It's no surprise to me. Their control group didn't INHALE! (:^*)
Posted on 05/24/2006 11:46:28 PM PDT by neverdem
The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A marijuana cigarette also deposits four times as much of that tar as an equivalent tobacco one. Scientists were therefore surprised to learn that a study of more than 2,000 people found no increase in the risk of developing lung cancer for marijuana smokers.
"We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use--more than 500 to 1,000 uses--would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana," explains physician Donald Tashkin of the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead researcher on the project. But looking at residents of Los Angeles County, the scientists found that even those who smoked more than 20,000 joints in their life did not have an increased risk of lung cancer.
The researchers interviewed 611 lung cancer patients and 1,040 healthy controls as well as 601 patients with cancer in the head or neck region under the age of 60 to create the statistical analysis. They found that 80 percent of those with lung cancer and 70 percent of those with other cancers had smoked tobacco while only roughly half of both groups had smoked marijuana. The more tobacco a person smoked, the greater the risk of developing cancer, as other studies have shown.
But after controlling for tobacco, alcohol and other drug use as well as matching patients and controls by age, gender and neighborhood, marijuana did not seem to have an effect, despite its unhealthy aspects. "Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there's less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled," Tashkin says. "And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers; they hold their breath about four times longer allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lungs."
The study does not reveal how marijuana avoids causing cancer. Tashkin speculates that perhaps the THC chemical in marijuana smoke prompts aging cells to die before becoming cancerous. Tashkin and his colleagues presented the findings yesterday at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.
"Dude!!! Giggle...What were we studying?"
As much as i like Hank Hill, I gotta hunch it's the propane fumes used as a dehumidifier/drying agent.
That's one major difference! Plus the advertising of propane, makes it sound like the second coming. If they're trying that hard to sell it (propane), there must be a reason!!!!
Today?
I'm pretty much pro pot, but I can't believe that putting that much tarry smoke into your lungs isn't harmful. Give me a break.
LOL! Malt Liquor!!!! When I was in the Navy, I spent a hot afternoon drinking Colt 45 on the base. They brought me back to my quarters in the bed of a pickup truck.
Yes...ban THAT, at least!
dont get logic get into the way of the good times
you know for the health benefits
It's no surprise to me. Their control group didn't INHALE! (:^*)
Who said it isn't harmful?
"Chain smoking, as with tobacco, would be quite impossible with pot. The smoker would be too zonked to continue."
Tried to do it as a teenager. Lasted five minutes.
I tried maijuana once but it made me too hungry. I smoked half a joint and ate the other half- Rodney Dangerfield
That's nice. I was sort of sold on the thing when my chain-smoking sister died horribly at the age of 52. I've seen more deaths than I have any to right to have seen, and nothing equaled that. Tobacco causes cancer, and it causes bad cancer.
Get over your hippy liberal 60's Krassner psycho conspiracy theories.
It's just not that simple. I'm sorry for your loss, but the connection you make doesn't stand up. It was my mother, the non-smoker who got cancer. My dad smoked for most of his life without cancer. My grandfather smoked all his 94 years, and parties at his house with all the other old Danes made it extremely smoky, but my grandmother put up with it and did not get cancer.
There's a lot of research out there showing a microbial link to cancer; that cancer needs some kind of other inflammation to be present for the cancer to get a foothold. Maybe tobacco lowers some barrier, or needs some genetic weakness, but the correlation between smoking and getting cancer is not that direct. It is possible that the need for nicotine might be a response to some underlying inflammation that is part of the road to cancer.
There are always exceptions, but the fact - and the evidence for this is so overwhelming it goes almost without saying - is that tobacco increases your risk for cancer enormously.
Maybe tobacco lowers some barrier, or needs some genetic weakness, but the correlation between smoking and getting cancer is not that direct.
I agree that other factors also affect risk, but nothing (with the possible exception of a history of asbestos inhalation) has a higher correlation than tobacco and cancer. Male smokers are fully 23 times more likely to get lung cancer than non smokers. Could you still smoke and not get sick? Could you not smoke and get sick? Sure. But if you smoke you shift the odds tremendously against you.
"I wonder if you give this report to a second hand smoke nazi would thier heads explode :-)"
I can think of a few here that we should ping...but I'm not in the mood to clean up the mess today, LOL! ;)
I don't know, I knew some guys in "high" school (pun intended) who smoked constantly. I think they got so used to it that it didn't even effect them anymore.
So? Having smoked at ANY time is enough to increase your risk. Your risks don't just go away because you quit, although obviously the more and the longer you smoke, the more the risk increases. If you go to any hospital and interview lung cancer cases, you'll find that an overwhelming, disproportionate majority of them were smokers. Now you can pretend that there's no causative evidence if it makes you feel better, but the jury came back on this decades ago. Smoking causes cancer.
Legalize pot and ban malt liquor = empty jails = not enough money for Prison Corporation of America. Wonder what money gets in what elected officials' pockets.
An interesting not. The town Barrow, Alaska banned liquor and the crime rate dropped 70%. Then some folk who wanted their wine with dinner got the law changed back. Perhaps their is a compromise, issue a drinking license like a driving license. If police arrest a drunk and disorderly, or a drunken domestic dispute, they confiscate the drinking license. Without it they would not be able to buy drink at a store or a bar. One week the first offense, one month the second, and a year for the third. This gets the drunks sober and allows the responsible to drink.
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