I never said that moderate use was wrong either. I'm just saying, I know a lot of people in my frat who are abusers of marijuana. They do it everyday as often as possible.
It is certainly possible to not abuse marijuana and still use it, I realize.
Then there's also the fact that some people just don't need drugs to enhance their life experience. I'm not one of those people, though.
when it comes down to it; abuse is drawn from within. if you're a pot abuser; you would have been an alcoholic if you didn't discover pot.
Did you even read the articles that you posted?
"Studies have shown that marijuana contains many compounds that when burned, produce about 50% higher concentrations of some carcinogenic chemicals than tobacco cigarettes."
-http://www.medpagetoday.com/HematologyOncology/LungCancer/tb/3393
And "transient schizophrenia-like symptoms" while the subject is high is a completely different thing than your previous claim where marijuana actually caused schizophrenia (a psychological condition)! Your information is at best misinterpreted. All of us who have smoked weed have had "schizophrenia like symptoms" or gotten paranoid while we were high, that doesn't mean that we have schizophrenia!
Smoking marijuana does not appear to increase the risk of lung cancer or head-and-neck malignancies, even among heavy users, researchers reported here. Action Points
Inform interested patients that the results of this study suggest that marijuana smoking does not appear to increase the risk of cancers of the lung, head, or neck, but there is also no evidence that it offers a protective effect.
Caution patients that marijuana smoke may cause or exacerbate other conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
This study was published as an abstract and presented orally at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary as they have not yet been reviewed and published in a peer-reviewed publication.
"We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use, more than 500 to 1,000 uses, would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana, said Donald Tashkin, M.D., of the University of California in Los Angeles.
But in fact, they reported at the American Thoracic Society meeting here, marijuana use was associated with cancer risk ratios below 1.0, indicating that a history of pot smoking had no effect on the risk for respiratory cancers.
Dr. Tashkin was quick to point out, however, that marijuana does not appear to have a protective effect against cancer. "If it did, there would be a dose-dependent effect, with people who smoked more having a lower risk," he said. "We didn't see that."
Studies have shown that marijuana contains many compounds that when burned, produce about 50% higher concentrations of some carcinogenic chemicals than tobacco cigarettes.
In addition, heavy, habitual marijuana use can produce accelerated malignant change in lung explants, and evidence on bronchial biopsies of pre-malignant histopathologic and molecular changes, Dr. Tashkin said.
The investigators had also previously shown that smoking one marijuana cigarette leads to the deposition in the lungs of four times as much tar as smoking a tobacco cigarette containing the same amount of plant material. Marijuana cigarettes are not filtered and are more loosely packed than tobacco, so there's less filtration of the tar. In addition, pot smokers hold the smoke in their lungs about four times longer than tobacco smokers do, Dr. Tashkin pointed out.
He and his colleagues, led by epidemiologist Hal Morgenstern, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, conducted a study to look at possible associations between marijuana use and the risk of respiratory cancers among middle-age adults in the Los Angeles area.
For the population-based case-control study, they identified cancer cases among people from the ages of 18 to 59, using the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program registry.
They identified 611 people with lung cancer, 601 with cancers of the head and neck, and 1,040 controls matched by age, gender and neighborhood (as a surrogate for socioeconomic status).
They conducted extensive personal interviews to determine lifetime marijuana use, measured in joint-years, with one joint-year equivalent to 365 marijuana cigarettes. The interviewers also asked participants about tobacco use, alcohol consumption, use of other drugs, socioeconomic status, diet, occupation, and family history of cancer.
The investigators also used logistic regression to estimate the effect of marijuana use on lung cancer risk, adjusting for age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, and cumulative tobacco smoking and alcohol use.
They found that the heaviest users in the study had smoked more than 60 joint years worth of marijuana, or more than 22,000 joints in their lifetime. Moderately heavy users smoked between 11,000 and 22,000 joints.
"That's an enormous amount of marijuana," Dr. Tashkin said.
Despite the heavy use, "in no category was there any increased risk, nor was there any suggestion that smoking more led to a higher odds ratio," he continued. "There was no dose-response—not even a suggestion of a dose response—and in all types of cancer except one, oral cancer, the odds ratios were less than one."
The confidence intervals around the odds ratios were wide however, and the odds ratios did not show a dose response.
In contrast, tobacco smoking was associated with increased risk for all cancers, and there was a "powerful" dose-response relationship. People who smoked more than two packs of cigarettes per day had a 21-fold risk for cancer, as opposed to a less than onefold risk for marijuana, Dr. Tashkin said.
