Posted on 01/27/2008 5:32:48 AM PST by saganite
A new study finds that the development of bullous lung disease occurs in marijuana smokers approximately 20 years earlier than tobacco smokers.
A condition often caused by exposure to toxic chemicals or long-term exposure to tobacco smoke, bullous lung disease (also known as bullae) is a condition where air trapped in the lungs causes obstruction to breathing and eventual destruction of the lungs.
At present, about 10% of young adults and 1% of the adult population smoke marijuana regularly. Researchers find that the mean age of marijuana-smoking patients with lung problems was 41, as opposed to the average age of 65 years for tobacco-smoking patients.
The study "Bullous Lung Disease due to Marijuana" also finds that the bullous lung disease can easily go undetected as patients suffering from the disease may show normal chest X-rays and lung functions. High-resolution CT scans revealed severe asymmetrical, variably sized bullae in the patients studied. However, chest X-rays and lung functions were normal in half of them.
Lead author Dr. Matthew Naughton says, "What is outstanding about this study is the relatively young ages of the lung disease patients, as well as the lack of abnormality on chest X-rays and lung functions in nearly half of the patients we tested."
He added, "Marijuana is inhaled as extremely hot fumes to the peak inspiration and held for as long as possible before slow exhalation. This predisposes to greater damage to the lungs and makes marijuana smokers are more prone to bullous disease as compared to cigarette smokers."
Patients who smoke marijuana inhale more and hold their breath four times longer than cigarette smokers. It is the breathing manoeuvres of marijuana smokers that serve to increase the concentration and pulmonary deposition of inhaled particulate matter – resulting in greater and more rapid lung destruction.
This paper is published in the January 2008 issue of Respirology.
You also know very few pot smokers that smoke 20 joints a day for 30 years. And you know no pot smokers that climb walls, yell at their kids, and kick their dog when abstaining.
Earl Grey goes for about a dollar an ounce. Legalized California pot goes for about $300 an ounce.
Now I get it. This must be Charlie Rangle and Susan Esterich’s problem.
No stats. No case. No risk.
Can you even produce a DEA policy for the alleged "prerogative"?
If there were a prize for most poorly reasoned post of the week or month, this would be a hard one to beat. If you try really hard, can you see any flaws in your reasoning?
Turn gypsies loose on 'em while you're at it.
Encourage people by saying, "Don't do drugs"?
Or encourage people like "If you test positive for marijuana you will not be eligible for federal student loans? If you test positive for marijuana you will not be eligibe for welfare, food stamps, public housing, WIC, unemployment benefits, or any other federal or state program? If you test positive for marijuana, and you do not have health insurance, you will not be treated at any medical facility that accepts federal dollars?
Well, now we're getting somewhere! Now it's affecting my wallet less. Think that'll happen?
Liberation through drugs. Thank you, Aldous Huxley.
It's about $300. an ounce in Amsterdam, too. Perfectly legal.
Legal medical marijuana in Canada, supplied by the Canadian government (can't get more legal than that!), is about $150 an ounce for ditchweed -- the same price as some llegal crap from Mexico.
The point being that I'm not convinced that legal marijuana will be cheap. Other than the users, who wants cheap marijuana? Parents? Employers? Law enforcement? Teachers?
” this stinks of bogus”
I had nothing to do with this study, and I do not stink!
Are you willing to do the exact same thing, but testing for nicotine? The amount of federal tax dollars spent treating pot-caused medical problems is completely dwarfed by the amount spend treating tobacco-caused medical problems.
Or whatever personal vice the government decides to outlaw next? The only reason pot is illegal is that the government decided to outlaw it. It's just a freakin' plant. They can outlaw ANYTHING. Don't encourage the bastards.
Help get the Nanny State off our backs. You propose making the problem worse, not better.
The old entitlement demand.
For those who insist on consuming marijuana, there is some good news:
a) most marijuana consumers smoke less than comparable tobacco smokers, so despite holding longer the overall damage is often less
b) bongs, water pipes and other smoking methods that cool and filter the smoke should mitigate this issue
c) at least smoking marijuana doesn’t cause lung cancer
d) you can always switch to eating it rather than smoking it
BTW, the linked article is about a 42 year old cigarette smoker who had the disease.
A bit more about bullous lung disease from:
http://www.ctsnet.org/sections/clinicalresources/clinicalcases/article-1.html
-—begin excerpt-—
Bullous lung disease is an uncommon cause of respiratory distress [1]. In patients with severe emphysema, discrete emphysematous bullae have been shown to functionally impair pulmonary mechanics and result in diminished exercise capacity and even acute respiratory distress [1-4]. Most patients with bullae have a significant cigarette smoking history, although cocaine smoking, pulmonary sarcoidosis, 1-antitrypsin deficiency, 1-antichymotrypsin deficiency, Marfan’s syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and inhaled fiberglass exposure have been shown to be associated with emphysematous lung bullae [1-8].
Bullae which enlarge enough to compress adjacent lung tissue are best diagnosed by CT. A “double-wall sign” on chest CT, demonstrating air on both sides of the bulla wall, signifies an associated pneumothorax with the bulla [6]. In addition to chest CT, these patients should undergo ABGs and PFTs, The decision to operate is often a challenging one. Patients should undergo surgical resection when they have incapacitating dyspnea with large bullae that fill more than 30% of the hemithorax and result in the compression of healthy adjacent lung tissue [1]. In addition, operation is indicated for patients who have complications related to bullous disease such as infection or pneumothorax [1,4].
