9 ms·

Marijuana may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say

139 points by Libertatea 12y ago

techmarketerguy 12y ago
The real kicker is that even the slim chance of "unwanted mental health effects" could be reduced without removing the substance's pain and inflammation-relieving properties, if the US Gov't would simply allow the plant to be researched for pharmaceutical purposes.
- hga 12y ago
  Suspected "unwanted mental health effects" include full blow permanent schizophrenia. (Emphasis on suspected, for we know there's a lot of mental illness self-medication with psychoactive drugs starting with alcohol.) That strikes me as making it very hard to do ethical research of the sort you're positing.
  - techmarketerguy 12y ago
    If you think regular usage of cannabis increases the general prevalence of schizophrenia sharply enough that it would prohibit further medical research, I don't really know what to tell you. I just don't see it.
    - hga 12y ago
      This is a question of ethical experiment design. You by definition start with a postulate that there is an "unwanted mental health effect" you want to reduce. We'll assume for the moment it isn't permanent schizophrenia. To see if you've reduced it, you need a control group getting the "wild type", who will be at risk of getting permanent schizophrenia to the best of our current knowledge. If that risk is real, there's also a real chance the causative agent(s) will be administered to the control group. BTW, two of the major active ingredients are already legal drugs or being tested in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol#Marinol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol#Marinol (Schedule III!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabilone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabilone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabiximols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabiximols (in US Phase III drug trials) So your initial premise that the US government hasn't been allowing medical research is not quite the case. However, unlike recreational use, pharmaceutical use has a much higher tolerance of side effects, there's medical gain to be balanced against risks, or so you believe and keep testing at each stage of the drug trials.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    That's a reasonable point, but marijuana use is already prevalent enough that you could probably recruit a statistically significant number of existing users with little difficulty and track the incidence of mental ill-health vs. a control population.
    - hga 12y ago
      Per my other comment in this sub-thread, my concern there is that the experimental group will still be getting whatever it is that's bad, and in the context of "unwanted permanent mental health effects" of recreational use the experiment would be unethical. On the other hand, with the recent state-wide decriminalizations we're "conducting" a rather while uncontrolled experiment right now that ought to be able to yield better data on the biggest concerns, although that sort of epidemiological research is really, really hard, and few are unbiased.
flockonus 12y ago
"researchers" change their mind every single week. Gotta love how media present science.
nope_ 12y ago
Insert your smoke weed everyday comment
- hga 12y ago
  Echoing flockonus' comment, to replace the "drink everyday" thing, unless you're a woman of age 68 or older, if my vague memory of the recent closer look at the data is correct.
- deleted 12y ago
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existencebox 12y ago
I may not be doing the article justice, but it seems a bit misleading how this is presented. The title reads almost like "science clickbait" and there's a lot of talk about "safe" and "lower risk" but the study seems to only have actually computed lethal dose. This is an almost entirely useless statistic from my perspective, and by presenting it as justification for any sort of "safeness" seems almost deceptive. They do nod to this with a small section on the other impacts of use, but it seems heavily deemphisized when compared with the core message. Here's hoping I'm just reading this wrong and looking for the worst possible interpretation; I just worry that when presented without an even hand that these sorts of statements will only impede the goal of more reasonable drug policy and culture.
- ertdfgcb 12y ago
  Wether you're right or not, I've noticed that a common clickbait title strategy is to make sure that the title is technically correct. In this case, a higher ld50 would mean weed is "safer" in the sense that it's harder to overdose. But it's already nearly impossible to OD on weed so that doesn't really mean much, and it certainly isn't what the title implies. This way, when you read it and the article is different than the title it almost feels like your fault for interpreting the title in the wrong manner instead of theirs for push an article about something few people care about.
cowsandmilk 12y ago
Don't see what is surprising in this article. I don't know anyone who claims you can easily consume enough marijuana to kill yourself. On the other hand, alcohol poisoning resulting in death is a well-known phenomenon. When people discuss the "dangers of marijuana", they aren't saying you will take a lethal dose. More typically, there are either claims of impacts on the brain, or claims that it is a gateway to potentially lethal drugs like cocaine or heroin.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >When people discuss the "dangers of marijuana", they aren't saying you will take a lethal dose. More typically, there are either claims of impacts on the brain, or claims that it is a gateway to potentially lethal drugs like cocaine or heroin. It's long past time for those people to support their speculation.
trose 12y ago
I can't help but feel that statistic they're using is a little disingenuous. Yes cannabis has a ridiculously high lethal dose, more than you could ever smoke or consume. You'd basically have to create a concentrate and inject it directly or something. I don't think you should be saying that cannabis is 114 times less deadly than alcohol. There are other contributing factors that could cause harm. There seems to be no research into carcinogenic qualities of cannabis smoke for example. I'm an avid user of cannabis but I dont think we need to go around pretending like there are no side effects and its completely harmless.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > There seems to be no research into carcinogenic qualities of cannabis smoke for example. We know that cannabis smoke contains a bunch of the same carcinogens as tobacco smoke. But tobacco smokers smoke a lot more than cannabis smokers; and you don't have to smoke cannabis.
