MARIGUANA

Please read these two very interesting studies on marijuana and lung cancer
being neglected (strangely) by the British Lung Foundation:

1. Where are the missing dead pot heads? Why aren't the newspapers filled
with anecdotal stories about pot heads renouncing the herb as they are
carted off for lung cancer treatment? This researcher says he can't find
any association between pot and lung cancer, not even for pot heads who
also smoke tobacco:

Johns Hopkins researcher says marijuana is unlikely to cause head, neck or
lung cancer.

See http://my.webmd.com/content/article/1728.57309.

2. How could the above study possibly be true? Doesn't it fly in the face
of simple logic about smoking in general? Here is a piece of stunning
research about the cancer-inhibitory effects of THC that could explain it.
Dr. Donald Tashkin is a leading pulmonary specialist who works at UCLA
Medical School. This is what he found about the way THC acts in lung cells.
The explanation in plain English is below: complex regulatory role of THC
in lung cell cancer process --

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11245634&dopt=Abstract.

Everyone knows burning anything produces carcinogens in the tar. It seems
natural to assume that the presence of carcinogens automatically means cancer.

But cancer is, in reality, a complex process that relies on a chain of
events. One necessary event in the lung cancer process is for the
carcinogen to be metabolized by an enzyme -- called the
carcinogen-metabolizing enzyme -- so that it can get into the cell nucleus
and interrupt the reproduction of the cell and make it malignant. This
enzyme attaches to carcinogens to help them cause cancer.

The THC in the marijuana tar appears to produce more of this enzyme, but at
the same time the THC blocks the activity of this enzyme so that it cannot
attach to the carcinogens. The more THC in the pot, the more the THC blocks
this enzyme from being able to work.

So THC interrupts the process by which the carcinogens in the smoke cause
the cancer. THC blocks the carcinogen-metabolizing enzyme. And that could
solve the mystery of the missing dead pot heads, the ones they couldn't
find in the Johns Hopkins study.

Dr. Tashkin and his research team found that THC also inhibits the activity
of the carcinogen-metabolizing enzyme when it is added to tobacco tar. That
could explain why tobacco smokers who also smoked pot aren't turning up
dead or dying in the statistics either.

It irritates me that the British Lung Foundation can make such a big splash
with their half-baked scare stories about the carcinogens, when the real
interesting scientific story behind pot smoking and the missing dead pot
heads is not going to be told.

Is that because so many journalists today have stopped believing in facts,
and have just accepted the job of printing a quote from one side and a
quote from the other and calling it a day?

Patricia Schwarz, California Institute of Technology Ph.D. 1998