"When we restricted the analysis to those who didn't smoke any tobacco we found the same results, and when we looked for interaction between tobacco and smoking—would marijuana increase the risk, potentiate the carcinogenic effect of tobacco—we didn't find that, nor did we find a protective effect against the effect of tobacco, which is very important, because the majority of marijuana smokers also smoke tobacco," he commented.
It's possible that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in marijuana smoke may encourage apoptosis, or programmed cell death, causing cells to die off before they have a chance to undergo malignant transformation, he said.
Dr. Tashkin also noted that "it's never a good idea to take anything into your lungs, including marijuana smoke."
Did you read it?
Although there are carcenogins in burning it, they could find no correlation between the cancers and pot.
Please learn about the drug you are doing before you speak on it. Nonetheless, I think you should be legally allowed to do marijuana.
Effects of Heavy Marijuana Use on Learning and Social Behavior
Research clearly demonstrates that marijuana has the potential to cause problems in daily life or make a person's existing problems worse. Depression17, anxiety17, and personality disturbances18 have been associated with chronic marijuana use. Because marijuana compromises the ability to learn and remember information, the more a person uses marijuana the more he or she is likely to fall behind in accumulating intellectual, job, or social skills. Moreover, research has shown that marijuana’s adverse impact on memory and learning can last for days or weeks after the acute effects of the drug wear off19,20,25.
Students who smoke marijuana get lower grades and are less likely to graduate from high school, compared with their nonsmoking peers21,22,23,24. A study of 129 college students found that, among those who smoked the drug at least 27 of the 30 days prior to being surveyed, critical skills related to attention, memory, and learning were significantly impaired, even after the students had not taken the drug for at least 24 hours20. These "heavy" marijuana abusers had more trouble sustaining and shifting their attention and in registering, organizing, and using information than did the study participants who had abused marijuana no more than 3 of the previous 30 days. As a result, someone who smokes marijuana every day may be functioning at a reduced intellectual level all of the time.
More recently, the same researchers showed that the ability of a group of long-term heavy marijuana abusers to recall words from a list remained impaired for a week after quitting, but returned to normal within 4 weeks25. Thus, some cognitive abilities may be restored in individuals who quit smoking marijuana, even after long-term heavy use.
Workers who smoke marijuana are more likely than their coworkers to have problems on the job. Several studies associate workers' marijuana smoking with increased absences, tardiness, accidents, workers' compensation claims, and job turnover. A study among postal workers found that employees who tested positive for marijuana on a pre-employment urine drug test had 55 percent more industrial accidents, 85 percent more injuries, and a 75-percent increase in absenteeism compared with those who tested negative for marijuana use26. In another study, heavy marijuana abusers reported that the drug impaired several important measures of life achievement including cognitive abilities, career status, social life, and physical and mental health27.
i did actually learn about it before i tried it, because i could find nothing else that would help ease my problem with migraines. that is why i knew it was safe and effective, and it has helped me a great deal to live life without the pain that i used to have to endure for days at a time.
in the long term, marijuana use has shown no adverse or negative impact on brain function. in other words once you stop it does not "fuck up your brain" as you claimed. the same cannot be said of alcohol, which is far more dangerous and will have lasting effects on many organs in the body.
in the short term i would agree that there is a slight loss of short term memory and recall, but certainly nothing that is permanent as you suggested.
there are many people who can use the drug recreationally with no ill effects and that is a great thing. however there is a proven link to mental illness for some people who use the drug regulary, who are genetically predisposed to psychosis which causes major problems. so for those who use it every now and then its fine, but for people who do nothing but smoke pot all day its has terrible consequences.
The wind is blowing cold
Have we lost our way tonight?
Have we lost our hope to sorrow?
Feels like were all alone
Running further from what’s right
And there are no more heroes to follow
Smoking marijuana does not appear to increase the risk of lung cancer or head-and-neck malignancies, even among heavy users, researchers reported here. Action Points
Inform interested patients that the results of this study suggest that marijuana smoking does not appear to increase the risk of cancers of the lung, head, or neck, but there is also no evidence that it offers a protective effect.
Caution patients that marijuana smoke may cause or exacerbate other conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
This study was published as an abstract and presented orally at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary as they have not yet been reviewed and published in a peer-reviewed publication.
"We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use, more than 500 to 1,000 uses, would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana, said Donald Tashkin, M.D., of the University of California in Los Angeles.
But in fact, they reported at the American Thoracic Society meeting here, marijuana use was associated with cancer risk ratios below 1.0, indicating that a history of pot smoking had no effect on the risk for respiratory cancers.
