Live In Pain To Protect Your Body And Brain?
February 8, 2008 by Alicia Sparks, Mental Health Notes
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
Listen up potheads, old hippies, wayward teens, and my good buddy in sunny California: According to scientists in New Zealand, “[s]moking a joint is equivalent to 20 cigarettes in terms of lung cancer risk.”
In an article published in the European Respiratory Journal, the scientists said cannabis could be expected to harm the airways more than tobacco as its smoke contained twice the level of carcinogens, such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons, compared with tobacco cigarettes (Cannabis bigger cancer risk than cigarettes: study).
Last May, I directed you to a study about the effects cannabis can have on your mental health – specifically, psychosis and schizophrenia-like symptoms.
Increased risk of lung cancer and psychosis and schizophrenia-like symptoms? Thanks anyway. (Says the girl who just put out a cigarette to type this. *sigh*)
However, Help My Hurt’s Marijke Durning makes some very good points when she claims it’s time to legalize marijuana for pain control.
So…which is it? Do we continue to ban Mary Jane for her mind-altering effects and, indirectly, her cancer-causing carcinogens? Even though we’re allowed to alter our minds with alcohol and kill ourselves with tobacco? Or, do we figure out a way to legalize the ganja – even if it’s with major limitations – to help chronic pain sufferers feel better and increase their qualities of life?
At this point, I vote for the latter. What do you think?
Pakalolo peddlin’ image credit.
Hi Alicia,
My argument has always been – and always will be – that there are many drugs that are legally available for pain that are much, much MUCH more potent than marijuana. From giving demerol and morphine, to a combination of opium and bella donna (good for bladder pain due to cancer), they are all way more potent and have a much higher abuse potential than does marijuana.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Marijke. Too, it’s been my experience (well, not my experience personally, but my secondhand experience with folks I know, things I’ve witnessed, read, etc.) that the likelihood of addiction/withdrawal symptoms from marijuana is something like, zilch.uno%. I add the uno because, not being a doctor and not having firsthand experience with marijuana addiction/withdrawal, I could be seriously wrong. So, I want to cover my bases
In your experiences (as a nurse and possibly as someone who’s known heavy marijuana smokers – I don’t know?), what is the likelihood of addiction and severe withdrawal?
Well, I’m not a real dr., but here’s my two cents. The lung issue is biased, and again, the point has been missed. None of my mary-jane friends, nor I, partake in joints as the delivery system. Joints are for people who have a lot of money to blow (to fill a whole joint with weed), or that smoke really bad weed and need a lot to get ‘high’.
I smoke one small nugget out of a water pipe (bong), which is filtered through WATER. My pal smokes through a gadget called a VAPORIZOR which completely breaks down the smoke into an almost undetectable amount of smoke. Smoking a whole joint to the head of the good weed we get in southern cal is way too much! There is no overdose amount, but you may feel like cleaning your whole house or wind up listening to your heart beat for like an hour.
I guess what I’m getting at, is that this study relates a “joint” to cigs, when there are usually 3-4 people who can partake in one joint. It just reminds me of the propaganda and the rhetoric of the 1960’s, associated with the moive “reefer madness” (check it out, it’s quite funny).
Have them do a bong rip to cig meter and get back to me… Duh, joints don’t have a FILTER either!!! It’s raw material into the lungs…I could have told you the lungs will resin up too…