There are two surgical approaches for resecting giant lung bullae. Stapling resection of the entire bulla, either through a VATS or open approach, is the most common technique [1,4]. Pericardial strips can be used along the staple line to assist in control of air leaks since the surrounding lung tissue is often diseased. Another operative approach is the modified Monaldi technique, which involves opening the bulla, placing a purse-string suture at the neck of the bulla and closing the overlying bulluous sac with a running back-and-forth plicating stitch [8]. Both techniques have been shown to be effective. Smoking cessation and aggressive pulmonary rehabilitation are also important for successful treatment of patients with bullous lung disease.
-—end excerpt-—
This has been a public service announcement.
The governor and the state legislature instead diverted those monies to social programs like Medicaid that pays for the costs of illegal immigrants who are sick and the public school systems (30% estimated children of illegals statewide) to help balance the budget. They have set up an automated voice-recorded $2.2 million anti-smoking 'hot-line' that costs $330K a year to actually operate, and approx. $3 million in literature for anti-smoking campaigns since the settlement. I believe from the last number I saw last year the total payout to NC has been close to $700 million so far.
This is what has happened to the settlement money, not to mention the state increasing the taxes on tobacco, more acres of tobacco being raised in NC ever than before for export by large corporate farms despite the small farmer 'buyout'. Many small tobacco farmers are still waiting for their money 3 years after filing their paperwork.
OK, the southern border still has approximately 1000 miles left of unsecured areas where SUV"s filled with hundreds of pounds of drugs simply drive across at night on a weekly basis.Senator Hutchison single-handedly strip fence building funding from a very recent bill right before the vote in the Senate.
The NC state government is now pushing for toll roads in the state where the roads were already built with taxpayer money because governor Easley has raided hundreds of millions from the DOT building fund to pay for the social programs. This is entirely and explicitly illegal from the statutes in NC's charter and lawsuits filed against this have been tossed by the Dem judges 3 time up to now and is in court again for the fourth time. It can only be done with prior legislature approval from both houses.
FYI:
Up in Smoke
How greed, hubris and high-stakes lobbying laid waste to the $246 billion tobacco settlement
By Mark Curriden
The goal was “to bring this industry to its knees.”
That’s what Texas Attorney General Dan Morales said on March 28, 1996, as he announced filing the first-ever federal civil racketeering lawsuit against the major tobacco companies.
"The purpose of this lawsuit is to change how this industry does business,” said Morales, who was the seventh state attorney general to sue the cigarette makers for smoking-related health care costs. “We are going to stop them from selling their deadly product to minors. We are going to force them to manufacture a safer product.”
In a little more than a year, 30 more states had filed similar lawsuits. The monetary claims topped $100 billion. Hundreds of lawyers were employed by both sides.
“The money at stake was unprecedented. The breadth of the litigation, reaching to nearly every state, was unprecedented,” says Tim Bouch, a Charleston, S.C., litigator specializing in mass torts who closely followed the tobacco litigation. “And the legal claims, which were truly novel in theory, would have been unprecedented if successful.”
But today, 10 years after the parties announced a record $369 billion settlement—which was later reduced to $246 billion—it’s business as usual.
Young adults still overwhelmingly make up the 3,000 people who start smoking daily. Cigarettes remain unregulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
And a study released in January by Harvard University’s School of Public Health found that nicotine levels in major-brand cigarettes sold in Massachusetts increased by about 11 percent between 1997 and 2005.
The only big winners in the litigation appear to be the tobacco companies, the state treasurers and the lawyers who represented both sides.
Profits for industry leader Philip Morris were $4.5 billion in 2005—up 36 percent from 1997. The company’s stock price has doubled since the filing of the first state lawsuit in 1994.
Of the $61 billion that Big Tobacco has paid as part of the settlement, the states have spent less than 8 percent on anti-smoking efforts. The vast majority of the money has gone to fund ordinary state operations and tax cuts.
And $15 billion has been awarded to the private lawyers hired by the state attorneys general. That’s the largest attorney fee award in history. More than $100 million—Big Tobacco won’t say precisely how much—has been paid to the lawyers defending the companies.
“The tobacco litigation was a failure of historic proportions,” says Linda Eads, a law professor at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law in Dallas. “A complete and utter failure in every sense.”
This is a story of how good intentions snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
This crap is not about the health of the public, it's about the government increasing its incomes.
Our current governor was the formal Attorney General in this state and know the NC Charter statutes backwards and forwards.
Hope you now understand the depth of my cynicisms.
Entitlement, my butt.
Given that you propose expanding and tightening government regulations on private activities, and criminalizing personal habits, what the heck are you doing on a Conservative forum? Big Government is not the solution, it is the problem!
I guess you didn't get the memo... I think it was from Ronald Reagan, maybe you've heard of him. It was based on some principles set out by a fellow name of Barry Goldwater, back around 1960. I can forward a link to you if you wish... ;-)
Also
While helping you to inhale more bacteria with every puff!
Would you support a return to alcohol prohibition?
Studies show that it extracts a much higher price to society then cannibus...For that matter so do guns.
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