Dr. Tashkin was quick to point out, however, that marijuana does not appear to have a protective effect against cancer. "If it did, there would be a dose-dependent effect, with people who smoked more having a lower risk," he said. "We didn't see that."
Studies have shown that marijuana contains many compounds that when burned, produce about 50% higher concentrations of some carcinogenic chemicals than tobacco cigarettes.
In addition, heavy, habitual marijuana use can produce accelerated malignant change in lung explants, and evidence on bronchial biopsies of pre-malignant histopathologic and molecular changes, Dr. Tashkin said.
The investigators had also previously shown that smoking one marijuana cigarette leads to the deposition in the lungs of four times as much tar as smoking a tobacco cigarette containing the same amount of plant material. Marijuana cigarettes are not filtered and are more loosely packed than tobacco, so there's less filtration of the tar. In addition, pot smokers hold the smoke in their lungs about four times longer than tobacco smokers do, Dr. Tashkin pointed out.
He and his colleagues, led by epidemiologist Hal Morgenstern, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, conducted a study to look at possible associations between marijuana use and the risk of respiratory cancers among middle-age adults in the Los Angeles area.
For the population-based case-control study, they identified cancer cases among people from the ages of 18 to 59, using the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program registry.
They identified 611 people with lung cancer, 601 with cancers of the head and neck, and 1,040 controls matched by age, gender and neighborhood (as a surrogate for socioeconomic status).
They conducted extensive personal interviews to determine lifetime marijuana use, measured in joint-years, with one joint-year equivalent to 365 marijuana cigarettes. The interviewers also asked participants about tobacco use, alcohol consumption, use of other drugs, socioeconomic status, diet, occupation, and family history of cancer.
The investigators also used logistic regression to estimate the effect of marijuana use on lung cancer risk, adjusting for age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, and cumulative tobacco smoking and alcohol use.
They found that the heaviest users in the study had smoked more than 60 joint years worth of marijuana, or more than 22,000 joints in their lifetime. Moderately heavy users smoked between 11,000 and 22,000 joints.
"That's an enormous amount of marijuana," Dr. Tashkin said.
Despite the heavy use, "in no category was there any increased risk, nor was there any suggestion that smoking more led to a higher odds ratio," he continued. "There was no dose-response—not even a suggestion of a dose response—and in all types of cancer except one, oral cancer, the odds ratios were less than one."
The confidence intervals around the odds ratios were wide however, and the odds ratios did not show a dose response.
In contrast, tobacco smoking was associated with increased risk for all cancers, and there was a "powerful" dose-response relationship. People who smoked more than two packs of cigarettes per day had a 21-fold risk for cancer, as opposed to a less than onefold risk for marijuana, Dr. Tashkin said.
"When we restricted the analysis to those who didn't smoke any tobacco we found the same results, and when we looked for interaction between tobacco and smoking—would marijuana increase the risk, potentiate the carcinogenic effect of tobacco—we didn't find that, nor did we find a protective effect against the effect of tobacco, which is very important, because the majority of marijuana smokers also smoke tobacco," he commented.
It's possible that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in marijuana smoke may encourage apoptosis, or programmed cell death, causing cells to die off before they have a chance to undergo malignant transformation, he said.
Dr. Tashkin also noted that "it's never a good idea to take anything into your lungs, including marijuana smoke."
Did you read it?
Although there are carcenogins in burning it, they could find no correlation between the cancers and pot.
I never said that marijuana "caused cancer", I just said that it did have carcinogens (cancer causing agents). You stated that it is "non-carconogenic), which is false. And as a psychologist myself, I still find it very hard to believe that marijuana "causes schizophenria"........and to base your information about marijuana from such a biased source as "mediacampaign.org" is like calling D.A.R.E. a helpful thing. People often misinterpret corrolation for cause.
i am climbing back on for a brief stop....if you call the cannabis, that word that starts with an m.....u are parto fthe system that hates us, just like human beings don't like to be call native americans, african americans, or mexican-americans....
the word marijuana is assoiciated with scare-tactic propaganda....
ms./mr. psychologist......thank you for jumping on....
one more day of work and have a chance to read and absorb...thank you for keeping my thread alive.....
all insanity:
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light
there are many people who can use the drug recreationally with no ill effects and that is a great thing. however there is a proven link to mental illness for some people who use the drug regulary, who are genetically predisposed to psychosis which causes major problems. so for those who use it every now and then its fine, but for people who do nothing but smoke pot all day its has terrible consequences.
hasty generalization...what if person who smokes pot all day suffers from over-active intellect and anxiety combined....doesn't the ganja soothe that beast? would you not rather see a person sleeping on butter or does it alays have to be thorzine????
