cannabisnews.com: How Deadly Is Pot?





How Deadly Is Pot?
Posted by CN Staff on September 24, 2003 at 10:29:19 PT
By Randy Dotinga, HealthDay Reporter
Source: HealthScout.com
It's no secret that marijuana makes people high. But can it also send them six feet under? That's the crux of an ongoing debate in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal between experts who disagree about the potential health risks of smoking pot.The latest volley in the battle came this month, when an American doctor took aim at suggestions by a British team that marijuana could be a major killer.
"I don't think it [marijuana] contributes very much to people dying. It's not in the league of alcohol or tobacco," says Dr. Stephen Sidney, an associate director of clinical research with the Kaiser Permanente health plan who has studied the effects of marijuana use on life span.The debate began in May, when the journal ran an editorial by a British medical professor and colleagues suggesting the United Kingdom isn't paying enough attention to the health risks of marijuana. "We were concerned that smoking is constantly being regarded as a major public health hazard, while cannabis, which is also usually smoked rather than consumed any other way, seems to have been completely overlooked," says Dr. John A. Henry, a professor at the Imperial College School of Medicine at St Mary's Hospital in London.Tobacco smoking kills almost 1 percent of smokers each year in the United Kingdom, and if marijuana had the same effect, some 30,000 people would die from it annually, Henry and colleagues wrote. "Even if the number of deaths attributable to cannabis turned out to be a fraction of that figure, smoking cannabis [marijuana] would still be a major public health hazard," the team wrote.The suggestions in the editorial spawned a flurry of letters and commentaries. In the most recent one, printed in the Sept. 20 issue of the British Medical Journal, Sidney points to two studies that debunked any connection between marijuana and higher death rates.In a Swedish study, researchers found no link between marijuana use among more than 45,000 male military conscripts, aged 18 to 20, and their death rates over the next 15 years. Another study of 65,171 men and women enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente health plan found that, with the exception of AIDS patients, marijuana users were not more likely than others to die over a 10-year period.Sidney acknowledges the follow-up periods are short, and says the marijuana users in the studies could still suffer from higher rates of disease later in life.Even so, evidence suggests smoking pot is much safer than smoking cigarettes, he says. "One of the reasons is that marijuana is not inherently as addictive as tobacco because it doesn't contain nicotine. Many more people get addicted to tobacco smoking than marijuana smoking."Also, pot users take much less smoke into their lungs than tobacco users, and many stop using marijuana as they get older, Sidney says. "It's the unusual person who's smoking seven marijuana cigarettes or joints a day. They're not smoking more than one on average, and they tend to quit."Some studies have linked marijuana use to a variety of medical problems, including schizophrenia, head and neck cancer and lung cancer, but the research isn't conclusive, Sidney says. There's also evidence that suggests people with heart disease should be careful about smoking pot.What to do? "There are common-sense measures about using marijuana," Sidney suggests. "It should be discouraged in teenagers. Young teenagers getting involved in drugs are going to have more of a problem with it. And people ought not to be driving around in cars and operating dangerous machinery when they're intoxicated with anything."On the other side of the debate, Henry wants to see more prevention efforts, if only because pot smoking may contribute to mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. "This alone is sufficient for a public health campaign, given the disabling nature of the disorder for the individual and the massive public health burden it imposes on society," he says.More information:To learn more about marijuana, see the National Institute on Drug Abuse or, for a different perspective, try the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Note: Experts debate the health effects of marijuana.Source: HealthScout.comAuthor: Randy Dotinga, HealthDay ReporterPublished: September 24, 2003Copyright: 2003 ScoutNews, LLCWebsite: http://www.healthscout.com/Contact: editors healthscoutnews.com Related Articles & Web Site:NORMLhttp://www.norml.org/Health Risks of Cannabis Probably Overstatedhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread17352.shtmlCannabis Smoking Could Cause 30,000 Deaths http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16142.shtmlCannabis May Become Aspirin of the 21st Century http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread16007.shtml 
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Comment #8 posted by The GCW on September 24, 2003 at 20:00:24 PT
Cannabis prohibition is getting harder to ignore.
Every day more and more lies are discredited. More and more, the truth is mulitiplying.It's a good seed.
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Comment #7 posted by FoM on September 24, 2003 at 15:23:18 PT
Press Release from ONDCP
Anti-Drug Ads Catch Eyes of Teens - Surveys By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An ad campaign that includes a message linking drug use with terrorism seems to be getting the attention of its target audience of U.S. teens, the White House said on Wednesday. 
