--Dee Gray lives.

[DaveM]

Shhhh....the portrait has not yet come out of the closet....

I know of a couple of people who got a great deal of benefit from marijuana while having chemotherapy. Minnesota doesn't permit medicinal marijuana, but that was no real problem....they just asked around a bit....

[pulmike]

Well pt, 'till somebody's brother gets an NSF grant and tests that herb mix for unwelcome side effects, I guess I'll stick with ye olde time-tested ,hiippy-approved "GVM". as they sometimes call it in my business.