In this video I’ll be dicussing some of the most controversial questions about marijuana .
Marijuana causes lung cancer ?
Fact: Dr. Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years have verified, that no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found. Moderate smoking of marijuana appears to pose minimal danger to the lungs. Like tobacco smoke, marijuana smoke contains a number of irritants and carcinogens. But marijuana users typically smoke much less often than tobacco smokers, and over time, inhale much less smoke. As a result, the risk of serious lung damage should be lower in marijuana smokers. There have been no reports of lung cancer related solely to marijuana, and in a large study presented to the American Thoracic Society in 2006, even heavy users of smoked marijuana were found not to have any increased risk of lung cancer. Unlike heavy tobacco smokers, heavy marijuana smokers exhibit no obstruction of the lung’s small airway. That indicates that people will not develop emphysema from smoking marijuana.
Marijuana is highly addictive ?
Fact: For most people, no. About 10% of recreational users will develop problems serve enough to impair their work and relationships. Many more will come to depend on pot for relaxation and social purposes. Some might seek help from drug treatment professionals however Marijuana does not cause physical withdraw symptoms like other drug substance do but more of a psychological withdraw symptoms which are mild.
Does marijuana cause brain damage?
Fact: The founder and director of the Medical Marijuana Policy Advocacy Project, Dr. David Ostrow said in his interview, “it’s been a controversial issue whether long term marijuana or cannabis use causes brain damage. There can be some acute affects of decreased coordination, some slowing down of psychological processes or we call cognitive problems, but these seem to go away after the active ingredients of cannabis are out of the body. I don’t believe there’s are any good studies that shows that use of just marijuana over any period of time produces any brain damage. Part of the problem though is that very few people use just one drug so they may drink along with cannabis use or they may use other drugs and those drugs may be causing long term brain damage. Certainly we know that about alcohol that it can cause dementia, or psychosis a number of problems over the long term. But marijuana alone, where it’s been studied is not associated with permanent brain damage”.
1 joint equals a pack of cigarettes ?
Fact: Some critics exaggerate the dangers of marijuana smoking by fallaciously citing a study by Dr. Tashkin which found that daily pot smokers experienced a “mild but significant” increase in airflow resistance in the large airways greater than that seen in persons smoking 16 cigarettes per day. What they ignore is that the same study examined other, more important aspects of lung health, in which marijuana smokers did much better than tobacco smokers. Dr. Tashkin himself disavows the notion that one joint equals 16 cigarettes. A more widely accepted estimate is that marijuana smokers consume four times as much carcinogenic tar as cigarettes smokers per weight smoked. This does not necessarily mean that one joint equals four cigarettes, since joints usually weigh less. In fact, the average joint has been estimated to contain 0.4 grams of pot, a bit less than one-half the weight of a cigarette, making one joint equal to two cigarettes (actually, joint sizes range from cigar-sized spliffs smoked by Rastas, to very fine sinsemilla joints weighing as little as 0.2 grams). It should be noted that there is no exact equivalency between tobacco and marijuana smoking, because they affect different parts of the respiratory tract differently: whereas tobacco tends to penetrate to the smaller, peripheral passageways of the lungs, pot tends to concentrate on the larger, central passageways. One consequence of this is that pot, unlike tobacco, does not appear to cause emphysema.
Uploaded to YouTube by thedanwriter1 on Feb 14, 2011
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