Two surveys of more than 30,000 teen-agers suggest the print and broadcast advertisements have made them more likely to believe drug use is dangerous, said White House "drug czar" John Walters. "These findings confirm that the media campaign is working," Walters said in a statement. "Our ads are contributing to a climate of disapproval of drug use that is so imperative to reducing the human, social, and financial costs of this deadly disease." In the Partnership Attitude Tracking Study of 7,500 youths, conducted by RoperASW, 49 percent of school-age teens who had "high exposure" to the ads said they were unlikely to try or use drugs versus 38 percent who said they had not seen or heard the ads. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that teens who had seen or heard any drug prevention messages outside of school used drugs at a rate that was 15 percent lower than those who had not -- and 80 percent of the 24,000 teens in the survey had. One set of ads, designed after joint research with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, links buying drugs with supporting terrorists, kidnappers and criminals around the world. "Young people tend to be very altruistic and they think they are immortal," said Tom Riley, a spokesman for Walters' Office of National Drug Control Policy. So telling teens something is dangerous tends not to affect their behavior, he said. "When you say, 'Don't do this because it makes the world a worse place,' then you are talking their language a little more" Riley told Reuters. It was too soon to tell if the ad campaign actually translated to fewer drug users, Riley said. But the attitude survey of students in grades 6 to 12 found that past-year marijuana use dropped 9 percent between 2002 and 2003. "This fits in with our other research," said Howard Simon of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America . "The kids who see these ads more often have stronger anti-drug attitudes and seem to show a lower rate of drug use." A survey issued earlier this month by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that 19.5 million Americans used illicit drugs in 2002. That works out to 8.3 percent of the population age 12 or older. The surveys can be found on the Internet at: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov
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Comment #6 posted by lombar on September 24, 2003 at 13:05:41 PT
Prohibition vs. murder rate
The murder rates spiked during alcohol prohiobition and were surpassed by the war on some drugs. Prohibition KILLS.http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/thornton4.htmlhttp://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ct-prohibition.html
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Comment #5 posted by E_Johnson on September 24, 2003 at 12:08:52 PT
And how deadly is prison?
The medical profession treats the legal status of marijuana as an abstraction, not as something that has a physical harm potential all of its own.People joke about prison rape, as if it is common, and then they turn around and pretend it doesn't exist as part of the cost-benefit analysis surrounding marijuana laws.It's not healthy to get raped. I would think that any doctor would agree, even in Britain.
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Comment #4 posted by 420toker on September 24, 2003 at 12:00:40 PT
Polonium in american smokes huh
I pulled this from hightimes I think. I dont buy it however. 1st alpha radiation has very little energy (electron energy) compared to either gamma or beta radiation. So little in fact it cannot penetrate a sheet of paper or human skin. Secondly if this is possibly true logic would dictate that since this is an american phenomina then those who smoke foreign cigarrets should have a 99% reduced cancer rate than american smokers. This means turkish smokers should only have 1 percent of the smoking related cancer americans have. Since this does not seem to be the case I would have to see this as more myth/addative cause and certainly not 99% or 90% or even 50% as people seen to suffer from lung cancer from smoking the world over in nearly the same ratios smoker to non-smoker.http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/canratrisamt.htmlhttp://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/canc-a26.shtmlThere are actually some very convincing reasons to believe that smoking cigarettes is relatively more dangerous to the body than smoking marijuana on more than one count: (1) It is accepted by a growing number of scientists today that all American cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium-210, the same sort of radiation given off by the plutonium of atom bombs (ionizing alpha radiation). It just so happens that the tobacco plant's roots and leaves are especially good at absorbing radioactive elements from uranium-containing phosphate fertilizers that are required by U.S. law, and from naturally occurring radiation in the soil, air, and water. It is the opinion of C. Everette Koop that this radioactivity, not tar, accounts for at least 90% of all smoking-related lung cancer.
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Comment #3 posted by VitaminT on September 24, 2003 at 11:33:09 PT
The real source of harm
The public health implications resulting from Cannabis prohibition dramatically outweigh the combined harms (real and imagined) associated w/ the Herb itself.That is why most Public Health advocates generally support an end to prohibition.
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Comment #2 posted by Duzt on September 24, 2003 at 11:24:47 PT
Cigarettes and cannabis
There was a 25 year study that started I believe in the 60's that proved that the cancer causer in cigarettes is polonium 210 and that the lead 210 may also have negative synergistic effects with the polonium. The nicotine and other chemicals get you hooked and the radiation kills you. Cigarettes give off radiation, cannabis that is grown in radioactive soil would as well but the studies are conclusive on polonium being the major problem with cigarettes yet doctors and scientists and the such act like it's some big mystery. Why even do the research if you arent going to use the results? 
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Comment #1 posted by ErikGhint on September 24, 2003 at 10:45:34 PT
cannabis vs. ciggarettes
"and if marijuana had the same effect, some 30,000 people would die from it annually"
How horendous!!! Luckily it has a completly different effect so we have nothing to worry about.
Here is an excerpt from Jack Herer's website www.jackherer.com"There are lung irritants involved in any smoke. Cannabis smoke causes mild irritation to the large airways of the lungs. Symptoms disappear when smoking is discontinued. However, unlike tobacco smoke, cannabis smoke does not cause any changes in the small airways, the area where tobacco smoke causes long term and permanent damage. Additionally, a tobacco smoker will smoke 20 to 60 cigarettes a day, while a heavy marijuana smoker may smoke five to seven joints a day, even less when potent high-quality flower tops are available. While tens of millions of Americans smoke pot regularly, cannabis has never caused a known case of lung cancer as of December 1997, according to America's foremost lung expert, Dr. Donald Tashkin of UCLA. He considers the biggest health risk to the lungs would be a person smoking 16 or more "large" spliffs a day of leaf/bud because of the hypoxia of too much smoke and not enough oxygen. Tashkin feels there is no danger for anyone to worry about potentiating emphysema "in any way" by the use of marijuana totally the opposite of tobacco."
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