Editor’s Note: There is a groundswell of attention in the news to marijuana’s role in causing and preventing various types of cancers. Last week, AlterNet published an article from the Marijuana Policy Project about a new study finding that pot smokers have a lower risk of head and neck cancers than people who don’t smoke pot. Earlier this year, the corporate media pounced on a study suggesting that men who had been using marijuana at least once per week and who had started smoking pot prior to age 18 had an elevated risk of testicular cancer known as nonseminoma, which makes up fewer than half of one percent of all cancer cases among men. Head, neck and testicular cancers are of course quite serious ailments to deal with, but what about cancer of the most obvious organ at risk with pot smoking, the lungs? Where’s the science on that? The article below by Fred Gardner, editor of the medical marijuana research quarterly journal O’Shaughnessy’s, shares the results of a major medical study the media completely ignored, and his conclusions are quite blunt on the matter: Smoking pot doesn’t cause lung cancer. In fact, the study found that cigarette smokers […]
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
Author: FRED GARDNER
Source: AlterNet/O'Shaughnessy's
Publication Date: 28-Aug-09
Link: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
Source: AlterNet/O'Shaughnessy's
Publication Date: 28-Aug-09
Link: Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer
Stephan: Further evidence that the massive incarceration of marijuana smokers is entirely a matter of cultural bias, having little to do with science.
Some years ago, I had dinner with a senior DEA official after a conference. He had several drinks before we went to dinner, a couple at dinner, and a couple after dinner. I can still see in my mind's eye, a slightly drunk, very opinionated, government official holding a liquid drug in his hand, lecturing me about the harm caused to health by marijuana.