Weed and Lung Cancer

[Girospeck]

Cannabis Smoking Not Linked To Lung Cancer, Case-Control Study Says
May 24, 2006 - San Diego, CA, USA


San Diego, CA: Smoking cannabis, even long-term, is not positively associated with increased incidence of lung-cancer, according to the findings of the largest population-based case-control study performed to date. Lead investigator Donald Tashkin of the David Geffen School of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, at the University of California-Los Angeles, presented the results at the 2006 International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.
Investigators assessed the possible association between cannabis use and the risk of lung cancer in middle-aged adults (ages 18-59) living in Los Angeles. Researchers conducted interviews with 611 subjects with lung cancer and 1,040 controls matched for age, gender and neighborhood. Data was collected on lifetime marijuana use, as well as subjects' use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, diet, occupation, and family history of cancer. Investigators used a logistical regression model to estimate the effect of cannabis smoking on lung cancer risk, adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity, education, and cumulative tobacco smoking and alcohol use.
"We did not observer a positive association of marijuana use -- even heavy long-term use -- with lung cancer, controlling for tobacco smoking and other potential cofounders," investigators concluded. Their data further revealed that one subset of moderate lifetime users (10-<30 "joint years") actually had an inverse association between cannabis use and lung cancer. The study did report a 20-fold increased risk in heavy tobacco smokers.
The five-year trial was sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
NORML Senior Policy Analyst Paul Armentano said that Tashkin's findings reaffirm the results of prior case-control studies dismissing a causal link between cannabis use and certain types of lung and upper aerodigestive tract (UAT) cancers. These include: a 2001 John Hopkins University hospital-based case-control study that found neither "lifetime use" nor "ever use" of cannabis were associated with head, neck or lung cancer in younger adults; a 2004 University of Washington case-control study that found "no association" between cannabis use and incidents of oral cancer, regardless of how long, how much or how often individuals had used it; and a 1997 Kaiser Permanente retrospective cohort study that found that cannabis use was not associated with increased risks of developing tobacco-use related cancers of the lung and upper aerodigestive tract or other cancers in men and women who used marijuana but did not smoke tobacco.
"The most remarkable aspect of this study is that its findings are, in fact, unremarkable," Armentano said. "As has been previously reported by the US Institute of Medicine and others, there is no conclusive evidence that marijuana causes cancer in humans, including those cancers generally related to tobacco use."
Armentano suggested that cannabis consumers who desire the rapid onset of action associated with inhalation but who are concerned about the potential harms of noxious smoke can dramatically cut down on their intake of carcinogenic compounds by engaging in vaporization rather than smoking.
For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Senior Policy Analyst, at (202) 483-5500. Additional information on cannabis and cancer is available in NORML's report, "Cannabis Smoke and Cancer: Assessing the Risk," available online at:
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6891

updated: May 24, 2006

[steez]

if that articles actually legitimate, it really makes me happy, i'd always thought that smoking weed could cause cancer just as easily as cigarettes, seeing as how smoke is still entering your lungs.

[turnadaburna]

if this is real then that would be great to have a link on the flier thats been talked about..or if not on the flier itself then maybe the website idea thats bein tossed around

[emrandel]

Someone should move this to MMJ forum.

A similar article came out not too long ago but it's good to hear/see that they haven't stopped. Step by step...

[rmfootball69]

its on www.digg.com just search for it. id go look it up but im lazy. almost everything on there is legit because everything is monitored, controlled, and submitted by every user on the site.

[metalstonerking]

Haha fuckin right

[Laemel]

Originally Posted by rmfootball69

its on www.digg.com just search for it. id go look it up but im lazy. almost everything on there is legit because everything is monitored, controlled, and submitted by every user on the site.

Haha, dude, just becuase a bunch of internet nerds posted a link to the news story doesn't say anything about whether the study was valid, it just means it was popular (which a pro-weed story obviously would be).

[Girospeck]

I found the story at Norml.org

http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6912

[JointVenture]

i like it ...... now all i need to do is quit cigs!

[emrandel]

Originally Posted by Girospeck

I found the story at Norml.org

http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6912

Yeah... anything at NORML can pretty much be considered legit. If NORML isn't legit then... well, we have nothing. They're the basis of the reformation.

[antwanp]

Not only did NORML have the story, so did Google News and about 1,700 other news organizations. If you're quick, you may be able to still see it on the front page. It was on the Drudge Report earlier today, I'm not sure if it's still on it though...

-Antwan L.

[geologyrox]

saw it just a bit ago on yahoo: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060524/hl_nm/marijuana_dc

took a nice 4:20 break in celebration

[jonster]

this reminds me of the fucken retards who made the commercial with 1 joint equalling 4 cigarettes in comparison, there's absolutely different characterisitcs with each, marijuana is now being known for it's non-cancer causing effects, fucken governments and presidents trying to use brainwashing so marijuana is hated, marijuana has no disease causing agents, my dealer is 60 and has been blazing since childhood everyday, he's still smoking strong, and is healthy. I can't say enough how stupid and arrogant people can be just because they personally disapprove, probably because there fucken nerds and live for politics. fucken fagots. im mad right now because some of my plants were found by people influenced with loving concerns by the criminalizing, marijuana laws, and had put up a sign saying "gro-sho get out of here or report will be made to RCMP", lucky me, hauling my 20 plants with 5 gallon buckets a few miles away from exploitation.
i understand they could've been raided, but i live in a retirement city, all old people. i dont care about that, i care about how life is like this with marijuana, it should be grown in the streets, on sidewalks, should even be painted by famous artists for it's beauty, theres nothing wrong with marijuana at all, i hate propaganda towards marijuana, and the thought of the modern person towards it is the word 'drug' or 'bad and disease causing'.

[4ction]

HELL YEAH... now what the fuck are those anti marijuana ads going to focus on ... Nothing but bullshit, so now people may come to realize that it's not bad after all and all this proproganda is BS

[infiniteawesome]

cannabis tar does affect your health, but is definately not as bad for you as cigarettes and has not been directly associated with death at all. If weed caused lung cancer, then no publication could claim that weed has caused zero deaths in history.

Simple fact: smoking weed does not kill you.

It does not cause emphezema, lung cancer, brain damage, sexual disfunction, etc.

The TRUE negative effects of smoking weed include: shortness of breath, eye irritation, irritation of the esophogus and the mucous lining of your nasal passages, accumulation of tar in the lungs over time.

This isn't to say that weed is ENTIRELY safe, but it is RELATIVELY safe.

Please keep in mind this does not include the psychological effects weed has, which vary from person to person.

In a positive light, weed has been found to clear the smoke from the lungs faster than say tobacco smoke, which, in contrast to cannabis smoke, sinks down into the lungs rather than raising upwards through the esophogus.

The cannabinoids in cannabis have been found to greatly reduce the chances of acquiring tumors and have an anti-emetic (prevents vomiting) effect in small doses.

And so on.