Marijuana, Smoking, Lung Cancer
The International Lung Cancer Consortium studied results from six "case-control" studies comparing over two thousand cancer patients and three thousand healthy controls. Their finding was that there was no significant link detected between marijuana and malignancy. The involved scientists delivered their findings at an April conference.Marijuana smoke is known to contain cancer-causing chemicals. However, according to Hal Morgenstern, a University of Michigan epidemiologist, and a member of the International Lung Cancer Consortium, the majority of marijuana users don't consume enough of the product to become ill.
"When you think about people smoking 20 - 40 cigarettes a day for forty years, they're smoking hundreds of thousands of cigarettes. The exposure [to harmful smoke] that marijuana users get ... is more than a magnitude of difference less", insists Dr. Morgenstern.
On the other hand, smoking pot leading to cancer is a reasonable enough conclusion. Marijuana contains some of the same carcinogens as does tobacco. Users tend to inhale far more deeply. And marijuana is smoked without a filter. On the marijuana-plus side, medical marijuana use is increasing in popularity.
Evidence suggests smoking marijuana not only helps control the pain of arthritis and cancer sufferers, it can help alleviate chemotherapy-related nausea, as well as some forms of pain and it can also relieve loss of appetite in cancer patients. Those are big pluses.
A medical professor at the University of California at Los Angeles discovered no association between low-to-moderate marijuana use and cancer. And the evidence on heavy-long-term use was anything but conclusive.
Bur now comes a new, Canadian-led study adding to the debate over medical marijuana and legalization. This is a study which contradicts recent research studies that conclude with no connection to marijuana use and cancer. A large group of Swedish men who had been surveyed in 1969-70 relating to their lifestyles and tracked over the following 40 years represented their subject trials.
The finding was that those who were classified as "heavy" pot users when they were young became over twice as likely to have lung cancer by 2009. Russ Callaghan, a psychiatry professor at the University of Northern British Columbia and his colleagues in Russia and Sweden were involved in the research, the results of which they had published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control.
It wasn't his intention to "demonize" marijuana, said Dr. Callaghan. Pointing out that two legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol cause "dramatically" more harm in their use. He felt it to be of importance to identify possible negative effects of marijuana use, as well as acknowledging its potential benefits, a logical enough goal for a scientist.
"It is seen as organic and natural", said the researcher. "[The study] does add one piece of evidence to suggest a caution around that."
Take from that what you will.
Labels: Drugs, Health, Nature, Science
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 03, 2013
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