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PuyoPiyo · 05-14-2008, 01:08 PM

More informations about marijuana vs tobacco.

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Don't alcohol and tobacco use already cause enough damage to society? Why should we legalize another intoxicant?

While there are indeed health and societal problems due to the use of alcohol and nicotine, these negative consequences would be amplified if consumption of either substance were prohibited.

Marijuana is already the third most popular recreational drug in America, despite harsh laws against its use. Millions of Americans smoke it responsibly. Our public policies should reflect this reality, not deny it.

In addition, marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. It fails to inflict the types of serious health consequences these two legal drugs cause. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose. According to the prestigious European medical journal, The Lancet, "The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat than alcohol or tobacco."

No one is suggesting we encourage more drug use; simply that we stop arresting responsible marijuana smokers. In recent years, we have significantly reduced the prevalence of drunk driving and tobacco smoking. We have not achieved this by prohibiting the use of alcohol and tobacco or by targeting and arresting adults who use alcohol and tobacco responsibly, but through honest educational campaigns. We should apply these same principles to the responsible consumption of marijuana. The negative consequences primarily associated with marijuana -- such as an arrest or jail time -- are the result of the criminal prohibition of cannabis, not the use of marijuana itself.

FAQ's - NORML

A doctor that research the marijuana and tobacco smokers.

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Newsgroups: alt.hemp
From: Christopher Clay <cclay@icis.on.ca>
Subject: Marijuana Safer than Tobacco - Medical Post, Sept./94
Message-ID: <DAqnxA.Awz@icis.on.ca>
Date: Sun, 25 Jun 1995 17:15:10 GMT

Marijuana Less Harmful to Lungs
than Cigarettes
by Louise Gagnon
Medical Post, Sept. 6 1994

L'ESTEREL, Quebec -- Heavy marijuana smokers show less evidence
of lung injury than heavy tobacco smokers, and it may be
cannabinoids that are protecting them from developing a condition
like emphysema.

That's according to the principal investigator of a study done at
the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Speaking at the third annual meeting of the International
Cannabis Research Society here, Dr. Donald Tashkin, a
pulmonologist and UCLA professor of medicine, concluded heavy
marijuana use did not cause the same degree of lung injury as
tobacco smoke.

"My own feeling is that marijuana smokers probably will not
develop emphysema as a consequence of smoking marijuana," he
said, but cautioned that does not rule out the development of
other conditions like respiratory carcinoma.

"It may be that the THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) in
marijuana could have different effects on inflammatory cells,
which may mediate injury in the lung."

His study, which aimed to measure the pulmonary effects of
habitual marijuana use, followed nine tobacco smokers, 10
marijuana smokers, 10 nonsmokers and four smokers of both
marijuana and tobacco. He gave both quantitative and qualitative
explanations for his finding.

Marijuana users in the study smoked three or four joints daily
for 15 years on average, while tobacco smokers in the study
smoked 25 cigarettes daily over a period of 20 years, indicating
a marked difference in exposure to smoke.

"There is a seven-fold difference in the amount of smoke to which
marijuana and tobacco smokers are exposed," he said.

"It's the quantitative difference in smoke exposure that might
explain the difference in the degree of lung injury as assessed
by these physiologic indices."

Moreover, the phagocytes gathered from the lungs of marijuana
smokers do not have the same properties as those gathered from
the lungs of tobacco smokers.

"We have previously shown that the macrophages that are harvested
from the rinse-out of the lungs of marijuana smokers seem not to
be activated," he said. "They do not release toxic oxygen
species, either under basal conditions or under stimulated
conditions nearly to the extent that tobacco macrophages do. If
anything, basal secretion of superoxide seems to be reduced in
the marijuana smokers."

Dr. Tashkin measured the clearance of the molecule diethylene
triamine penta-acetate (DTPA) from the lung, believed to be a
more sensitive indicator of lung injury than measuring the lung's
diffusing capacity.

If DTPA clearance is accelerated, then it implies an increase in
the leakiness of the alveolar epithelial membrane, which implies
injury to the membrane, he said.

Dr. Tashkin noted DTPA clearance is accelerated in tobacco smoke-
related lung injury.

Initially, the chronic effects of marijuana smoke were measured
in comparison to those of tobacco smoke: DTPA clearance was
measured at about 12 hours after the last marijuana or tobacco
cigarette smoked.

To determine the acute effects of marijuana and tobacco smoking,
Dr. Tashkin restudied these smokers a week or two later, giving
them a single joint of marijuana or a single tobacco cigarette or
both, and then measuring DTPA clearance 15 minutes subsequently.

"What we found was the clearance of DTPA was abnormally rapid
from the lung in the tobacco smokers," he said. "It was about
twice the rate of non-smokers. In the marijuana smokers, there
was a tendency toward a much less rapid rate of clearance. There
was no acute effect in either tobacco or marijuana, and there was
no added effect of marijuana or tobacco."

As with the lungs to tobacco smokers, when the lungs of marijuana
smokers are "washed out", a marked increase in the number of
alveolar macrophages is witnessed.

But whereas tobacco smoke has a concomitant effect of activating
the macrophages, leading to the subsequent release of certain
toxic substances, marijuana smoke fails to activate the
macrophages, Dr. Tashkin said. He noted this difference could be
attributed to differential regulation of cytokins.

"It may be that the macrophages from marijuana smokers release
certain suppressive cytokins, like transforming growth factor-
beta, which is known to suppress the inflammatory activity of
nearly all of the site populations," he said. "That's our
hypothesis, which we are currently exploring."

Pot vs. Cigarettes

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http://www.kayalounge.net/Marijuana%20vs%20cigaret te.html
So, you thought it was the tar that caused cancer... Think again. Cigarette companies will have you believing anything just as long as you continue to buy their products. The fact is, although insoluble tars are a contributing factor to the lung cancer danger present in today's cigarettes, the real danger is radioactivity. According to U.S. Surgeon General C. Everette Koop (on national television, 1990) radioactivity, not tar, accounts for at least 90% of all smoking related lung cancer.

Tobacco crops grown in the United States are fertilized by law with phosphates rich in radium 226. In addition, many soils have a natural radium 226 content. Radium 226 breaks down into two long lived 'daughter' elements -- lead 210 and polonium 210. These radioactive particles become airborne, and attach themselves to the fine hairs on tobacco leaves.

Many people think smoking marijuana is just as harmful as smoking tobacco, but this is not true. Those who hold that marijuana is equivalent to tobacco are misinformed. For example the Berkeley carcinogenic tar studies of the late 1970's concluded that "marijuana is one-and-a-half times as carcinogenic as tobacco." This finding was based solely on the tar content of cannabis leaves compared to that of tobacco, and did not take radioactivity into consideration. (Cannabis tars do not contain radioactive materials.)... "

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Keep this in mind people:
1) Most marijuana smokers smoke the bud, not the leaf, of the plant. The bud contains only 33% as much tar as tobacco.
2) Marijuana smokers do not smoke anywhere near as much as tobacco smokers, due to the psychoactive effects of cannabis.
3) Not one case of lung cancer has ever been successfully linked to marijuana use.
4) Cannabis, unlike tobacco, does not cause any narrowing of the small air passageways in the lungs.

Professional Ethics | Marijuana vs Cigarettes