Marijuana May Cause Cancer and DNA Damage

[mrvitorsky]

Couldn't the act of simply inhaling smoke and holding it in your lungs cause cancer. The damage it does to your lungs making cells in your lungs weak susceptible to cancer formation(cellular mutations).

 

[Sticki]

Oxygen causes damage to cells, Should we stop breathing incase it gives us Cancer too?

I smell poo :lol:

 

[HeartCore]

For example cannabis is suposed to contain more carcinogens than tabaco but it doesnt contain as much radio activity and no nikotine

Look, study clearly shows that regardless of the increased carcinogens in cannabis does not mean an increased risk in getting lungcancer. As it turns out, people who don't smoke have as much chance for lungcancer as people who smoke only cannabis. People who smoke tobacco and people smoking tobacco and cannabis, have the same chance getting lungcancer. I'm not sourcing this, it was posted here a year maybe two years ago and the study was extensive and people should be able to find it by themselves.

 

[Icelus]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=large-study-finds-no-link&ref=rss

I think you mean this study?

 

[Brugmansia]

Either way, even if THC damages the cells of the penis, eventually resulting in a drop off, I'd still proceed light-spirited.

 

[????????]

The chemical acetaldehyde, a compound that can be found both in tobacco and marijuana, was therefore the target of the new tests.

does this mean they made the tests with acetaldehyde only instead of the whole combo of stuff contained in cannabis smoke? if so, the whole study is worthless. and i wonder, where else can this compound be found?

Acetaldehyde occurs naturally in ripe fruit, coffee, and bread, and is produced by plants as part of their normal metabolism. [...] is an air pollutant resulting from combustion, such as automotive exhaust and tobacco smoke. It is also created by thermal degradation of polymers in the plastics processing industry

so... it's fucking everywhere.

if acetaldehyde is indeed cancer-inducing then, as meduzz pointed out, this shows that there's other things in cannabis smoke that keep it at bay, which shows anti-cancer properties in cannabis...

 

[restin]

well...I'd say you shouldn't smoke bread, should you :lol:

 

[????????]

^lol

i'm just going to go ahead and post the article Icelus linked to in it's entirety, since it's rather short:

The smoke from burning marijuana leaves contains several known carcinogens and the tar it creates contains 50 percent more of some of the chemicals linked to lung cancer than tobacco smoke. A marijuana cigarette also deposits four times as much of that tar as an equivalent tobacco one. Scientists were therefore surprised to learn that a study of more than 2,000 people found no increase in the risk of developing lung cancer for marijuana smokers.

"We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use--more than 500 to 1,000 uses--would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana," explains physician Donald Tashkin of the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead researcher on the project. But looking at residents of Los Angeles County, the scientists found that even those who smoked more than 20,000 joints in their life did not have an increased risk of lung cancer.

The researchers interviewed 611 lung cancer patients and 1,040 healthy controls as well as 601 patients with cancer in the head or neck region under the age of 60 to create the statistical analysis. They found that 80 percent of those with lung cancer and 70 percent of those with other cancers had smoked tobacco while only roughly half of both groups had smoked marijuana. The more tobacco a person smoked, the greater the risk of developing cancer, as other studies have shown.

But after controlling for tobacco, alcohol and other drug use as well as matching patients and controls by age, gender and neighborhood, marijuana did not seem to have an effect, despite its unhealthy aspects. "Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there's less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled," Tashkin says. "And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers; they hold their breath about four times longer allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lungs."

The study does not reveal how marijuana avoids causing cancer. Tashkin speculates that perhaps the THC chemical in marijuana smoke prompts aging cells to die before becoming cancerous. Tashkin and his colleagues presented the findings yesterday at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.