In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.

One cannabis joint as bad as five cigarettes ...

zipperzapzipperzap Member Posts: 25,057
edited July 2007 in General Discussion
Smoking marijuana damages lungs' airways, study finds

Study shows smoking one marijuana joint effects lungs same as smoking five cigarettes

London - Smoking one cannabis joint is as harmful to a person's lungs as having up to five cigarettes, according to research published on Tuesday.

Those who smoked cannabis damaged both the lungs' small fine airways, used for transporting oxygen, and the large airways, which blocked air flow, the researchers said.

It meant cannabis smokers complained of wheezing, coughing, and chest tightness, the study by experts at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand found.

The researchers tested 339 people - those who smoked only cannabis, those who smoked tobacco, those who smoked both and non-smokers.

The study found only those who smoked tobacco suffered from the crippling lung disease emphysema, but cannabis use stopped the lungs working properly.

"The extent of this damage was directly related to the number of joints smoked, with higher consumption linked to greater incapacity," said the authors of the report published in the medical journal Thorax.

"The effect on the lungs of each joint was equivalent to smoking between 2.5 and five cigarettes in one go."

The British government is considering whether cannabis should be reclassified as a more serious drug because of the dangers associated with stronger strains.

t
Pot may hike risk of psychosis, research finds Soggy stars make mockery of rehab, experts say 1 in 12 full-time workers admits using drugs

"The danger cannabis poses to respiratory health is consistently being overlooked," said Helena Shovelton, Chief Executive of the British Lung Foundation.

"Smoking a joint is more harmful to the lungs than smoking a cigarette and we have just banned people from doing that in public places because of the health risks."

Last week British researchers said using marijuana increased the risk of developing a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20052489/
[:D]

Comments

  • bobskibobski Member Posts: 17,868 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    60 year old report?
    whats new?
    dope is bad.
    imagine that.
    Retired Naval Aviation
    Former Member U.S. Navy Shooting Team
    Former NSSA All American
    Navy Distinguished Pistol Shot
    MO, CT, VA.
  • RockatanskyRockatansky Member Posts: 11,175
    edited November -1
    Not to mention what it does to ones analytical abilities.
  • GotteskriegerGotteskrieger Member Posts: 3,170 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    don't pay no attention these idiotic studies.
  • tsavo303tsavo303 Member Posts: 8,891 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I agree it bad for you and stupid (both types of smoking) but people dont smoke a pack of joints a day!
    Although regular smokes dont turn someone moronic as fast[:D]
  • RockatanskyRockatansky Member Posts: 11,175
    edited November -1
    quote:Originally posted by tsavo303
    I agree it bad for you and stupid (both types of smoking) but people dont smoke a pack of joints a day!
    Although regular smokes dont turn someone moronic as fast[:D]


    Don't know about a pack, but a while back I was kind of considering moving to LA area and we had a neighbor that worked in the movie industry (he was a tech person, not one of them actor-types), and omfg he puffed. I'd be up getting at 6-7am ready to hit the surf and he'd be outside in the yard packing a bowl. Didn't make him stupid or anything, that's just the thing he did.
  • FatstratFatstrat Member Posts: 9,147
    edited November -1
    Yep, heard that 30 years ago. But I think one factor might be that most modern cigs are filtered. Never saw a joint w/a filter.
  • RockatanskyRockatansky Member Posts: 11,175
    edited November -1
    Ever seen an evaporator?
  • hisbigbootygirlhisbigbootygirl Member Posts: 1,856 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    well they can just put that in thier pipe and smoke it!!!
  • spryorspryor Member Posts: 9,155
    edited November -1
    I'm sure over-indulgence of either could cause problems..
  • sierrasamsierrasam Member Posts: 149 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    At $400 an ounce for Sinsemilla, joints are getting skinny these days.
  • HappyNanoqHappyNanoq Member Posts: 12,023
    edited November -1
    That settles it....


    Canabis-joints should be sold in packages of FOUR. !!!


    [:D]
  • frankcastle13frankcastle13 Member Posts: 1,182 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Myth: Cannabis is toxic / poisonous

    From: OPINION AND RECOMMENDED RULING, FINDINGS OF FACT, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW AND DECISION OF Administrative LAW JUDGE,

    DATED: SEP 6 1988

    Findings of Fact:

    "4. Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.

    "5. This is a remarkable statement. First, the record on marijuana encompasses 5,000 years of human experience. Second, marijuana is now used daily by enormous numbers of people throughout the world. Estimates suggest that from twenty million to fifty million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible medical reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death.

    "6. By contrast aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year.

    "7. Drugs used in medicine are routinely given what is called an LD-50. The LD-50 rating indicates at what dosage fifty percent of test animals receiving a drug will die as a result of drug induced toxicity. A number of researchers have attempted to determine marijuana's LD-50 rating in test animals, without success. Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death.

    "8. At present it is estimated that marijuana's LD-50 is around 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman terms this means that in order to induce death a marijuana smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much marijuana as is contained in one marijuana cigarette. NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes weigh approximately .9 grams. A smoker would theoretically have to consume nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about fifteen minutes to induce a lethal response.

    "9. In practical terms, marijuana cannot induce a lethal response as a result of drug-related toxicity.

    "10. Another common medical way to determine drug safety is called the therapeutic ratio. This ratio defines the difference between a therapeutically effective dose and a dose which is capable of inducing adverse effects.

    "11. A commonly used over-the-counter product like aspirin has a therapeutic ratio of around 1:20. Two aspirins are the recommended dose for adult patients. Twenty times this dose, forty aspirins, may cause a lethal reaction in some patients, and will almost certainly cause gross injury to the digestive system, including extensive internal bleeding.

