Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Good News

Okay, so the FDA still won't acknowledge the health benefits of marijuana because they say it's as bad for your health as smoking cigarettes. Mmm, apparently not.

"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Marijuana smoking does not increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.

They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer.

Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day."

Don't expect the increasingly faith-based FDA to acknowledge this either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What IS it about pot that makes people so upset? I really want to know. I have always found this genuinely confusing and I'm not even a pot smoker myself, but I don't see what frightens people about it so much. It seems clear that alchol abuse is far more of a danger to the general public than marijuana smoking (I've never heard of someone getting high and going out looking for a fight, for instance) and yet people get so consumed with rage over the subject (like I "get" over the death penalty heh heh). I once mentioned in a group of parents that I hoped my kids smoked pot instead of getting drunk and ... well, talk about "could have heard a pin drop". You would have thought I said I hoped the little bastards killed many, many people before violently killing themselves, that was how *strident and furious* the response was. I was basically going, "WOW" mentally and decided to shut my mouth because there was no way anyone was going to hear any other point of view on the subject. I just wonder, why does it get folks so riled up?

Rufus said...

I think maybe it's just because we've committed ourselves so heavily to getting rid of it for so many years now that nobody wants to admit they were wrong. Certainly a large number of people have used it by now, and they must know what little harm it does. It's understandable why you get upset about the death penalty. But, I've never really understood why some people get so upset by the ways that others recieve pleasure or just pass the time.