New centre will fight marijuana - National - smh.com.au
Cannabis use and addiction have become such a problem, particularly among the young, that the Federal Government is funding a $12 million research centre at the University of NSW to try to turn the trend around.

Cannabis is the most popular illicit drug in Australia, with 33.5 per cent of adults having used it, [The centre’s director] Professor [Jan] Copeland said.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures from last year showed that 750,000 people used cannabis weekly and 300,000 used it every day.

The number of those seeking treatment had tripled since 1992, but many young people still did not understand the significant potential for harm to their health nor that there were treatment services available, Professor Copeland said.

She said about one in 10 people who tried cannabis would develop a dependence.

Those under 16 who had used it at all were three times more likely to either drop out of school or finish without attaining their Higher School Certificate, she said. Professor Copeland said those who began smoking cannabis in the 1970s were starting to develop respiratory, head and neck cancers.

A single cannabis joint has the same effect on the lungs as smoking up to five cigarettes in one sitting, according to research published in the respiratory medicine journal Thorax last year.

Nothing like starting the week out with a trifecta of drug war lies.

1. Yes, admissions for drug treatment, both in Australia and the US and elsewhere, have increased since 1992.  This is because courts are increasingly sentencing people to drug rehab when they’re caught with marijuana.  Imagine if they sent to rehab people who are ever found to be buzzed on alcohol - would there be a mass media frenzy about the incredible increase in alcoholism?  Of course not, because not all use is abuse.  If you factor out those forced into marijuana rehab, you find the number of pot smokers choosing to enter rehab is quite small.
2. People who have smoked pot in the 1970’s may indeed be getting head and neck cancers some three decades later, but you can’t attribute that to the pot.  Recent studies have concluded that smoking marijuana, even heavily, does not increase the risks of these cancers.
3. The “one joint = 5 / 10 / 20 cigarettes” myth has been debunked as well.  Marijuana does not cause emphysema and marijuana smokers show much better respiratory function than tobacco smokers.

The Arizona Republic newspaper ran a story about medical marijuana and the push to decriminalize its use in Arizona by sick and debilitated people.  While overwhelming majorities support medical marijuana, there are still some people who buy in to the reefer madness.  Witness this one letter to the editor:

Marijuana dangerous; don’t legalize it
Marijuana should not be legalized and it is not medicine. It is a dangerous, addictive substance, which can cause physical and mental-health problems, traffic accidents, and can lead to worse addictions, such as heroin.

If people want to cure cancer, they should look elsewhere and not try to legalize marijuana, even for such purposes. - Susan Bengston, Phoenix

Got it?  Even if marijuana turns out to be the cure for cancer, it shouldn’t be legalized, because people might get addicted to heroin.  Sorry, cancer patients, you’re just going to have to die, because we don’t want there to be any traffic accidents.  Here, have a beer instead!

This is the mindset we are up against.  Good luck, reformers!

Oral sex, marijuana use linked to throat cancer - Examiner.com
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND - The sexually transmitted virus that causes some cervical cancers can also cause cancer in the upper throat, researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center report.

The human papilloma virus, more commonly known as HPV, is linked to throat cancers most often in younger, married college graduates, according to the study published in the March 12 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The connection grows stronger with larger numbers of oral sex partners and increasing marijuana use.

Other head and neck cancers are more often associated with smoking tobacco, alcohol use and poor oral hygiene, suggesting they may be a separate disease, said Dr. Maura L. Gillison, associate professor of oncology and epidemiology at Hopkins and lead researcher on the study.

More research will need to be done to clarify the relationship to marijuana use, she said.“It’s possible that other behaviors linked with marijuana use could be the real culprit, and our results will need to be confirmed,” she said. Chemicals in marijuana called cannabinoids could affect the immune system’s ability to fight a virus.

We’ll cover this study with Dr. Earleywine, but it seems to me that this is a warning to those people who have genital warts and perform a lot of oral sex while smoking a bong… and what exactly is the goal here, to get people to give up oral sex and marijuana?  Good luck with that one…

Another fantastic essay from our Deputy Director, Paul Armentano. Be sure to read the whole article at AlterNet.org.

Outrageous Anti-Pot Lies: Media Uses Disgraceful Cancer Scare Tactics | DrugReporter | AlterNet
On Tuesday, January 29 — three days prior to the publication of a forthcoming study assessing marijuana use and cancer — Reuters News Wire published a story under the headline: “Cannabis Bigger Cancer Risk Than Tobacco.” Mainstream media outlets across the globe immediately followed suit. “Smoking One Joint is Equivalent to 20 Cigarettes, Study Says,” Fox News declared, while Australia’s ABC broadcast network pronounced, “Experts Warn of Cannabis Cancer ‘Epidemic.’”

If those headlines weren’t attention-grabbing enough, one only had to scan the stories’ inflammatory copy — much of which was lifted directly from press statements provided by the study’s lead author in advance of its publication.

“While our study covers a relatively small group, it shows clearly that long-term cannabis smoking increases lung-cancer risk,” chief investigator Richard Beasley declared. Beasley went on to speculate that pot “could already be responsible for one in 20 lung cancers diagnosed in New Zealand” before warning: “In the near future we may see an ‘epidemic’ of lung cancers connected with this new carcinogen.”

The mainstream press, always on the look out for a good pot scare story, ran blindly with Beasley’s remarks. Apparently not a scribe among them felt any need to confirm whether Beasley’s study — which remained embargoed at the same time it was making worldwide headlines — actually said what was claimed.

It didn’t.

For those who actually bothered to read the study’s full text, which appeared in the European Respiratory Journal days after the global feeding frenzy had ended, they would have learned the following. Among the 79 lung cancer subjects who participated in the trial, 70 of them smoked tobacco. These individuals, not surprisingly, experienced a seven-times greater risk of being diagnosed with lung cancer compared to tobacco-free controls. As for the subjects in the study who reported having used cannabis, they — on average — experienced no statistically significant increased cancer risk compared to non-using controls.