    "12. The therapeutic ratio for prescribed drugs is commonly around 1:10 or lower. Valium, a commonly used prescriptive drug, may cause very serious biological damage if patients use ten times the recommended (therapeutic) dose.

    "13. There are, of course, prescriptive drugs which have much lower therapeutic ratios. Many of the drugs used to treat patients with cancer, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis are highly toxic. The

    therapeutic ratio of some of the drugs used in antineoplastic therapies, for example, are regarded as extremely toxic poisons with therapeutic ratios that may fall below 1:1.5. These drugs also have very low LD-50 ratios and can result in toxic, even lethal reactions, while being properly employed.

    "14. By contrast, marijuana's therapeutic ratio, like its LD-50, is impossible to quantify because it is so high."

    ==

    In the journal FUNDAMENTAL AND APPLIED TOXICOLOGY, Dr. William Slikker, director of the Neurotoxicology Division of the National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR), described the health of monkeys exposed to very high levels of cannabis for an extended period:

    "The general health of the monkeys was not compromised by a year of marijuana exposure as indicated by weight gain, carboxyhemoglobin and clinical chemistry/hematology values."

    (TOXICOLOGY LETTERS, No Increase in Carcinogen-DNA Adducts in the Lungs of Monkeys Exposed Chronically to Marijuana Smoke, 1992, Dec;63 (3): 321-32.

    THE ARKANSAS TIMES (Refer Madness. 16 Sept 1993) asked Dr. Merle Paule of NCTR about evidence of cannabis toxicity and the health of the monkeys in the study, Dr. Paule said,

    "There's just nothing there. They were all fine."


    Myth: Cannabis causes cancer

    BOSTON, Jan. 30, 1997 (UPI):

    "The U.S. federal government has failed to make public its own 1994 study that undercuts its position that marijuana is carcinogenic - a $2 million study by the National Toxicology Program. The program's deputy director, John Bucher (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/dirtob/bucher.htm), says the study "found absolutely no evidence of cancer." In fact, animals that received THC had fewer cancers. Bucher denies his agency had been pressured to shelve the report, saying the delay in making it public was due to a personnel shortage.

    CANCER PREVENTION DATA

    "Marijuana Use and Mortality": AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, April 1997:

    TABLE 2 Relative Risk of Death for Ever Users and Current Users of Marijuana, by Sex and Cause of Death: Kaiser Pemanente Medical Care Program Members (n = 65,171), Oakland and San Francisco, June 1979 through December

    1985 - section of table regarding cancer (Neoplasms) as the cause of death:

    MEN

    Ever Users Relative Risk of Cancer Death

    Full Model 0.78

    Non-smokers/ Occasional Drinkers 0.46

    Current Users

    Full Model 0.97

    Non-smokers/ Occasional Drinkers 0.75

    WOMEN

    Ever Users

    Full Model 0.82

    Non-smokers/ Occasional Drinkers 0.70

    Current Users

    Full Model 0.86

    Non-smokers/ Occasional Drinkers 0.56

    Here, numbers less than one for Relative Risk of Cancer Death represent a lower rate of fatal cancer among marijuana smokers in the large Kaiser Study from California. For example, women who are current marijuana smokers but did not smoke tobacco were found to have only 56% of the risk of cancer death as compared to other women who were non-smokers of both tobacco and marijuana.

    Not only is the evidence linking cannabis smoking to cancer negative, but the largest human studies cited indicated that cannabis users had lower rates of cancer than nonusers. What's more, those who smoked both cannabis and tobacco had lower rates of lung cancer than those who smoked only tobacco-a strong indication of chemoprevention. Even more, in 1975 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia found that cannabis showed powerful antitumour activity against both benign and malignant tumours (the government then banned all future cannabis/cancer research).

    (The Emperor Wears No Cloths. Jack Herer, Queen of Clubs Pub, 1991)

    (Ganja in Jamaica: A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use. 1975. Anchor Books)

    (Cannabis in Costa Rica: A Study of Chronic Marijuana Use, 1980-82, Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 3401 Science Center Philadelphia, PA.)

    The NEW ENGLISH DISPENSATORY of 1764 recommends boiled cannabis roots for the elimination of tumours.(Marijuana: The First 12,000 Years. Plenum Press, 1980)

    Powerful evidence that cannabis not only does not cause cancer, but that it may prevent and even cure cancer.<http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_health2.shtml&gt;

    SO, YOU THOUGHT IT WAS THE TAR THAT CAUSED CANCER


    Myth: Cannabis smoking damages the lungs

    Researchers at the University of California (UCLA) School of Medicine have announced the results of an 8 - year study into the effects of long-term cannabis smoking on the lungs. In Volume 155 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Dr. D.P. Tashkin reported "Findings from the present long-term, follow-up study of heavy, habitual marijuana smokers argue against the concept that continuing heavy use of marijuana is a significant risk factor for the development of [chronic lung disease. ..Neither the continuing nor the intermittent marijuana smokers exhibited any significantly different rates of decline in [lung function]" as compared with those individuals who never smoked marijuana. Researchers added: "No differences were noted between even quite heavy marijuana smoking and non-smoking of marijuana."


    http://www.ccguide.org.uk/safety.html
    Thats a link for more cannabis myths that have been busted. The studies that say it's 5 times worse than cigarettes are garbage. There hasn't been a single recorded death from the use of cannabis alone in the history of it's use. All it's doing by being illegal is keeping our prisons full of non-violent offenders and taking up room that could be used by rapists, murderers, and child molestors.
Sign In or Register to comment.