all insanity:
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light
i am climbing back on for a brief stop....if you call the cannabis, that word that starts with an m.....u are parto fthe system that hates us, just like human beings don't like to be call native americans, african americans, or mexican-americans....
the word marijuana is assoiciated with scare-tactic propaganda....
ms./mr. psychologist......thank you for jumping on....
one more day of work and have a chance to read and absorb...thank you for keeping my thread alive.....
lol, my pleasure. I had no idea that the word "marijuana" was associated with scare-tatic propoganda........hmmm, I learn something new about it every day. And for the record, I love "cannabis"............I just hate it when people give false or rather misleading information about it, on either side of the issue. I think my biggest pet peeve is when people throw out the word "proven". It's not proven to cause cancer, yet it does have carcinogens. It's not proven to cause schizophrenia, even if it corrolates with it in SOME individuals. It is not a proven gateway drug. It's not even proven to be as unhealthy for you as a bag of potato chips or a cheese burger. In my opinion anything used out of moderation can potentially be unhealthy...........that's as true with cannabis as it is with water. I'm confident that most people that say cannabis is such a bad "drug" does something that is just as, if not more unhealthy for their body every single day. The "just don't do it" argument should be much more focused on meth and perscription drug abuse than cannabis I don't see how I am part of the "system" like your are assuming when I am actually on the side promoting cannabis......I hate no one.........I just don't like false information on either side. BTW, if the word that starts with a "M" is a propoganda scare tactic word, why hasn't the NORML taken it out of its name????.......unless you were talking about "Melodious" in which I have no opinion here or there.
I never said that marijuana "caused cancer", I just said that it did have carcinogens (cancer causing agents). You stated that it is "non-carconogenic), which is false. And as a psychologist myself, I still find it very hard to believe that marijuana "causes schizophenria"........and to base your information about marijuana from such a biased source as "mediacampaign.org" is like calling D.A.R.E. a helpful thing. People often misinterpret corrolation for cause.
Pot does not cuase or contribute to the cause of cancer therefore it is non-carcinogenic. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
I will stick it in my pipe and smoke it, for my lungs are safe...........wait, what's this! http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=57710
The fact is that it does contain known carcinogens, the question still remains how those are effecting the body. I wouldn't conclude anything just yet. It is far from being "proven" that it does not cause cancer.
hasty generalization...what if person who smokes pot all day suffers from over-active intellect and anxiety combined....doesn't the ganja soothe that beast? would you not rather see a person sleeping on butter or does it alays have to be thorzine????
I've seen plenty of people waste their lives doing nothing but smoking bongs, so my experience tells me its a drug that shouldn't be used regulary. I don't see any problem going out and getting pissed on weekends (or occassional pot use) but habitual use of ANY drug ie: alcohol, pot or harder drugs is just a stupid thing to do.
The wind is blowing cold
Have we lost our way tonight?
Have we lost our hope to sorrow?
Feels like were all alone
Running further from what’s right
And there are no more heroes to follow
that depends on how much you smoke. i wrote a paper on thc for a neurobiology class(i think that i was the only one who found this funny, the prof wasn't so amused), if you're an occasional smoker , (even a couple times a week), it won't. the big problems with weed are the same as with cigarettes; lung problems (so go eat your weed, it's better for you), it does cause cancer, there's more tar in a joint than a cig of equal size (we also get the same amount of chemicals into our lungs by going to our city's centers), but most of us don't smoke enough weed for it to be a problem. studies have shown that there aren't permanent effects done to your chemical composition, or your brain. long-term frequent users will have changes in their neurotransmitters (think serotonin), and i'm not sure on this bit, but i think that can be corrected if they stop.
what does piss me off are the ppl who say 'i can drive just fine when i'm high, i have more focus actually', no, no you don't, driving high is just as bad as driving drunk.
and yeah, i smoke weed, and yeah, i'm all for it's legalization (although, as a canadian, i can be pretty sure that my weed is grown domestically, and noone was actually hurt in its making/transport), remember, once upon a time alcohol used to be illegal.
No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.
Albert Einstein
aaaahhh.....dont know about that...sounds like propaganda to me!!! no more or less than beer/wine/.....shit anything for that matter.....
everythings gonna kill u someday.....
Yeah but don't you think those people would have found something else to waste their lives on? Sometimes it's the person not the drug.:)
true but if so many people make a waste of their lives (i'm sure this problem isn't confined to suburban melbourne) then all of these people on this thread saying its a fine drug are wrong IMO. people do need to show some self control, and as i said i can't see a problem with occassional use (eg at parties and the like although i don't see the attraction myself). however i have seen more people waste their lives due to use of this drug than from alcohol.
