News 14 | 24 Hour Local News | HEADLINES | Proposal studies medical marijuana
RALEIGH — A state lawmaker wants North Carolina to study and potentially legalize medical marijuana.Guilford County Rep. Earl Jones filed the bill. Wednesday, a former U.S. surgeon general testified in favor of it as well. From 1993-1995, Dr. Joycelyn Elders was the country’s top doctor. Nearly 20 years, later she’s here in North Carolina advocating medical marijuana.
“We’ve been using marijuana out there as I said for 5,000 years,” Elders said. “It’s safer than an awful lot of medications than we have out there on the market.”
But opponents say that’s not the case.
“When you consider the carcinogens in marijuana alone, it’s multiple to that of smoking so this is not really a safe drug to take,” said Mark Creech from the N.C. Christian Action League.
Let me help educate Mr. Creech. First of all, don’t give me that nonsense about marijuana not being a safe drug to take:
An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.
The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328.
Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).
Second of all, your assertion about the carcinogens in marijuana being “multiple to that of smoking” is way off base:
While cannabis smoke has been implicated in respiratory dysfunction, including the conversion of respiratory cells to what appears to be a pre-cancerous state [5], it has not been causally linked with tobacco related cancers [6] such as lung, colon or rectal cancers.
Furthermore, compounds found in cannabis have been shown to kill numerous cancer types including: lung cancer [9], breast and prostate [10], leukemia and lymphoma [11], glioma [12], skin cancer [13], and pheochromocytoma [14].
…[T]he medical potential of cannabis has been obscured by the potential negative impact of using a smoked medicine [17]. Those who deny the validity of “medical marijuana,” cite that marijuana smoke contains four fold more tars than does tobacco smoke [18]. … Are the biological consequences of smoking cannabis and tobacco similar?
Smoke from tobacco and cannabis contains many of the same carcinogens and tumor promoters [20,21]. However, cannabis and tobacco have additional pharmacological activities… that result in different biological endpoints. …[D]espite potentially higher levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons found in cannabis smoke compared to tobacco smoke (dependent on what part of the plant is smoked), the THC present in cannabis smoke should exert a protective effect against pro-carcinogens that require activation. In contrast, nicotine activates some [pro-carcinogenic] activities, thus potentially increasing the carcinogenic effects of tobacco smoke [24].
And for the hat trick, your point is completely moot, Mr. Creech, if we simply vaporize the cannabis:
Concern about the respiratory hazards of smoking has spurred the development of vaporization as an alternative method of medical cannabis administration. Cannabis vaporization is a relatively new technology aimed at suppressing respiratory toxins by heating cannabis to a temperature where cannabinoid vapors form (typically around 180-190°C), but below the point of combustion where smoke and associated toxins are produced (near 230°C). The purpose of this is to permit the inhalation of medically active cannabinoids while avoiding noxious smoke compounds that pose respiratory hazards.
Of particular concern are the carcinogenic polynuclear (or “polycyclic”) aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), known byproducts of combustion that are thought to be a major culprit in smoking-related cancers. While there exists no epidemiological evidence that marijuana smokers face a higher risk of smoking-related cancers, studies have found that they do face a higher risk of bronchitis and respiratory infections (Polen et al. 1993, Tashkin 1993). This risk is not thought to be due to cannabinoids, but rather to extraneous byproducts of pyrolysis in the smoke.
In principle, vaporization offers medical cannabis patients the advantages of inhaled routes of administration: rapid onset, direct delivery into the bloodstream, ease of self-titration and concomitant avoidance of over- and under-dosage, while avoiding the respiratory disadvantages of smoking. Compared to other proposed non-smoked delivery systems using pharmaceutical extracts and synthetics, vaporization also offers the economic advantage of allowing patients to use inexpensive, homegrown cannabis.
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