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Is Marijuana Harmless?

Cyphermage

Critical Thinker
C
Joined
May 13, 2006
Messages
358
According to a new study by shocked scientists at the University of California Los Angeles, even heavy marijuana use does not increase a person's chances of developing lung cancer.

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

This even though marijuana smoke contains more of the chemicals linked to lung cancer.

Heavy cigarette use, on the other hand, increases lung cancer risk by a factor of 20.

We know that tobacco plants concentrate natural alpha particle emitting radioisotopes, such as Polonium, and that ingestion of these radioactive substances into the lungs causes part of the risk of lung cancer in tobacco smokers, much like Radon in your basement increases your cancer risk. But it was always assumed that this risk was small compared to the effect of the carcinogens in the smoke.

It may be time to re-examine this hypothesis.
 
Pot may not cause as much lung cancer as topbacco, but it's also been linked to schizophrenia and mental illness.

The problems associated with pot smoking are many.

PS. I spent most of the 90s stoned. It didn't damage my brain in any way, it just made me miss those 10 years.
 
arthwollipot said:
Pot may not cause as much lung cancer as topbacco, but it's also been linked to schizophrenia and mental illness.

The problems associated with pot smoking are many.

PS. I spent most of the 90s stoned. It didn't damage my brain in any way, it just made me miss those 10 years.
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I don't drink, smoke, or use intoxicants, and I never have. I've never used a prescription medication for more than ten days, and only when really necessary. I prefer to face life unbefuddled.

Nonetheless, I don't think I have a right to substitute my judgment for someone elses, or judge the relative value to them of how they spend their time. I certainly don't think this should be a function of government.

I have friends who tell me that if I just take LSD, I will see the answers to all the unsolved mathematical problems I am working on. While this may be true, I suspect the "answers" will look like total crap when the effects of the drug wear off.

I've conceded that maybe someday when I no longer need my brain, I might be talked into some drug experimentation. Then again, perhaps not. :)
 
arthwollipot said:
Pot may not cause as much lung cancer as topbacco, but it's also been linked to schizophrenia and mental illness.

The problems associated with pot smoking are many.
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No, I beg to differ, but it hasn't been linked to those. What has been found is that probably triggers mental illness in people predisposed to schizophrenia and other diseases. Furthermore, this (the consumption of marihuana) encompassed in what is been called as the "Reward defficit syndrome" (of which there is still a lot of research pending), correlates with ALL kinds of addictive drugs, even with legal ones such as alcohol.

(i've got references.. but in home :S certainly at least 3 different toxicology books and a forensic medicine one..)

If marihuana was linked to schizophrenia and mental illness, then we should have noticed an statistically significant increase in the incidence of those diseases in the Netherlands after the tolerance of marihuana; which is not the case :)

Have you seen Pen & Teller Bullsh|t show about marihuana prohibition?
 
Is Marijuana Harmless?
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Insuffient information to come to a valid conclusion. Just don't use the stuff while driveing.
 
I don't drink or smoke either (hell, I don't even drink coffee). But for the life of me, I can't see why marijuana shouldn't be legalized, with the same restrictions as alcohol. I suspect pot isn't harmless exactly (I think anytime you draw any kind of smoke into your lungs, it probably isn't good for you one way or another). But on the damage scale, I bet it compares rather favorably to alcohol and tobacco.
 
Cyphermage said:
I have friends who tell me that if I just take LSD, I will see the answers to all the unsolved mathematical problems I am working on. While this may be true, I suspect the "answers" will look like total crap when the effects of the drug wear off.
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On one of my early LSD trips, I walked around the streets with a piece of chalk, chalking "THE TIME IS NOW" everywhere. On another trip, I wrote "THIS IS A PLASTIC PLANE OF REALITY" everywhere.
It all seemed pefectly logical at the time.

As for the study allegedly showing that dope doesn't cause lung cancer, did they take into account the fact that very few dope smokers get through more than a couple of joints daily, while ciggarette wmokers routinely go through 40 or more daily?
 
I would have to agree that while marijuana may not be harmless, but it is probably safer than alcohol and many kinds of presciptions drugs. It may even have some medicinal uses that haven't been reserched better because of the government's crusade against the plant. I've known several people with Cancer and MS that say it is better than the stuff prescribed by their doctors and far less expensive.
 
Cyphermage said:
It may be time to re-examine this hypothesis.
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I don't understand the drug issue at all really. Here are some facts, see if you can make sense of them.

1) We know that for many drugs, like marijuana, the potential harm is much lower than that of already legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco. This implies that their illegal status has more to do with politics than anything else.

