One question I have is in regards to the US government. Why, when presented with such evidence (and this is hardly the only study to support this argument) does the government steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that pot smoking is not quite the danger they’ve traditionally made it out to be? I mean, its obvious to most rational people that a large portion of the dangers involved in smoking pot come from the legal ramifications that our current web of drug laws has wrought. I’m scared to smoke it because I might get arrested or double-crossed by someone I buy it from, not from a health perspective.
Does anyone think the increasing number of studies like these will change our government’s drug policy?
I like to think, “oh, when people from my generation (I’m 33) get power, they’ll be chill about pot laws because they know it’s nothing.”
But, that should be true of the people who are in power NOW.
Each of our last 2 presidents smoked pot for chrissakes.
Maybe there’s still too many of them out there from the generation before them. Maybe the pot smokers someday will get a really good lobby together, spend their money on greasing the right palms instead of buying bags and it will get done.
The study’s hardly definitive. They merely model a rationale as to how THC might act in the body to reduce cancer risk. Medical scientists modeled for hears on how supplementing women with estrogen would reduce their risk of heart disease. Then they actually studied all those women taking estrogen supplements, and oops, guess what! In real life, taking estrogen increased their risk of heart disease!!
I was trained as a medical scientist. I favor the medical use of marijuana for certain diagnoses, such as terminal cancer pain, wasting disease from HIV or malignancy, and other extreme conditions.
But the data in this study does not yet rise to the level where it should be cited as evidence to argue a policy change.
I tend to agree with you that the studay is not the final word on all this. Still, wouldn’t the most practical body of evidence, millions of pot smokers world-wide, be evidence enough to argue in favor of legalization?
They also mention in the article, "All of this, he said, fits in with population studies that have failed to link marijuana smoking with a higher risk of lung cancer " albeit without a cite. I don’t know how these “population studies” were performed.
Even so, I don’t even think that whether weed causes cancer or not should be the deciding factor on its legality.
Consider the longterm harmful effects of tobacco, heavy alcohol use, and certain foods. . .“containing carcinogens” hardly seems to be the measuring stick.
Hrrrmmm? Maybe I missing something, but the fact that there are a lot of users doesn’t signify anything. There are more tobacco users and a shit load of heroine users, but I don’t think that indicates anything about how dehabilitating these substances are.
I’d like to see independant confirmation of this study, like I would with any study. Just like last decade when those two gentlemen ‘successfully’ created cold fusion, peer review and attempts to recreate the experiment showed it was flawed and incorrect.
I’m skeptical, I don’t see that THC would counter all the cadmium that pot smokers are inhaling.
Not in and of itself, I meant more along the lines of studying the current population. How many pot smokers do you know that have died from it? I don’t know any.
You are missing something. You’re missing the fact that you don’t anyone who has died from cancer who smokes pot even though there are a lot of users, whereas you probably know people who have died from smoking cigarettes and can readily find records of people who have died from using heroin.
Do you know people that get X-rays and eat lead paint every single day?
I don’t know anyone who’s died of smoking of any sort. My grandfather’s smoking for 50 years may have contributed to his death, but he died at 89, so it’s tough to toss all the blame on the smokes.
No, but I work with a lot of people who are bombarded by gamma rays and neutrons on a daily basis and are surrounded by lead shielding that they often have to touch, shove or manhandle.
Anecdotal evidence is not good data to use to study. It’s hard to attribute any deaths directly to cigarettes because most deaths are cancer, which is a cell mutation, or lung diseases which aren’t wholly in the realm of cigarettes. What one needs to do is correlate the number of deaths of a certain disease to smokers and non-smokers. Then you show (or don’t show) that the rate for X disease is significantly higher for smokers leading smoking to being a likely cause. The pathways just haven’t been shown yet. The same thing needs to be done with pot or whatever else is of interest.
How do you expect him to answer a question that remains under review in early and ongoing research? Nothing is compelling yet, Bongmaster, thus the need for prudence and continued study.
To counterargue: How many pot smokers do you know whose deaths or disease processes can be conclusively proven to have no causal relationship with their marijuana usage?
Round off to the nearest thousand. Please explain methodology.
I was reading today about a University of sasketchewan reasearcher who discovered that a highly purified derivative of marijauna can actually cause neural regeneration in rats…the opposite effect to almost every other drug of abuse.
The amount of this chemical in marijauna is minute, but a synthetic version might have some promise.
But you do understand that there is an established link because cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
There’s no such thing for marijuana.
[quote=kidchameleon]
No, but I work with a lot of people who are bombarded by gamma rays and neutrons on a daily basis and are surrounded by lead shielding that they often have to touch, shove or manhandle.
Right, but there are studies and established links between radiation/lead poisoning and death. There’s population data, and there are known effects on the body from radiation that we understand to be cancer causing. Acute and prolonged.
With marijuana, we do not seem to have population studies that show weed to be carcinogenic, and the study the OP linked to suggests some possible biological reasons why.
That’s why I’d prefer more research. With drugs its proof of safety before approval, not the other way around.
Acute and chronic. Yes, I know, but how many people died because these dangers weren’t assessed prior to their use? Hell, the effects of low levels of radiation exposure are still unknown and most of our studies on humans come from disasters and accidents. I’d rather have some extensive studies done rather than one study saying it’s non-carcinenic. How can you explain THC mitigating cadmium build up?
I acknowledge that there needs to be more research but who here really thinks we’re going to suddenly find that smoking pot will cause cancer or other problems that are as severe as those which develop by taking legal drugs like cigarettes and alcohol? I feel confident that in time there will be enough studies done to convince even the most hardened anti-pot crusader that pot is safer than many drugs sold legally now.
Your argument rests on the faulty assumption that the governments position on marijuana is based in facts. Pot laws have thier origin in racism, yellow journalism and complete misrepresentation of the dangers of marijuana. When the government first started legislating marijuana it linked it to causing brutal murders and rapes. Shoot they even linked pot to a friggen order of assassins. There is no way the government will say “Well shucks looks like we were wrong” and legalize pot over one study.