  - misiti3780 12y ago
    and you can use a vaporizer - which further reduces those carcinogenic qualities - most people i know that smoke cigarettes do not smoke e-cigs
  - spacemanmatt 12y ago
    Do we really know that? I mean, it stands to reason that combustion produces carcinogens, but cannabis is not tobacco. I think this is one of the basic assertions that must be validated by quantitative analysis.
    - lotsofmangos 12y ago
      Soot from bits of stalk in a spliff is going to be little different from breathing in soot from any other bit of dry burning wood.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      You make it sound like noone has analyzed cannabis smoke. Do you really believe that? Obviously they have. Here's an easy read summary. http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=636 http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?question... The interesting one is: > Dale Gieringer, PhD, State Coordinator of the California National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), stated in his 2004 article "Cannabis Vaporizer Combines Efficient Delivery of THC with Effective Suppression of Pyrolytic Compounds," published in the Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics, where he compared the chemical constituents of marijuana smoke (from a glass pipe) with marijuana vapor (from a vaporizer machine): [...] > Comparison runs using combusted [burned] cannabis presented a strikingly different picture... Review data from the gaseous headspace detected 111 tentatively identified compounds, including THC and CBN. Included were five known PAHs [polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons]. Cannabinoids represented only 12% of the inferred recovered mass; the remaining 88% consisted of extraneous products of combustion." And that is followed by a different study: > Donald P. Tashkin, MD, Director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratories at the University of California, Los Angeles, stated in his article "Effects of Marijuana on the Lung and its Immune Defenses," published in the Mar. 1997 "Secretary's Youth Substance Abuse Prevention Initiative: Resource Papers" by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention: > With regard to the carcinogenic potential of marijuana, it is noteworthy that the tar phase of marijuana smoke contains many of the same carcinogenic compounds contained in tobacco smoke, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, such as benz[a]pyrene, which was recently identified as a key factor promoting human lung cancer... Preliminary findings suggest that marijuana smoke activates cytochrome P4501A1, the enzyme that converts polycyclic hydrocarbons, such as benz[a]pyrene, into active carcinogens."
JoshMilo 12y ago
It's legal here in WA and we haven't had a problem with it being "unsafe". These articles kind of remind me about articles on coffee/wine. One day they're bad for the heart, the next day they boost heart health. I think these types of articles are why we have those anti-vaccine people.
guelo 12y ago
As a programmer I'm very protective of my higher level brain functions. Marijuana's effects on short term memory are especially concerning to me. Do any of you long term smokers feels like it has affected your programming skills for the worse or better?
- Synaesthesia 12y ago
  As a Marijuana addict, It has negatively affected mine, although that may be due to the underlying pschological problems that cause me to be an addict. I find that with infrequent use, it is a legitimate psychedelic which can be very intense. It can however give one deep insights into your topic of study under the effects. With frequent use the character of the drug changes, and it becomes almost a normal state, where I am, probably, slightly less functional than normal. If I were abusing almost any other drug as much, I'd be looking at far greater cognitive damage, IMO.
  - PaulHoule 12y ago
    There is no doubt at all that is affects short term memory when you are using it. The long term affects of cannabis use is difficult to study and there is the whole problem that the median scientific paper is wrong.
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  Neutral in my experience - I find sleep deprivation is far, far, far more damaging to my ability to think clearly. If I code while stoned, I find I take longer, but come up with ideas I may not have otherwise considered - and I take way more notes and actually document my code, due to the whole memory thing - which is only while you're stoned, rather than permanent. I mean, if you inject most of the LD50 of THC into your blood stream every few hours from infancy to adulthood, you're going to have some significant neurological problems - just like the lab rats used in the study I think you're referencing.
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discardorama 12y ago
While I agree that the headline is click-baity, and the stats are a bit suspect, I still want to see headlines like these in the mainstream press, because it raises questions about why MJ is classified as a Schedule-I drug after all? I'm not a smoker (maybe once or twice a year, at most?). But the blatant lying by the government (that MJ has no medicinal value and is more dangerous than meth), which flies in the face of science, _and_ the governments prohibition on research, really bothers me. Are we a theocracy? Shouldn't we let science inform our decisions?? Edit: gah! I meant Schedule-I, not Schedule-III ! Edited.
- mycroft-holmes 12y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, marijuana is a Schedule I drug. https://www.google.com/search?q=schedule+1+drugs&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=schedule+1+drugs&ie=utf-8&oe...
  - masklinn 12y ago
    You're correct, schedule I is "high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use and unsafe to use even under medical supervision". Schedule III would be "less potential for abuse than I and II, accepted medical use, abuse may lead to high psychological dependence or low to moderate physical dependence" (Schedule II is for high abuse potential and severe physical or psychological dependence drugs which nonetheless have accepted medical use e.g. cocaine, amphetamines, morphine). A problematic side effect of I is that being allowed to study them is extremely difficult, so getting enough data to move a drug from schedule I to schedule II is near-impossible.
