Leading researcher: “At this point, I’d be in favor of legalization.”
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 10:20 am | By: Radical Russ
(McClatchy) UCLA pulmonologist Dr. Donald Tashkin, who has studied marijuana’s effects on the lungs for three decades, 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. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Tobacco smokers in the study had as much as a 21-fold increase in lung cancer risk. Cigarette smokers, too, developed COPD more often in the study, and researchers found that marijuana did not impair lung function.
Tashkin, supported by other research, concluded that the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has an “anti-tumoral effect” in which “cells die earlier before they age enough to develop mutations that might lead to lung cancer.”
However, the smoke from marijuana did swell the airways and lead to a greater risk of chronic bronchitis.
“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.”
Dr. Tashkin is one of the government’s leading anti-pot researchers. His whole career has been spent searching for that (pardon the pun) smoking gun showing marijuana causes cancer. His prohibitionist funders (our government) have spent millions looking for such a link, one that Dr. Tashkin was certain he would find. A link between the tragedy of cancer that kills so many Americans and the marijuana the government has told us is our country’s gravest threat. A link that would provide the political justification for the war against that grave threat, even though all the evidence seems to show that marijuana is actually quite benign and there is no link to cancer. A supposed link that unnecessarily frightens Americans into supporting that war, which diverts our attention from real threats like meth.
Fake links, lying government, ignoring evidence, diverting attention, a war on a noun… man, it all seems so vaguely familiar…
This is a huge moment when even the government’s own researchers can’t deny the science behind marijuana anymore.
[...] marijuana smoke are cannabinoids that seem to mitigate the carcinogens. In thirty years of study, Dr. Donald Tashkin tried to find a link between marijuana smoke and cancer and instead found a protective effect against cancer. Alcohol is eliminated from the body in a few [...]
[...] longtime Stashers know, Dr. Donald Tashkin’s 30 years of trying to find a link between marijuana smoking and lung cancer found no correlation [...]
[...] and the presence of carcinogens in any smoke, while blissfully ignoring all the research showing cannabis to have an anti-tumoral effect and actually reducing the risk of head and neck [...]
damn russ i guess the money couldnt cover this one up. now lets see how far the research goes…………………… :2thumb: :2thumb:
Just one small point here- Dr. Tashkin is not a “government researcher”. He is a professor at UCLA who has received government grants, like >95% of academic medical researchers. It may well be that the agencies who funded his research wished to see grant applications for projects that sought to find harm in cannabis, and he may have tailored his applications to reflect that, but as with government grants to academic researchers he was perfectly free to publish as he saw fit. This is not necessarily so for the true “government’s own researchers” at the NIH, CDC, FDA, EPA, etc.
GOOD POINT, I DIDNT KNOW THAT. SO THE GOVERMENT MUST HAVE NO NEW RESEARCH OR THERE JUST GOING OFF THE OLD CRAP (RIGHT)
Thank you for that clarification, I should have been clearer. I wrote it in the context of many other posts where we’ve pointed out that the government doesn’t give grants to researchers who are looking to prove benefits of cannabis. That the government would give UCLA’s Tashkin money to study marijuana, and that Tashkin has previously toed the government’s line on legalization, and that Tashkin’s initial grants were all about finding the link between cancer and marijuana, those make him a favorite of the government. That was the idea.