The wind is blowing cold
Have we lost our way tonight?
Have we lost our hope to sorrow?
Feels like were all alone
Running further from what’s right
And there are no more heroes to follow
true but if so many people make a waste of their lives (i'm sure this problem isn't confined to suburban melbourne) then all of these people on this thread saying its a fine drug are wrong IMO. people do need to show some self control, and as i said i can't see a problem with occassional use (eg at parties and the like although i don't see the attraction myself). however i have seen more people waste their lives due to use of this drug than from alcohol.
Well, I've seen way more people waste their lives because of alcohol than pot. I'm not sure what that proves. I mean, which of us is right?
And alcohol spans the generations -- lots of people "age out" of marijuana use. That is, they use less of it as they get older.
Also, here in the US, we have a serious problem with binge drinking -- which I think is because of our bizarre drinking age. Go to any college campus, and there will be some well-publicized, well-attended, university-condoned (kind of) rituals that revolve explicitly around alcohol abuse. But these kids today -- they don't stop drinking until they're puking their guts up in the gutter. That's how they know they've got a buzz on. In *MY* day, you drank until just *before* you threw up. In any event, it's hardly healthy behavior.
"Things will just get better and better even though it
doesn't feel that way right now. That's the hopeful
idea . . . Hope didn't get much applause . . .
Hope! Hope is the underdog!"
that depends on how much you smoke. i wrote a paper on thc for a neurobiology class(i think that i was the only one who found this funny, the prof wasn't so amused), if you're an occasional smoker , (even a couple times a week), it won't. the big problems with weed are the same as with cigarettes; lung problems (so go eat your weed, it's better for you), it does cause cancer, there's more tar in a joint than a cig of equal size (we also get the same amount of chemicals into our lungs by going to our city's centers), but most of us don't smoke enough weed for it to be a problem. studies have shown that there aren't permanent effects done to your chemical composition, or your brain. long-term frequent users will have changes in their neurotransmitters (think serotonin), and i'm not sure on this bit, but i think that can be corrected if they stop.
what does piss me off are the ppl who say 'i can drive just fine when i'm high, i have more focus actually', no, no you don't, driving high is just as bad as driving drunk.
and yeah, i smoke weed, and yeah, i'm all for it's legalization (although, as a canadian, i can be pretty sure that my weed is grown domestically, and noone was actually hurt in its making/transport), remember, once upon a time alcohol used to be illegal.
good post, and it is very dangerous and irresponsible to get behind the wheel when under the influence of anything that is going to slow down or change reaction time.
good post, and it is very dangerous and irresponsible to get behind the wheel when under the influence of anything that is going to slow down or change reaction time.
True, but wouldn't car stereos, cell phones, annoying passengers, kids watching dvd's in the back of the van fall under this category as well?
True, but wouldn't car stereos, cell phones, annoying passengers, kids watching dvd's in the back of the van fall under this category as well?
i wouldn't say so much car stereos, but i would agree with the others, as they involve interaction with other people and are certainly a distraction.
i was just agreeing with tara's point that some people play it off like it's not big of a deal to drive under the influence of cannibas. i would say that alcohol impairs your judgement, reaction time and endangers lives on the road more than cannibas would...but at the point where you decide to get behind the wheel while under the influence of anything that will decrease your ability to perform, then the point becomes moot really, as endangerment is endangerment, no matter what the source of influence or the level of impact it has on your ability to drive safely.
i wouldn't say so much car stereos, but i would agree with the others, as they involve interaction with other people and are certainly a distraction.
i was just agreeing with tara's point that some people play it off like it's not big of a deal to drive under the influence of cannibas. i would say that alcohol impairs your judgement, reaction time and endangers lives on the road more than cannibas would...but at the point where you decide to get behind the wheel while under the influence of anything that will decrease your ability to perform, then the point becomes moot really, as endangerment is endangerment, no matter what the source of influence or the level of impact it has on your ability to drive safely.
I knew what you were saying, some people think that the things I listed above have no effect on driving, which is ridiculous. I've driven impaired and also have driven with the said distractions.
My experience is when I've got my stereo cranked to Comatose, I'm probably more "impaired" then I am after smoking a bowl. But that is me, and we all handle things differently.
I'm not condoning what I'm doing, just giving others a different perspective.
I don't buy that for a second...meth fucks with your brain....marijuana I don't think so.
