I know i'm gonna regret this, but I just can't help myself.

[ravingdave]

http://www.labspaces.net/98084/Marijuan ... use_cancer_





David

[pfrit]

I am the only libertarian that I know who advocates legalization of drugs, including recreational ones, but has absolutely no interest in using them. I am sure that there are others of us out there. However, I am amazed at the science that is turned on the justification of marijuana's illegality. Yes, everyone out there had been convinced that inhaling smoke into your lungs was a perfectly safe thing to do until this report came out. Does this study examine the actual risk involved? How about the risk of marijauna through other delivery routes? May I make a nomination for JIR's annual awards?

[Professor Science]

And yet cigarettes with several hundred different lethal toxins are fully legal for adults.

[choff]

For those American citizens who would like to make changes to current US drug laws, might I suggest a one week vacation in Vancouver's own downtown east side, centered at Hastings and Main, (a.k.a. Wastings and Pain).

It is the very closest you can get in North American to an open drug market. Recently some Irish tourists strayed from the local Chinatown into the area. In their opinion, it was just like a George Romero movie.

We actually do have activists in favour of drug law liberalization, namely the BC Marijuana Party. They don't look at all like the undead, rather the cast from 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.

I shouldn't forget to mention the drug trade induced gang wars that are liable to kill more Canadians than Afghanistan.

All this could be yours America, think about it.

[TallDave]

http://www.labspaces.net/98084/Marijuan ... use_cancer_

I'm skeptical. Why did they need this fancy new "very sensitive test" if the damage is significant enough to worry about?

The medical studies say there is no correlation to head, throat, or lung cancer, unlike tobacco. It also doesn't damage the circulatory system the way tobacco does. The reasons for this are pretty well established.

[TallDave]

It is the very closest you can get in North American to an open drug market. Recently some Irish tourists strayed from the local Chinatown into the area. In their opinion, it was just like a George Romero movie.

We actually do have activists in favour of drug law liberalization, namely the BC Marijuana Party. They don't look at all like the undead, rather the cast from 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.

The drunks aren't pretty either. Dangerous, too. Someone should pass a law. Oops, we tried that already.

I shouldn't forget to mention the drug trade induced gang wars that are liable to kill more Canadians than Afghanistan.

We had gang wars during alcohol Prohibition too. Why are people surprised that making things that lots of people want illegal means criminals fight over the profits?

[PolyGirl]

Did you know that dihydrogen monoxide can kill you? (albeit in large quanties). This is known as Dihydrogen Monoxide Intoxication.

Did you know that Talcum powder can cause cancer?

Did you know that the deaths caused by Alcohol and Tobacco compared with Drug related deaths is 520,000 to 17,000 or nearly 30 to 1?[1]

People need to be educated because if they are not, they tend to be Gullible. I leave you with a bit of homework. What is the answer to the following question. "What is more expensive than an Education?

Regards
Polygirl

[1] Facts and Figures

[krenshala]

Did you know that dihydrogen monoxide can kill you? (albeit in large quanties).

Actually, I've seen reliable papers that show small quantities of dihydrogen monoxide, no more than a few cm deep, cause a large number of deaths every year.

[pfrit]

On a somewhat serious note, is there a more addictive and statistically lethal substance than dextrose? You don't need it and it will kill you. Yet we give it to children.

[ravingdave]

My point is that to hear the legalization crowd talk, Marijuana is as beneficial as sunshine and mother's milk. The idea that putting plant toxins into your body might not somehow be good for you never seems to get mentioned.

I actually don't care a whit about people wanting to smoke the stuff, but to try to convince people that the stuff is harmless and even beneficial is ... well now you're just being silly.




Yeah, it's probably safer than cigarettes.


David

[Skipjack]

Well, if you have ever been to the netherlands, particularily Amsterdam, you know that the only thing it got them was drug- tourism. They have a very high crime rate, they have more drug related crime and it just quite simply does not work. So they are actually thinking about getting out of this again, which is not as easy as getting into the mess. Obama was very wise to dismiss this topic very quickly. It is stupid, period.

[seedload]

Did you know that the deaths caused by Alcohol and Tobacco compared with Drug related deaths is 520,000 to 17,000 or nearly 30 to 1?[1]

That's good right? Drugs being illegal seems to be keeping down the number of deaths compared to the legal equivelents.

[MSimon]

For 30 years, Donald Tashkin has studied the effects of marijuana on lung function. His work has been funded by the vehemently anti-marijuana National Institute on Drug Abuse, which has long sought to demonstrate that marijuana causes lung cancer. After 3 decades of anti-drug research, here's what Tashkin has to say about marijuana laws:

"Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects," Tashkin says. "But at this point, I'd be in favor of legalization. I wouldn't encourage anybody to smoke any substances. But I don't think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance. Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm." (McClatchy http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_con ... ews_Health )

We've been told a thousand times that marijuana destroys your lungs, that it's 5 times worse than cigarettes, and on and on. Yet here is Donald Tashkin, literally the top expert in the world when it comes to marijuana and lung health, telling us it's time to legalize marijuana. His views are shaped not by ideology, but rather by the 30 years he spent studying the issue. He didn't expect the science to come out in favor of marijuana, but that's what happened and he's willing to admit it.

Here's the study that really turned things around:

UCLA's Tashkin studied heavy marijuana smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and marijuana smoking, but the results proved otherwise.

"What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect," says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted.

