Substance Abuse Problems

1 Joint as Damaging as 5 Cigarettes to Your Lungs

August 1 (HealthDay News) -- Smoking just one marijuana joint is the same as smoking five cigarettes in terms of the damage it does to your lungs, a new study found.

Lung damage from marijuana results in chronic bronchitis and other respiratory problems. But whether marijuana causes emphysema or lung cancer isn't clear, the researchers said.

"This damage is a full range from symptoms to structural lung damage and reduced lung function," said lead researcher Dr. Richard Beasley, director of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, in Wellington.

Beasley thinks marijuana smokers should heed the study's findings. "Many people think that marijuana is safe, but this shows that it's not safe. Hopefully, this will avoid a lack of knowledge among smokers," he said.

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STUDY: SMOKING MARIJUANA DOES NOT CAUSE LUNG CANCER

Marijuana smoking -"even heavy longterm use"- does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airwaves, or esophagus, Donald Tashkin reported at this year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. Coming from Tashkin, this conclusion had extra significance for the assembled drug-company and university-based scientists ( most of whom get funding from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse ). Over the years, Tashkin's lab at UCLA has produced irrefutable evidence of the damage that marijuana smoke wreaks on bronchial tissue. With NIDA's support, Tashkin and colleagues have identified the potent carcinogens in marijuana smoke, biopsied and made photomicrographs of pre-malignant cells, and studied the molecular changes occurring within them. It is Tashkin's research that the Drug Czar's office cites in ads linking marijuana to lung cancer. Tashkin himself has long believed in a causal relationship, despite a study in which Stephen Sidney examined the files of 64,000 Kaiser patients and found that marijuana users didn't develop lung cancer at a higher rate or die earlier than non-users. Of five smaller studies on the question, only two -involving a total of about 300 patients- concluded that marijuana smoking causes lung cancer. Tashkin decided to settle the question by conducting a large, prospectively designed, population-based, case-controlled study.

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1065/a03.html