I used to smoke and I must say that this was my point of view but when I look at my friends who started with me...man, they look like shit, their world just turn about the next smoke, books about cannabis, songs about cannabis, movies about cannabis and paranoia. I remember that my friends couldn't sit in a pub for an half an hour without having the desire to go out for a joint. It was really ridiculous, we were hiding in parks and everyone who came around waked up such paranoid ideas, like "he's surely from the police". When it all started it was funny getting stoned sometimes, laughing about everything, feeling good, no bad ideas. We were 3 at first and after a few weeks we were about a dozen. My best friend during this time devellopped his personnality, he didn't had much friends and really quick he saw his chance with cannabis, started sharing his joint, dealing and then had in his eyes this gloryfull idea to plant marijuhana. One day while we were at school, the director came in and told my friend that his mother was waiting in his office. She was there because my friend forgot a burning joint on his sofa and it started to burn, firemen came and then the police who found Cannabis plants. He should be lucky having a so good mom because the police gave her the chance to decide if they should take the plants and the son to their office because he was still minor and the police just found 2 plants while he had a room beside the garage filled with almost 25 plants...but this hadn't change his way of life and until that day I decide to quit smoking. Don't really know what happened to all of them but I'm sure that they have a lot of problems.
Beavis : Is this Pearl Jam?
Butt-head: This guy makes faces like Eddie Vedder.
Beavis: No, Eddie Vedder makes faces like this guy.
Butt-head: I heard these guys, like, came first and Pearl Jam ripped them off.
Beavis: No, Pearl Jam came first.
Butt-head: Well, they both suck.
I've seen plenty of people waste their lives doing nothing but smoking bongs, so my experience tells me its a drug that shouldn't be used regulary. I don't see any problem going out and getting pissed on weekends (or occassional pot use) but habitual use of ANY drug ie: alcohol, pot or harder drugs is just a stupid thing to do.
it is not a toy to be played with; it is a staple that mother earth has given us...do we not protect our mother?
all insanity:
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light
Comments
when it comes down to it; abuse is drawn from within. if you're a pot abuser; you would have been an alcoholic if you didn't discover pot.
Smoking marijuana does not appear to increase the risk of lung cancer or head-and-neck malignancies, even among heavy users, researchers reported here. Action Points
Inform interested patients that the results of this study suggest that marijuana smoking does not appear to increase the risk of cancers of the lung, head, or neck, but there is also no evidence that it offers a protective effect.
Caution patients that marijuana smoke may cause or exacerbate other conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
This study was published as an abstract and presented orally at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary as they have not yet been reviewed and published in a peer-reviewed publication.
"We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use, more than 500 to 1,000 uses, would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana, said Donald Tashkin, M.D., of the University of California in Los Angeles.
But in fact, they reported at the American Thoracic Society meeting here, marijuana use was associated with cancer risk ratios below 1.0, indicating that a history of pot smoking had no effect on the risk for respiratory cancers.
Dr. Tashkin was quick to point out, however, that marijuana does not appear to have a protective effect against cancer. "If it did, there would be a dose-dependent effect, with people who smoked more having a lower risk," he said. "We didn't see that."
Studies have shown that marijuana contains many compounds that when burned, produce about 50% higher concentrations of some carcinogenic chemicals than tobacco cigarettes.
In addition, heavy, habitual marijuana use can produce accelerated malignant change in lung explants, and evidence on bronchial biopsies of pre-malignant histopathologic and molecular changes, Dr. Tashkin said.
The investigators had also previously shown that smoking one marijuana cigarette leads to the deposition in the lungs of four times as much tar as smoking a tobacco cigarette containing the same amount of plant material. Marijuana cigarettes are not filtered and are more loosely packed than tobacco, so there's less filtration of the tar. In addition, pot smokers hold the smoke in their lungs about four times longer than tobacco smokers do, Dr. Tashkin pointed out.
He and his colleagues, led by epidemiologist Hal Morgenstern, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, conducted a study to look at possible associations between marijuana use and the risk of respiratory cancers among middle-age adults in the Los Angeles area.
For the population-based case-control study, they identified cancer cases among people from the ages of 18 to 59, using the Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance Program registry.
They identified 611 people with lung cancer, 601 with cancers of the head and neck, and 1,040 controls matched by age, gender and neighborhood (as a surrogate for socioeconomic status).
They conducted extensive personal interviews to determine lifetime marijuana use, measured in joint-years, with one joint-year equivalent to 365 marijuana cigarettes. The interviewers also asked participants about tobacco use, alcohol consumption, use of other drugs, socioeconomic status, diet, occupation, and family history of cancer.
The investigators also used logistic regression to estimate the effect of marijuana use on lung cancer risk, adjusting for age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, and cumulative tobacco smoking and alcohol use.
