Largest study ever shows NO CAUSAL LINK between ganja use and Cancer and may PREVENT CANCER AND COPD!

A chief researcher for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has proven with a grant from NIDA that not only is there no link between ganja use and cancer, but that ganja use may actually prevent cancer and COPD!

The doctor, Donald Tashkin, who the prohibitionists have relied on exclusively for their claims that ganja use causes lung damage and even cancer has done a complete about face. In the largest study ever, of more than 2,200 people, has proven that there is no link between ganja use and cancer. This study is so frightening to the prohibitionist mentality that the NIDA has refused to publish the findings.

Tashkin reported them at the 2005 meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society and they were published in the October 2006 issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention. The results are in "Marijuana Use and the Risk of Lung and Upper Aerodigestive Tract Cancers: Results of a Population-Based Case-Control Study" by Mia Hashibe1, Hal Morgenstern, Yan Cui, Donald P. Tashkin, Zuo-Feng Zhang, Wendy Cozen, Thomas M. Mack and Sander Greenland was a blockbuster story.

Tashkin reviewed his findings April 4 this year at a conference organized by "Patients Out of Time," a reform group devoted to educating doctors and the public ( as opposed to lobbying politicians ). Some 30 MDs and nurses got continuing medical education credits for attending.

The heaviest marijuana smokers had lighted up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of cancer.

As to the highly promising implication of his own study -that something in marijuana stops damaged cells from becoming malignant- Tashkin noted that an anti-proliferative effect of THC has been observed in cell-culture systems and animal models of brain, breast, prostate, and lung cancer. THC has been shown to promote known apoptosis ( damaged cells die instead of reproducing ) and to counter angiogenesis ( the process by which blood vessels are formed -a requirement of tumor growth ). Other antioxidants in cannabis may also be involved in countering malignancy, said Tashkin.

Much of Tashkin's talk was devoted to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, another condition prevalent among tobacco smokers. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are two forms of COPD, which is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Air pollution and tobacco smoke are known culprits. Inhaled pathogens cause an inflammatory response, resulting in diminished lung function. COPD patients have increasing difficulty clearing the airways as they get older.

Tashkin and colleagues at UCLA conducted a major study in which they measured lung function of various cohorts over eight years and found that tobacco-only smokers had an accelerated rate of decline, but marijuana smokers -even if they smoked tobacco as well-experienced the same rate of decline as non-smokers. "The more tobacco smoked, the greater the rate of decline," said Tashkin. "In contrast, no matter how much marijuana was smoked, the rate of decline was similar to normal." Tashkin concluded that his and other studies "do not support the concept that regular smoking of marijuana leads to COPD."

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

One in three Americans will be afflicted with cancer, we are told by the government ( as if it's our immutable fate and somehow acceptable ). Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. and lung cancer the leading killer among cancers. UCLA medical school professor Donald Tashkin, doing research under an NIDA grant, revealed that components of marijuana smoke somehow prevent cells from becoming malignant. In other words, something in marijuana exerts an anti-cancer effect.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse supported Tashkin's marijuana-related research over the decades and readily gave him a grant to conduct a large, population-based, case-controlled study that would prove definitively that heavy, long-term marijuana use increases the risk of lung and upper-airways cancers. What Tashkin and his colleagues found, however, disproved their hypothesis. ( Tashkin is to marijuana as a cause of lung cancer what Hans Blick is to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -an honest investigator who set out to find something, concluded that it wasn't there, and reported his results. )

I have to point out that this is (in the research world) a fresh study. Prohibitionists are quick to use antique studies, such as one commenter has posted in responding to this blog piece, that are literally decades older than this study BY THE VERY SAME DOCTOR!!

As all of the justifications used to promote prohibition and destroy peoples' lives over their consumption of ganja continue to be shown to be overblown myth or unfounded lies, we have to ask just what excuse does the government have to justify persecuting ganja consumers? I guess they are left with persecuting people for doing something that feels good.

The time has come to put an end to the perverts of prohibition peeping into our bedroom windows and arresting people jst for doing something that feels goods.

(some excerpts from report by Fred Gardner, (Source:CounterPunch))