snoiduspoitus

I'm not entirely certain if this even has any relevance, but I recall an interview app 15 years ago with Paul McCartney, (and not the interviewer - Frost perhaps) where he tried to put Paul on a hot-seat right away about his marijuana use.

Paul replied with something similiar to 'Is smoking tobacco good for you? Is drinking good for you? Is smoking marijuana good for you? Obviously, none of them are good for you. We all make choices, but I'm not here to be the poster-boy for marijuana.'

Most billionaires tend to be pretty well-spoken.

Free Thinkr

Well, hate to bug the shit out of you, but alcohol is in fact more dangerous than marijuana. In my freshman year alone, my roomate and a friend of mine from school nearly died from alcohol poisoning. Alcohol is a poison, and people can very easily die from ingesting too much. Thc poisoning is simply impossible.

ps418

First, the study mentioned in the OP is consistent with virtually all of the other recent reviews of the long-term effects of cannabis use on cognitive function. For instance, there were two reviews published last year in the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. According to the authors of one study, the findings "suggest that cannabis-associated cognitive deficits are reversible and related to recent cannabis exposure rather than irreversible and related to cumulative lifetime use" (Cognitive measures in long-term cannabis users. J Clin Pharmacol 2002 42:11, pp. 41-47). That is, there are deficits in memory in active users compared to nonusers, but these between-group differences disappear with a couple of weeks of abstinence.

The other study was a review of 40 previous studies. It reported that although just over half (22) of the studies reported subtle residual impairment, "the authors could not detect consistent evidence for persisting neuropsychological deficits in cannabis users" (Nonacute (residual) neuropsychological effects of cannabis use: a qualitative analysis and systematic review. J Clin Pharmacol 2002 42:11, pp. 48-57).

There are also studies which demonstrate that, in 'experienced' users, even the acute phase (the 'high') does not significantly adversely affect most cognitive functions. One study examining the affects of cannabis on cognitive ability appeared in Neuropsychopharmacology. In a nutshell "acute marijuana smoking produced minimal effects on complex cognitive task performance in experienced marijuana users," although it did increase reaction time and frequency of premature responses.

Effects of acute smoked marijuana on complex cognitive performance. Neuropsychopharmacology 2001 Nov;25(5):757-65.


Regarding cannabis use and lung cancer, the evidence is equivocal but consistent with a modest increase in risk, but unequivocal in showing that the increase in risk is small compared to the increase in risk from cigarette smoking. In fact, in the largest studies of cannabis users, there is no evidence for ANY increased mortality. Below are two abstracts from a previous thread.

Sidney S, Beck JE, Tekawa IS, Quesenberry CP, Friedman GD., Marijuana use and mortality. Am J Public Health. 1997 Apr;87(4):585-90.


Andreasson S, Allebeck P., Cannabis and mortality among young men: a longitudinal study of Swedish conscripts. Scand J Soc Med. 1990;18(1):9-15.


Also, though there is indeed a higher prevalence of bronchitis and symptoms such as cough, weezing, and sputum production in cannabis smokers, there is no compelling evidence that smoking cannabis causes chronic obstructive pulmonary disorders, or COPD, even when the analyses is restricted to very heavy smokers (several joints per day). This is in contrast to cigarette smoking, where the evidence for increased risk of COPD is undeniable. According to the 1999 NAS Institute of Medicine report Marijuana as Medicine: Assessing the Science Base:

The abstract of Tashkin's 1997 paper:

Tashkin et al, 1997. Heavy habitual marijuana smoking does not cause an accelerated decline in FEV1 with age. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 155(1):141-8.


By any rational measure of dangerous, alcohol is far more dangerous than cannabis.

For one, the ratio of recreational dose to fatal overdose is thousands of times higher with alcohol. Something like 10-20 times the recreational dose of alcohol can easily kill you, equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.4-0.6%, which is easily consumable in one night, whereas with cannabis the LD50 is so high that it cannot be ascertained, but is clearly thousands of times the average recereational dose. It would be impossible to ingest enough cannabis to kill yourself, unless you have a major heart condition, in which case jogging could kill you also.

For another, the excess mortality associated with cannabis abuse is not signficantly different from zero, whereas that associated with alcohol abuse is very signficantly above zero. Same with permanent injury, such as alcohol-related dementia. I'm sorry if that bugs you, but its hardly 'propaganda.'

Patrick

Mageth

Preach it, Brother Patrick! :notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

marijuana causes fairly extensive brain damage

It does? That's news to me. Do you have some evidence to back up this claim?

Brain damage heals fairly quickly.

