It's Official: Smoking Marijuana is Safer Than Puffing on Cigarettes

1) Tobacco is cancer causing largely because it delivers specific carcinogens such as NNK and NNAL that are not present in cannabis. Not all "tar" is created equal, and tobacco has some of the most carcinogenic types of tar known to science, whereas cannabis does not.

2) Cannabis (marijuana) use is associated with a DECREASE in several types of cancer... potentially even providing a protective effect against tobacco and alcohol related cancer development.

Donald Tashkin, a UCLA researcher whose work is funded by NIDA, did a case-control study comparing 1,200 patients with lung, head and neck cancers to a matched group with no cancer. Even the heaviest marijuana smokers had no increased risk of cancer, and had somewhat lower cancer risk than non-smokers (tobacco smokers had a 20-fold increased lung cancer risk). Tashkin D. Marijuana Use and Lung Cancer: Results of a Case-Control Study. American Thoracic Society International Conference. May 23, 2006.

Researchers at the Kaiser-Permanente HMO, funded by NIDA, followed 65,000 patients for nearly a decade, comparing cancer rates among non-smokers, tobacco smokers, and marijuana smokers. Tobacco smokers had massively higher rates of lung cancer and other cancers. Marijuana smokers who didn't also use tobacco had no increase in risk of tobacco-related cancers or of cancer risk overall. In fact their rates of lung and most other cancers were slightly lower than non-smokers, though the difference did not reach statistical significance. Sidney, S. et al. Marijuana Use and Cancer Incidence (California, United States). Cancer Causes and Control. Vol. 8. Sept. 1997, p. 722-728.

The fact that learning and memory are affected by cannabis, is nothing but an old wives tale, concocted by our draconian buracracy. As a biochemist that has studied the history, uses, effects and pharmacology of cannabis, I can tell you that It has been demonstrated that cannabis may protect against brain tumors and the onset of neurodegenerative conditions like alzheimers and parkinsons disease. We have already discovered the biochemical mechanism by which cannabis inhibits(YES, INHIBITS!!) cancer cells. The disinformation lobby that exists in the law enforcement community, as well as in politics and of course, the pharmaceutical industry(who ironically, manufacture and SELL the synthetic version) is tremendously powerful and has unlimited amounts of money to fabricate anything that they want you to believe. Now, how much grass a person smokes is certainly relevant to this issue. Someone who smokes one joint a week is certainly going to be less prone to any health problems than someone who smokes all day-every day. It is these"all day-every day" smokers who abuse it that may head for trouble. Coffee has been shown to have health benefits-but how much?-a cup or two a day-or five or six cups a day?                                     Steve Shapiro

The fact that learning and memory are affected by cannabis, is nothing but an old wives tale, concocted by our draconian buracracy. As a biochemist that has studied the history, uses, effects and pharmacology of cannabis, I can tell you that It has been demonstrated that cannabis may protect against brain tumors and the onset of neurodegenerative conditions like alzheimers and parkinsons disease. We have already discovered the biochemical mechanism by which cannabis inhibits(YES, INHIBITS!!) cancer cells. The disinformation lobby that exists in the law enforcement community, as well as in politics and of course, the pharmaceutical industry(who ironically, manufacture and SELL the synthetic version) is tremendously powerful and has unlimited amounts of money to fabricate anything that they want you to believe. Now, how much grass a person smokes is certainly relevant to this issue. Someone who smokes one joint a week is certainly going to be less prone to any health problems than someone who smokes all day-every day. It is these"all day-every day" smokers who abuse it that may head for trouble. Coffee has been shown to have health benefits-but how much?-a cup or two a day-or five or six cups a day?                                     Steve Shapiro

Kindly do some research before making such claims!

Here is a new Study proving that Marijuana is not linked with Long Term Cognitive Impairment:

* Nearly 2,000 young Australian adults (aged 20-24) were followed for eight years. It was found that marijuana had little long-term effect on learning and memory, and any cognitive damage that did occur as a result of cannabis use was reversible.* Researchers categorized them as light, heavy, former or non-users of cannabis based on their answers to questions about marijuana habits.

* Prior studies have found that drug users do accurately report their consumption levels in surveys like this as long as anonymity is guaranteed and there are no negative consequences for telling the truth.

* Participants took tests of memory and intelligence three times over the eight year period the study. They were also asked about how their marijuana use had changed. When the results were at last tabulated, researchers found that there were large initial differences between the groups, with the current marijuana smokers performing worse on tests that required them to recall lists of words after various periods of time or remember numbers in the reverse order from the one in which they were presented.

* However, when the investigators controlled for factors like education and gender, almost all of these differences disappeared. The lower education levels of the pot smokers — and their greater likelihood of being male — had made it look like marijuana had significantly affected their intelligence. In fact, men simply tend to do worse than women on tests of verbal intelligence, while women generally underperform on math tests. The relative weighting of the tests made the impact of pot look worse than it was.

* Researchers then explored whether quitting cannabis would affect the one difference that remained, which was poorer performance by heavy users on a test that required immediate recall of a list of nouns. They found that heavy users who had quit by the end of the study were no longer distinguishable on this measure from those who had never used.

The authors, who were led by Robert Tait at the Centre for Mental Health Research at Australian National University, conclude:"Cessation of cannabis use appears to be associated with an improvement in capacity for recall of information that has just been learned. No other measures of cognitive performance were related to cannabis after controlling for confounds."

The research was published in the journal Addiction.

Kindly do some research before commenting on a public forum:

Here is a new Study proving that Marijuana is not linked with Long Term Cognitive Impairment:

* Nearly 2,000 young Australian adults (aged 20-24) were followed for eight years. It was found that marijuana had little long-term effect on learning and memory, and any cognitive damage that did occur as a result of cannabis use was reversible.* Researchers categorized them as light, heavy, former or non-users of cannabis based on their answers to questions about marijuana habits.

* Prior studies have found that drug users do accurately report their consumption levels in surveys like this as long as anonymity is guaranteed and there are no negative consequences for telling the truth.

* Participants took tests of memory and intelligence three times over the eight year period the study. They were also asked about how their marijuana use had changed. When the results were at last tabulated, researchers found that there were large initial differences between the groups, with the current marijuana smokers performing worse on tests that required them to recall lists of words after various periods of time or remember numbers in the reverse order from the one in which they were presented.

* However, when the investigators controlled for factors like education and gender, almost all of these differences disappeared. The lower education levels of the pot smokers — and their greater likelihood of being male — had made it look like marijuana had significantly affected their intelligence. In fact, men simply tend to do worse than women on tests of verbal intelligence, while women generally underperform on math tests. The relative weighting of the tests made the impact of pot look worse than it was.

* Researchers then explored whether quitting cannabis would affect the one difference that remained, which was poorer performance by heavy users on a test that required immediate recall of a list of nouns. They found that heavy users who had quit by the end of the study were no longer distinguishable on this measure from those who had never used.The authors, who were led by Robert Tait at the Centre for Mental Health Research at Australian National University, conclude:"Cessation of cannabis use appears to be associated with an improvement in capacity for recall of information that has just been learned. No other measures of cognitive performance were related to cannabis after controlling for confounds."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...The research was published in the journal Addiction.