Pot = no increased risk of lung cancer!

[CynicalGabe]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/05/24/pot.lung.cancer.reut/index.html

New news from UCLA.

[PunditLisa]

@CynicalGabe

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/05/24/pot.lung.cancer.reut/index.html

New news from UCLA.

Who sponsored the study and what was their agenda?

[Ogre]

@PunditLisa

Who sponsored the study and what was their agenda?

Errr, are you dismissing the results of this study right off the bat?

[PunditLisa]

@Ogre

Errr, are you dismissing the results of this study right off the bat?

Not at all. It’s always useful to know who sponsored the study so we can determine if perhaps there was an agenda outside of seeking the truth.

[Waenara]

@PunditLisa

Not at all. It’s always useful to know who sponsored the study so we can determine if perhaps there was an agenda outside of seeking the truth.

Here is Dr. Donald Tashkin’s webpage at UCLA.

I also found numerous sites with reference to Dr. Tashkin doing work for the National Institute on Drug Abuse since the 90s. [1] [2] [3] [4]

From this link (my emphasis added)

Marijuana smoking -“even heavy longterm use”- does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airways, or esophagus, Donald Tashkin reported at this year’s meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. Coming from Tashkin, this conclusion had extra significance for the assembled drug-company and university-based scientists ( most of whom get funding from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse ). Over the years, Tashkin’s lab at UCLA has produced irrefutable evidence of the damage that marijuana smoke wreaks on bronchial tissue. With NIDA’s support, Tashkin and colleagues have identified the potent carcinogens in marijuana smoke, biopsied and made photomicrographs of pre-malignant cells, and studied the molecular changes occurring within them. It is Tashkin’s research that the Drug Czar’s office cites in ads linking marijuana to lung cancer. Tashkin himself has long believed in a causal relationship, despite a study in which Stephen Sidney examined the files of 64,000 Kaiser patients and found that marijuana users didn’t develop lung cancer at a higher rate or die earlier than non-users. Of five smaller studies on the question, only two - -involving a total of about 300 patients-concluded that marijuana smoking causes lung cancer. Tashkin decided to settle the question by conducting a large, population-based, case-controlled study. “Our major hypothesis,” he told the ICRS, “was that heavy, longterm use of marijuana will increase the risk of lung and upper-airways cancers.”

[Waenara]

Also, www.medicalmarijuanaprocon.org has a chart of experts and doctors and their stance on medical marijuana (pro, con or neutral). They list Dr. Tashkin as being neutral, stating “we do not know if the benefits outweigh the [costs]”, and that he has researched the effects of marijuana on the pulmonary system for over 30 years.

[Myself]

This link leads to a long article from Medscape General Medicine. (e-newsletter from WebMD.)

**Medical Marijuana: Politics Trumps Science at the FDA/B]

It is written by Gregory T. Carter, MD, Clinical Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington.

Registration is required.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/531038?src=mp

Three–of many–major points are these:

1. Even the federal Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) own Administrative Law Judge, the Honorable Francis Young, stated in 1988, “Marijuana is the safest therapeutically active substance known to man…it would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance.”[2]

2. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Institute of Medicine have previously issued statements of support for medical marijuana and have called for further investigation.[6,7]

3. The scientific process continues to document the therapeutic effects of marijuana through ongoing research and assessment of available data. With regard to the medicinal use of marijuana, our federal government and legal system should take a similar approach, using science and logic, rather than politics, as the basis of policymaking.

But just who appointed this wrong-thinking DEA judge?! And, of course we all know what kind of crackpot hippie leftist stoners work at NIH! We need more government intrustion into the private lives of people who obviously can’t take care of themselves…or maybe not.

Just bein’
Myself