2) The alcohol and tobacco giants have a huge lobbying presence in washington and could probably get drugs like marijuana legalized if they wanted to.

3) The alcohol and tobacco giants have the infrastructure in place to jump to the lead in any new market created by the legalization of a now-illegal drug, such as marijuana.

4) Marijuana remains illegal.

What did I miss? It seems to me that the drug industry would make a sh--load of cash if marijuana was legalized. So why hasn't it been done?
 
stup_id said:
No, I beg to differ, but it hasn't been linked to those. What has been found is that probably triggers mental illness in people predisposed to schizophrenia and other diseases.
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The first sentence suggests that there is no known link ... and then the second sentence appears to happy acknowledge a link ("probably triggers"), albeit in some cases.

stup_id, please indicate who you were begging to differ with ... apart from yourself. :confused:
 
Har har.

I've hung around with enough stoners to know it definitely has long-term deleterious effects on heavy users, but frankly that's the same for pretty much anything. If I eat enough fish suppers then my health is sure to be harmed too, yet in small quantities food is actually beneficial. Go figure!

As for joints not causing lung cancer specifically, I would contend that it comes down the recipe of the joint as to how much your risk is increased by. Most people mix a little drug with a lot of tobacco, so they're smoking 90% cigarette and 10% gange. That's got to be a cancer risk.
 
A lot of cats put down grass because they say things like, it makes you lose your memory, you know? I just want to say that, um...well, I forgot what I was going to say, but I'm sure I had a point somewhere.

(ok, borrowed copiously from Cheech and Chong)
 
stup_id said:
If marihuana was linked to schizophrenia and mental illness, then we should have noticed an statistically significant increase in the incidence of those diseases in the Netherlands after the tolerance of marihuana; which is not the case :)
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From http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/1/parlbus/...m#4. International comparison of cannabis use :
In conclusion, trends in cannabis use in the Netherlands are rather similar to those in other European countries, and Dutch figures on cannabis use are not out of line with those from countries that did not decriminalise cannabis. The U.S. figures consistently appear to be higher then those in the Netherlands. Over time prevalence of cannabis use show a wave-like trend in many countries, including the Netherlands. This supports Reuband’s earlier conclusion that trends cannabis use evolve rather independently from drug policy, and that countries with a ‘liberal’ cannabis policy do not have higher or lower rates than countries with a more repressive policy. [Reuband, 1995].

Consequently, it is unlikely that decriminalisation of cannabis will cause an increase in cannabis use.
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Whether or not cannabis is linked to schizophrenia, it certainly can be harmful to your mental health. Myself, I've spent my puberty smoking dope. When I had an emotional problem, my solution was to light up another joint. Needless to say, that wasn't working out for me in the long run.

Also, my thinking skills and memory clearly suffered from cannabis. And not just when I was stoned, because if you smoke a lot there's always enough THC in your body to prevent you from becoming entirely sober. When I finally stopped it took at least months for the clouds in my head to clear up.

On the other hand, I know people who smoke pot every day and seem to keep a clear mind; they seem to be an exception though.
 
It's not GOOD for you, but compared to a lot of other crap we pour into our bodies, it doesn't strike me as a particularly big deal. I take stuff daily, with a prescription, that does much weirder and more pronounced stuff to my body (and which passes on through and causes fish downstream to become hermaphrodites, for that matter, which is something that to my knowledge has never been claimed about pot.) I suppose it's possible that pot triggers schizophrenia in some very unlucky people, but my birth control pills trigger blood clots and sudden death in some very unlucky people, and yet they're still legal.*

Using it to excess as a coping mechanism, as many people do, is not healthy, but neither is using anything to excess as a coping mechanism, be it sex, drugs, sky-diving, religion, or violence. It's hardly the fault of the weed if people use it to avoid dealing with their emotional problems, any more than it's the fault of sex, alcohol, sky-diving, religion, etc, etc. It's not particularly physically habit forming, and if we illegalized everything people use as emotional crutches, we'd probably be allowed to sit quietly in an empty room, breathing shallowly, and not much else. (And no daydreaming or meditation or exercising!)

That we lock people up for using it quietly in their own homes strikes me as a desperate absurdity. But the powers keeping it illegal are fairly vast and sweet reason does not seem to make much impact. Que sera, sera...


*Doubtless some people would prefer they weren't, but that's a topic for another post.
 
The Don said:
Still feeling stoned the next day
Excessive consumption of junk food
And because it's illegal, you have to buy it from bad people
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Wow; since you seem to believe everything you hear, you should stop listening.

What's wrong with feeling stoned the next day? If the point of smoking is to get stoned today, what's wrong with also feeling stoned tomorrow?
 
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