I think you misread his post. He’s saying the fertilizers are used in tobacco, not marijuana:
And here is a link to the article that he posted a copy of.
Yes, I know, and i find that doubtful. Sure I know that some hothouse growers here in the US treat their "buds’ like babies, 100% organic and all, but there are stories of the waste left behind at National Forest sites, including herbicide and fertilizer containers.
That link doesn’t.
Nobody has mentioned this, but I overheard a few days ago that marijuana has a much higher tar content than tobacco. :eek:
And, inasmuch as tobacco smoke also contains things like cyanide, benzophyrene and carbon monoxide, I think it’s safe to assume that marijuana has sinmilar ingredients.
:smack: Somehow I read your question with the words “don’t you?” attached to the end. My mistake.
Doesn’t what?
You don’t have to assume anything. I don’t know why you would think that two totally different plants would necessarily have the same chemical make-up, but you don’t have to assume. Just look at this chart.
I admit I am not a chemist, so I don’t know which of those things is “tar”. Can anyone point that out for those of us who stopped after we learned Avogadro’s number?
You have perhaps heard of the term “nicotine stains,” which, of course, is a misnomer, since nicotine is colorless. But for years some cigarette companies’ ads have touted their productas’ “low tar” content." Offhand, I don’t know how much tar contributes to tobaccos’ carcinogenic potential…
Good God! I just read that chart. Acetone and benzene, yet!
In late 1963 I read a note in a book about the baseball season. Yankee star pitcher Whitey Ford, after pitching a shutout, announced that he had given up smoking. He said, “My doctor told me that when I think of lighting up, I should picture a bus starting up and blowing the exhaust in my face.”
Granted your chart shows differences, but the fact that both cannabis sativa and tobacco cotain acetone, benzene, and carbon monoxide would be enough to scare me away from both of them…
:eek:
I know that nicotine is the addictive substance in tobacco. I also know that marijuana contains ZERO nicotine.
I think “tar” is the aggregate of all the nasty bad stuff that isn’t nicotine, but I’m not sure. Hoping someone can enlighten us, tho.
lol
dude, all sorts of funky stuff is in the food you eat, etc.
Coca-Cola products have for years included “glycerol ester of wood rosin”, but I bet that doesn’t stop you from grabbing a coke at McWendy King.
I think the little “ug” symbol means parts per millionth of a gram, but I could be wrong about that.
Damn my fascinations with light and sound! The certainly aren’t helping me now. :smack:
Tar is the particulate matter in smoke. It’s all the stuff that globs together to form the yellow stuff in your filter and your fingers, the brown stuff in your hacky mucus and the black stuff on your lungs. For purposes of this discussion, tar=resin.
So yes, marijuana does have tar. Take a gander at your one-hitter next time you clean that puppy out. Eeeew! Some of that does end up in your lungs. But again, how much depends on your implements, the amount in the plant to begin with (different varieties of both tobacco and marijuanna have different amounts, making test results very suspect) and your style of smoking. And again again, people don’t smoke nearly as much marijuana as tobacco, and so are exposed to less tar/resin total, even if each cigarrette/joint has more or less.
dougie_monty, get a grip, please. Or at least a sense of perspective. *Any *burning matter, including your gas stove, gives off trace amounts of carbon monoxide. There’s lead, arsenic, mercury and titanium in asparagus, fer chrissakes. Apples and cherries contain cyanide. I’m not saying inhaling burning anything into your lungs is a good thing, but getting hysterical doesn’t help you sound like a rational debater. It tends to make people tune you out, even if you have good things to say.
Well, I know that the fact that you ingest something doesn’t invariably mean it will poison you; anyone who drank a barium subtstance (to get an intestinal X-ray examination) would know that. The critical issue is 1) whether any substance is soluble enough to be absorbed across the walls of the intestines or the alveoli in the lungs; and 2) whether, once absored, the substance is toxic.
Ask Loretta Lynn–her dad worked in the coal mines and breathed coal dust so much he got black lungs and had to retire.
And FWIW, I would certainly not go to the ridiculous extreme of kneeling on the roof of a house with a chimney, inhaling the smoke from the fireplace fire! (That’s an exaggeration, of course, but I think you get my idea.)
As an active member and now the co-director of NORML @ UCSB, I have this conversation with people quite often. NORML is the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, by the way, and we are a student chapter. The topic of marijuana causing cancer has been covered quite extensively in the book “The Emperor Wears No Clothes” by Jack Herer, which is the most authoritative book on hemp and cannabis in existance, now in its 11th edition I believe. I don’t have the book handy at the moment, but to summarize the key points:
There has been no research to ever conclusively show that cannabis causes lung cancer or any other types of cancer for that matter. While burned cannabis, like most burned plant fiber, does contain carcinogens, this is not neccesarily responsible for causing cancer. The main reason that people develop cancer from smoking cigarettes is because commercial tobacco is grown in radioactive soil. As many members have already mentioned, soil used to grow commercial tobacco contains large amounts of radium and polonium. This is a result of the fertilizer used, because it is the most cost effective. US Surgeon General C Everett Koop publicly stated this in 1990, however most people still seem to be unaware. Of course, as mentioned, any hot smoke from burned fiber is not good for your lungs, and I have heard anecdotal evidence of habitual marijuana smokers developing emphysema. This however, is different than causing cancer. There is even research as recent as 2005 that indicates that THC, the active chemical in cannabis, inhibits the growth of tumors and is neuroprotective. Also, many people are unaware that cannabis does not need to be smoked to succesfully administer THC to the body. A device called a vaporizer heats cannabis to a temperature that is hot enought to activate the THC but not hot enought to burn the plant fiber. The THC vapor inhaled from a vaporizer has less than a handful of chemicals in it, compared to the hundreds found in combusted cannabis. Vaporizers are extremely popular among medical cannabis users, but I also know many health-conscious recreational users who own one. As far as currently available research shows, there are almost no negative health effects of using vaporized or ingested cannabis, if any. If anyone has any other questions about cannabis or the negative effects of the war on drugs, feel free to email me at emkman [at] gmail . com.