I think what you might want to say is something like the brain is capable of recovering from or compensating for some injuries to varying extents. Physical brain damage is typically permanent; when neurons die, they stay dead and are not replaced. E.g. when someone has a stroke, a region of the brain may be permanently killed; this region never heals as in recovering its functionality, but the person may (or may not) recover functionality that was affected by the death of that region.

theyeti

I'm not aware of any evidence that marijuana kills neurons. I would like to know if there are any studies showing this, and if so, how it compares to other sources of neuronal death like alcohol or aging. If marijuana was killing neurons, you would expect long-term cognitive impairment from heavy use, just as you get with alcohol. The fact that we don't see this is good evidence that marijuana is not killing significant numbers of neurons.

As for lung damage, the amount of marijuana smoked by your average pot head is far less than the amount of tobacco smoked by your average cigarette smoker. Moreoever, most of the harmful tars in marijuana smoke can be removed with a water pipe. Or at least it could if the pipes weren't illegal...

theyeti

Corwin

And if you ingest THC in the same amounts, it's about as toxic.

Beer bongs are a bad idea. Always have been. You have to work pretty damned hard to actually poison yourself with either one.

Let me switch into anal-retentive mode... (since we seem to be going down that path. Again.)

The damage caused by marijuana tends to be short term and recovery from it once use of marijuana ceases tends to be the norm.

Recovery from the equivalent damage due to ingestion of alcohol tends to be permanent, however, said damage tends to be much less common, and is usually accompanied by other physical damage, most notably to the liver. (You have to be a pretty committed hardcore drinker to achieve the same level of damage.)

Is that specific enough? Or should we start enclosing tissue samples in posts?

ps418

That's exactly what I thought, but as it turns out, its not clear that waterpipes deliver the highest THC/tar ratio smoke. According to a 1996 study of waterpipes, unfiltered cannabis cigarettes, and vaporizers, the waterpipes actually performed relatively poorly:

Marijuana Water Pipe and Vaporizer Study

That study also looked at vaporizers. The theoretical advantage of the vaporizer is that it can heat the cannabis to a temperature high enough (~160C) to vaporize the THC, but too low to produce the carcinogens created by combustion, such as benzene and toluene. While the vaporizers that were tested in the 1996 study turned out to be not very good, a more recent study by the same author showed very promising results with a new vaporizer. This time, the tests were for cannabanoids and individual substances known to be in cannabis smoke, rather than simply a cannabanoids/tar ratio.

Vaporizer Research: An Update, MAPS 13:1, Spring 2003

So, it looks as if at least some vaporizers can give you smokable cannabis with more of what you want and less of what you dont want. This is good news, since most smokers are not interested in using alternative administration routes such as eating.

Another point I would make is that the best way to protect your lungs is, first, to reduce your consumption. Many if not most smokers smoke far more than they need to achieve the desired result. The thing is that past a certain dose range, taking in more does not enhance the effects, while probably increasing the risk of doing harm. IMHO, if you're smoking more than 2 grams a day, you're wasting your money, and are probably not doing your lungs any good either.

Also, as Ive said before, the most effective way to reduce your total intake of cannabis-associated tars and so on is to smoke the most potent form available. With modern strains that have been selectively bred for THC content, the 'desired' effect requires no more than 2-3 inhalations, as opposed to perhaps 10-20 inhalations with average commercial cannabis. So, simply by keeping all other things equal but smoking the most potent varieties, you can reduce your tar intake by 50-90% or more.

Patrick

Corwin

Or if you're really worried about tar.... you can just make brownies....

sweep

how so?

how do you know this?

I don't think that cannabis kills neurones- smoking kills neurones. Why? because when you smoke you ingest monoxides. This is typical when you apply a lot of heat to bud or hashish. Bear in mind that the first 'hit' on a bowl of weed evaporates the thc, yielding that clean, fresh feeling. Then carry on burning the weed and it turns BLACK- you're smoking vegetable matter. Alright, there's probably thc in the vegetable matter, but the 'other' matter is what I question.

Suffice to say, I don't know 'what' it is, but it used to make me feel groggy and tired. I don't think all of that is attributable to the effects of nervous exhaustion.

10-20 inhalations *belly laugh*> don't forget about tolerance, which you did mention. And, if you need to inhale 20 times, then you've probably got a high tolerance, and you're smoking for smoking sake. And, if you're mixing with tobacco, which most users do, then it isn't just thc you're after.

And, commercial cannabis, varies, from really shite untreated crap, to bud that shatters coz its glazed with thc rich sap!

ps418

That's true. In fact, you don't get any of the combustion byproducts (i.e. carbon monoxide) that way. However, on the down side. brownies are relatively inefficient, they take a long time for the effect to begin, and it takes a long time for the effect to wear off. This makes it difficult to self-regulate the dose. It also makes them not as effective for treating nausea in chemotherapy patients, since many medical marijuana patients can't hold down the brownies to begin with. However, there has been some discussion of developing a sublingual administration route, which would largely overcome those problems (but alas would not be available to recreational users).

Patrick