They found that the heaviest users in the study had smoked more than 60 joint years worth of marijuana, or more than 22,000 joints in their lifetime. Moderately heavy users smoked between 11,000 and 22,000 joints.
"That's an enormous amount of marijuana," Dr. Tashkin said.
Despite the heavy use, "in no category was there any increased risk, nor was there any suggestion that smoking more led to a higher odds ratio," he continued. "There was no dose-response—not even a suggestion of a dose response—and in all types of cancer except one, oral cancer, the odds ratios were less than one."
The confidence intervals around the odds ratios were wide however, and the odds ratios did not show a dose response.
In contrast, tobacco smoking was associated with increased risk for all cancers, and there was a "powerful" dose-response relationship. People who smoked more than two packs of cigarettes per day had a 21-fold risk for cancer, as opposed to a less than onefold risk for marijuana, Dr. Tashkin said.
"When we restricted the analysis to those who didn't smoke any tobacco we found the same results, and when we looked for interaction between tobacco and smoking—would marijuana increase the risk, potentiate the carcinogenic effect of tobacco—we didn't find that, nor did we find a protective effect against the effect of tobacco, which is very important, because the majority of marijuana smokers also smoke tobacco," he commented.
It's possible that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in marijuana smoke may encourage apoptosis, or programmed cell death, causing cells to die off before they have a chance to undergo malignant transformation, he said.
Dr. Tashkin also noted that "it's never a good idea to take anything into your lungs, including marijuana smoke."
Did you read it?
Although there are carcenogins in burning it, they could find no correlation between the cancers and pot.
Here's a better schizo one.
http://www.mediacampaign.org/newsroom/factsheets/marij_mhealth.html
the bad idea or me befallen by it?
i did actually learn about it before i tried it, because i could find nothing else that would help ease my problem with migraines. that is why i knew it was safe and effective, and it has helped me a great deal to live life without the pain that i used to have to endure for days at a time.
in the long term, marijuana use has shown no adverse or negative impact on brain function. in other words once you stop it does not "fuck up your brain" as you claimed. the same cannot be said of alcohol, which is far more dangerous and will have lasting effects on many organs in the body.
in the short term i would agree that there is a slight loss of short term memory and recall, but certainly nothing that is permanent as you suggested.
Have we lost our way tonight?
Have we lost our hope to sorrow?
Feels like were all alone
Running further from what’s right
And there are no more heroes to follow
So what are we becoming?
Where did we go wrong?
Till there aint nothing left worth taking away from me.....
I was waiting for you "fucking ignorant potheads!"
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the word marijuana is assoiciated with scare-tactic propaganda....
ms./mr. psychologist......thank you for jumping on....
one more day of work and have a chance to read and absorb...thank you for keeping my thread alive.....
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light
DEFINITION FOR CARCiNOGENIC
Carcinogenic: Causing cancer or contributing to the causation of cancer.
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=11094
Pot does not cuase or contribute to the cause of cancer therefore it is non-carcinogenic. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
the bad idea or me befallen by it?
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=57710
The fact is that it does contain known carcinogens, the question still remains how those are effecting the body. I wouldn't conclude anything just yet. It is far from being "proven" that it does not cause cancer.
11/91 chicago
7/11/95 chicago
6/29/98 chicago
5/30/00 london UK
6/4/00 manchester UK
10/8/00 alpine valley
10/9/00 chicago
6/18/03 chicago
PLAY ALASKA U PUSSIES
I've seen plenty of people waste their lives doing nothing but smoking bongs, so my experience tells me its a drug that shouldn't be used regulary. I don't see any problem going out and getting pissed on weekends (or occassional pot use) but habitual use of ANY drug ie: alcohol, pot or harder drugs is just a stupid thing to do.
Have we lost our way tonight?
Have we lost our hope to sorrow?
Feels like were all alone
Running further from what’s right
And there are no more heroes to follow
So what are we becoming?
Where did we go wrong?
that depends on how much you smoke. i wrote a paper on thc for a neurobiology class(i think that i was the only one who found this funny, the prof wasn't so amused), if you're an occasional smoker , (even a couple times a week), it won't. the big problems with weed are the same as with cigarettes; lung problems (so go eat your weed, it's better for you), it does cause cancer, there's more tar in a joint than a cig of equal size (we also get the same amount of chemicals into our lungs by going to our city's centers), but most of us don't smoke enough weed for it to be a problem. studies have shown that there aren't permanent effects done to your chemical composition, or your brain. long-term frequent users will have changes in their neurotransmitters (think serotonin), and i'm not sure on this bit, but i think that can be corrected if they stop.
what does piss me off are the ppl who say 'i can drive just fine when i'm high, i have more focus actually', no, no you don't, driving high is just as bad as driving drunk.
and yeah, i smoke weed, and yeah, i'm all for it's legalization (although, as a canadian, i can be pretty sure that my weed is grown domestically, and noone was actually hurt in its making/transport), remember, once upon a time alcohol used to be illegal.