Prejudice against marijuana and smoking in general runs so deep for many people that it just seems inconceivable that marijuana could actually reduce the risk of lung cancer. But that's what the data shows and it not only demolishes a major tenet of popular anti-pot propaganda, but also points towards a potentially groundbreaking opportunity to develop cancer cures through marijuana research.

Over and over again, all the bad things we've been told about marijuana are revealed to be not only false, but often the precise opposite of the truth. So the next time someone tells you that marijuana is worse for your lungs than cigarettes, you might want to mention that the world's leading expert on that subject happens to be a supporter of legalization.

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blo ... er_changes

[MSimon]

In a cannabis study on cancer conducted in 1974, researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, instead found that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice - lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/20080901590/c ... ancer.html

04/05/2009 - According to a study released on Thursday, Spanish researchers from the Complutense University in Madrid, together with scientists of other universities, found that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - the main chemical in the infamous narcotic agent, marijuana - likely helps the annihilation of brain cancer cells.

The research, which proposes to bring to improve the prospects of anti-cancer therapies, said that THC causes cancer cells to go through a process called autophagy - the breakdown that takes place when the cells fundamentally self-digest.

http://www.topnews.in/study-says-mariju ... es-2147697

Last year, five scientific journals published prominent articles trumpeting cannabinoids (compounds in marijuana) as potential anti-cancer agents.

These include:

* Clinical trial data published in January 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Society of Clinical Investigation that found cannabinoids significantly inhibit skin tumor growth in mice. Investigators of the study concluded, "The present data indicate that local cannabinoids administration may constitute an alternative therapeutic approach for the treatment of non-melanoma skin cancer."
* Clinical trial data published in the March 2003 issue of The FASEB Journal that found that the "local administration of a non-psychoactive cannabinoid inhibits angiogenesis (tissue growth) of malignant gliomas (brain tumors)."
* A clinical review in the October 2003 issue of the prestigious journal Nature Reviews Cancer that concluded that cannabinoids’ "favorable drug safety profile" and proven ability to inhibit tumor growth make them desirable agents in the treatment of cancer. According to the review’s author, tumors inhibited by cannabinoids include: lung carcinoma, glioma, thyroid epithelioma, lymphoma/leukemia, skin carcinoma, uterus carcinoma, breast carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, and neuroblastoma (a malignant tumor originating in the autonomic nervous system or the adrenal medulla and occurring chiefly in infants and young children).
* Clinical trial data published in the November 2003 issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that found the administration of the cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) inhibits the growth of human glioma cells both in vitro (e.g., a petri dish) and in animals in a dose-dependent manner. Investigators concluded, "Non-psychoactive CBD produce[s] a significant antitumor activity both in vitro and in vivo, thus suggesting a possible application of CBD as an antineoplastic agent (something which prevents the growth of malignant cells.)"
* And finally, a clinical review in the December 2003 issue of the journal Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets that summarized "the demonstrated antitumor actions of cannabinoids," and elaborated on "possible avenues for the future development of cannabinoids as antitumor agents."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/armentano-p1.html

ScienceDaily (Apr. 9, 2009) — Guillermo Velasco and colleagues, at Complutense University, Spain, have provided evidence that suggests that cannabinoids such as the main active component of marijuana (THC) have anticancer effects on human brain cancer cells.

In the study, THC was found to induce the death of various human brain cancer cell lines and primary cultured human brain cancer cells by a process known as autophagy.

Consistent with the in vitro data, administration of THC to mice with human tumors decreased tumor growth and induced the tumor cells to undergo autophagy. As analysis of tumors from two patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (a highly aggressive brain tumor) receiving intracranial THC administration showed signs of autophagy, the authors suggest that cannabinoid administration may provide a new approach to targeting human cancers.

Cannabinoid action induces autophagy-mediated cell death through stimulation of ER stress in human glioma cells

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 181217.htm

[MSimon]

Did you know that the deaths caused by Alcohol and Tobacco compared with Drug related deaths is 520,000 to 17,000 or nearly 30 to 1?[1]

That's good right? Drugs being illegal seems to be keeping down the number of deaths compared to the legal equivelents.

Depends,

If illegal drugs are less harmful (generally true when compared to alcohol and tobacco) then we could reduce total fatalities by moving folks from alcohol to pot say. Or from tobacco to pot.

If the deaths from illegal drugs are due to adulterants then making them legal could reduce those deaths further.

Now if we could just do something about those Negroes hopped up on cocaine raping white women.

The foreign policy considerations are also very old. Britain’s victory over China in the Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-58 assured British dominance in the lucrative opium trade between British-controlled India and China. When America became an imperial power, an early step in its control of the new empire was the prohibition of opium use in the Philippines in 1905. And the Shanghai Opium Commission of 1909—portrayed as the West’s effort to cure a “backward,” non-Christian nation of its drug problem—was explicitly motivated by a desire to give Europe and the U.S. an advantage in trade negotiations with China.

However, the dearth of U.S. domestic law against the use of narcotics impugned America’s sincerity in this effort. To relieve this embarrassment, a multiyear effort to enact a federal antidrug law culminated in the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. To convince conservative Southern members of Congress to accept this substantial expansion of federal power, promoters of the law exploited racist myths, depicting “cocainized” Negroes as the principal cause of rape of white women.

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/1413

"If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us."
-- Directors of Jardine-Matheson

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html