-Ethan Kravitz
Co-Director NORML @ UCSB
Thank you , and welcome!
Do you have a cite for the factoid above? Somehow I doubt that all tobacco is grwon on the same soil with the same fertilizers, but I am willing to read a cite.
When I say commercial tobacco, I don’t mean all cigarettes you can buy, but most come from the same big players, Phillip Morris, RJ Reynolds, etc. Almost all tobacco, despite the brand, comes from the same sources in the United States. I believe that more “natural tobacco” products such as American Spirits do not fall into this category, however I don’t know for sure.
Here are a few links citing the radioactivity of tobacco:
http://scienceu.fsu.edu/news/healthsmart/health27.html
http://www.acsa2000.net/HealthAlert/radioactive_tobacco.html
http://nepenthes.lycaeum.org/Drugs/THC/Health/cancer.rad.html
http://www.pmdocs.com/getallimg.asp?DOCID=2012611337/1338
The cause for this is the high level calcium phosphate fertilizer used, as well as a lack of plot rotation by growers. Switching to ammonium phosphate fertilizer could have alleviated the problem, but was not deemed to be cost effective by BigTobacco.
There is plenty of information on the subject if you google “radioactive tobacco” or “radioactive tobacco soil”. This is one of those well known facts that no one really knows about. It’s unfortunate.
Here’s a different one that also documents the tobacco plants ability to concentrate radioactives naturally in the soil. Adding fertilizer or other things that contain these radioactives I’m sure isn’t helping the problem either.
http://www.lumen.luc.edu/lumen/MedEd/radiation/Radaccident/500mr.html
Another site I encountered also mentions that there is evidence for syngeristic effects between the radioactives in tobacco and the hydrocarbons/polycyclic amines found in the smoke.
In short, the combination of radioactives and hydrocarbons is even more carcinogenically effective than either actiing on its own (such as hydrocarbons from MJ).
Thank you both. I now accept that a lot of US tobacco is thus grown in a way that increases radioactivity, which increases it’s lung cancer risk.
I would then assume that some Pot is also grown that way, but likely a lot less, hmmm?
However, emkman, do you also agree that amount has something to do with it? I mean- are there many Pot smokers that puff two packs a day for 30 years?
I also find interesting that you agree that smoking Pot (or any burning plant product) is dangerous to *some *extent. Shows that you are reasonable.
It’s hard to talk about marijuana use in “packs a day” numbers because you cannot purchase marijuana in commercially produced standardized cigarettes. Better to talk about grams.
If a tobacco cigarette weighs 1 gram, and there are 20 cigs in a pack, well… I don’t know anyone, frankly, who could smoke 30-40 grams of pot in a day, every day. Even in heavy party mode, that would mean a lit joint in someone’s hands almost continuously every moment that they are awake.
As emkman mentions, any time you are burning organic matter and inhaling the smoke emitted from same, you are doing some small amount of damage to your body, if only from the forced absorbtion of particulates. Bronchial tracts aren’t meant for solids, or for all gasses, after all.
Does this apply in the case of tobacco grown (and cigars, cigarettes, smokeless tobacco etc.) manufactured outside the U. S.?
I unfortunately don’t know, my expertise is in marijuana, not in tobacco. I do know that the Japanese smoke significantly more cigarettes per capita than the US and yet have a much lower rate of cancer. Some say this is because of the poor diet many have in the US, and others attribute it to the magic powers of japanese seaweed, I can’t commit to either of these scientifically 
.
It is hard to directly compare dosage to tobacco. I know people who smoke “a lot” of marijuana a day. Lets say 10+ times a day. Guaging the amount scientifically is difficult however, because there are two factors, weight (in grams) as mentioned by Snowboader Bo, and potency(% THC). This is why at NORML we always advocate access to high quality cannabis, as opposed to the media and government who often portray it as dangerous, i.e. “this is not your parents weed.”. Higher potency cannabis means people have to use less to achieve the same affect, minimizing damage to the lungs. It is also unfortunate that the federal government monopolizes the supply of NIDA marijuana available for research. UMass-Amherst recently applied for the ability to grow marijuana for research and was denied without reason. I have personally spoken with people who have smoked federally supplied marijuana and they have all said it is not very good. It certainly can not compare to the high quality available in medical dispensaries throughout California.
http://www.mapinc.org/norml/v05/n1106/a09.htm
This recently released study concludes that there is no positive correlation between cannabis and cancer, even in extremely heavy users.
Joint-Years is a measurement they devised for frequency of use, and in the highest use category, the ratio of cancer was 1.0 as compared to non-cannabis users. In the other categories, there was even a negative correlation, possibly suggesting cannabis’ protective effect against cancerous cells.
As I said before, smoking anything isn’t great for you, it will leave small lesions on your lungs. That is why health conscious smokers should use a vaporizer. This study details the medical benefits of vaporizer use:
The second link is more recent.
But the highest category was 60 joints/year (it appears) or 5 joints a month. I am not sure that smoking cigs is really all that dangerous at one or two a week (in an otherwise healthy person).
So-since the highest dosage they list is about a joint a week, rather than 2 packs a day (140 time the usage)- it IS possible that at cig usage levels there may be danger?