Albert Einstein
aaaahhh.....dont know about that...sounds like propaganda to me!!! no more or less than beer/wine/.....shit anything for that matter.....
everythings gonna kill u someday.....
true but if so many people make a waste of their lives (i'm sure this problem isn't confined to suburban melbourne) then all of these people on this thread saying its a fine drug are wrong IMO. people do need to show some self control, and as i said i can't see a problem with occassional use (eg at parties and the like although i don't see the attraction myself). however i have seen more people waste their lives due to use of this drug than from alcohol.
Have we lost our way tonight?
Have we lost our hope to sorrow?
Feels like were all alone
Running further from what’s right
And there are no more heroes to follow
So what are we becoming?
Where did we go wrong?
And alcohol spans the generations -- lots of people "age out" of marijuana use. That is, they use less of it as they get older.
Also, here in the US, we have a serious problem with binge drinking -- which I think is because of our bizarre drinking age. Go to any college campus, and there will be some well-publicized, well-attended, university-condoned (kind of) rituals that revolve explicitly around alcohol abuse. But these kids today -- they don't stop drinking until they're puking their guts up in the gutter. That's how they know they've got a buzz on. In *MY* day, you drank until just *before* you threw up. In any event, it's hardly healthy behavior.
doesn't feel that way right now. That's the hopeful
idea . . . Hope didn't get much applause . . .
Hope! Hope is the underdog!"
-- EV, Live at the Showbox
good post, and it is very dangerous and irresponsible to get behind the wheel when under the influence of anything that is going to slow down or change reaction time.
True, but wouldn't car stereos, cell phones, annoying passengers, kids watching dvd's in the back of the van fall under this category as well?
Best way to smoke it is when listening to the Dark side of the Moon record by Pink Floyd
♪♫♪♫♫
i wouldn't say so much car stereos, but i would agree with the others, as they involve interaction with other people and are certainly a distraction.
i was just agreeing with tara's point that some people play it off like it's not big of a deal to drive under the influence of cannibas. i would say that alcohol impairs your judgement, reaction time and endangers lives on the road more than cannibas would...but at the point where you decide to get behind the wheel while under the influence of anything that will decrease your ability to perform, then the point becomes moot really, as endangerment is endangerment, no matter what the source of influence or the level of impact it has on your ability to drive safely.
I knew what you were saying, some people think that the things I listed above have no effect on driving, which is ridiculous. I've driven impaired and also have driven with the said distractions.
My experience is when I've got my stereo cranked to Comatose, I'm probably more "impaired" then I am after smoking a bowl. But that is me, and we all handle things differently.
I'm not condoning what I'm doing, just giving others a different perspective.
I used to smoke and I must say that this was my point of view but when I look at my friends who started with me...man, they look like shit, their world just turn about the next smoke, books about cannabis, songs about cannabis, movies about cannabis and paranoia. I remember that my friends couldn't sit in a pub for an half an hour without having the desire to go out for a joint. It was really ridiculous, we were hiding in parks and everyone who came around waked up such paranoid ideas, like "he's surely from the police". When it all started it was funny getting stoned sometimes, laughing about everything, feeling good, no bad ideas. We were 3 at first and after a few weeks we were about a dozen. My best friend during this time devellopped his personnality, he didn't had much friends and really quick he saw his chance with cannabis, started sharing his joint, dealing and then had in his eyes this gloryfull idea to plant marijuhana. One day while we were at school, the director came in and told my friend that his mother was waiting in his office. She was there because my friend forgot a burning joint on his sofa and it started to burn, firemen came and then the police who found Cannabis plants. He should be lucky having a so good mom because the police gave her the chance to decide if they should take the plants and the son to their office because he was still minor and the police just found 2 plants while he had a room beside the garage filled with almost 25 plants...but this hadn't change his way of life and until that day I decide to quit smoking. Don't really know what happened to all of them but I'm sure that they have a lot of problems.
Butt-head: This guy makes faces like Eddie Vedder.
Beavis: No, Eddie Vedder makes faces like this guy.
Butt-head: I heard these guys, like, came first and Pearl Jam ripped them off.
Beavis: No, Pearl Jam came first.
Butt-head: Well, they both suck.
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light
a derivitive of nature.
nature is god
god is love
love is light
How?
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