    - shawabawa3 12y ago
      > schedule I is "high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use and unsafe to use even under medical supervision" I think even the most vocal marijuana opponents would agree schedule 1 classification is insane. Stricter control than cocaine? Really?
      - 12y ago
madaxe_again 12y ago
Decided to feed the rage centres of my brain and read the most replied to comments in the article. Apparently every joint smoked causes four pregnancies. By this math, everyone please, give me a pat on the back, I've repopulated a small city. I suppose my lowered testosterone and enhanced aggression have made me super-virile, and I'm causing parthenogenesis all over without trying. Thing is, I don't know how you can even begin to argue against that level of stupid. Scientific fact and rational discourse don't work. You may as well try to convince a lamp post of the validity of deontological ethics.
- rprospero 12y ago
  That does make for some interesting math. For instance, there's about four million children born each year, so that gives us an upper bound of about a million joints consumed. The penal system seems to regard about thirty grams as the unit of scale, so the total mass would be 30 Mg. According to their own website, the DEA seems to seize about an average of 400 Mg of marijuana a year. So we now have a lower bound on production (400 Mg) and an upper bound on consumption (30 Mg). Clearly, production has greatly exceeded demand, in violation of basic micro-economics. Thus, the statement there are four children born for every joint smoked is one of the greatest refutations of capitalism you can imagine. Everyone who believes it should be issued a free Che Guevara t-shirt to show their disdain for free market enterprise. Similarly, anyone who supports the war on drugs should preferentially hire jobs candidates wearing Che Guevara t-shirts in order to avoid hiring those pot heads.
- mod 12y ago
  I have to actively avoid comment sections on most of the internet. HN is my safe-haven, although I still try to avoid politic-centric discussions here. It's appalling the level of discourse of the average person, even in my normal friend/family circles (my facebook feeds).
Someone1234 12y ago
I've never been a user, but I do support legalisation. The reason I support it even though I myself wouldn't benefit is: - It is at least as safe as tobacco and alcohol. So even if we leave the question of what is safer on the table, I think most people would agree based on available evidence that it isn't LESS safe than those two, and they're legal. - The "war on drugs" has been a disaster. It has actually hurt economic growth, you have too many people in jail for trivial things, you leave a black mark on their file almost indefinitely making them unable to get a [good] job, you isolate them from society, you further push people into criminality, and the benefits of it are not clear if you ignore moralist arguments. - We gain tax money from it being legal AND drug users aren't funding pretty horrifying criminality in countries like Mexico and Columbia. - It has been shown to help with certain medical conditions (e.g. chronic pain, PTSD, etc). And while much more research needs to be conducted, it might be easier after legalisation as the permits needed are much easier to get. However I will say my support for legalisation dropped quite a lot after reading how lightly "weed" users take smoking and driving. A lot of them seem to do it now and don't consider it a big deal, which I take a pretty dim view of. Unfortunately there isn't a very reliable test to see if someone is under the influence of anything other than alcohol. People who drive under the influence of any mind altering substance (be it alcohol or weed) should have their driving privileges taken away or for repeat offenders they should literally go to jail for a period. It endangers their lives and the lives of other people on or near the road.
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  Agreed on the whole driving bit - but commensurately, whenever I'm in the US, I am astonished by how casually people drink and drive. Don't think it's a stoner problem, more an inconsiderate dickhead/cultural problem.
  - misiti3780 12y ago
    people smoke and drive here too though
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    I agree. People are far too blasé about drinking and driving in the US. It also seems like the punishment is often fairly light for the first few offenses (e.g. a small ticket, no penalty points, or similar). People from the US I've spoken to often claim this is because in some areas not having a car is pretty unworkable due to a lack of public transport or alternatives. So if driving was revoked then people could get "stranded" at home (e.g. the nearer store is a 10 minute drive away on roads with no sidewalk). I think if they're unwilling to revoke people's driving, then waste a bunch of their time. People car much more about their time than their money, just force people to take a full day weekend class even on the first offense and make it three weeks worth or more on the second attempt (you can fine them also).
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legulere 12y ago
> the risk of death associated with the use of a variety of commonly-used substances. But just looking at risk of death isn't enough. I'm pro legislation, but I think downplaying risks does harm.
LordKano 12y ago
I don't smoke but I don't care if you do. Because of my field of work, I am subject to drug testing and I like my job so I don't partake but it really doesn't matter to me if someone else wants to. It doesn't make any sense to me to spend billions of dollars every year to try to stop people from obtaining and ingesting a plant. Even if it were a deadly poison, it still wouldn't make sense to me. For example, if drinking Hemlock infused tea were to became fashionable and people were dropping left, right and center from it, I would still think it's absurd to spend billions of dollars to stop consenting adults from doing so. Since it makes no sense in that case, I have not heard a convincing argument for prohibition of a much less harmful (and often helpful) plant.
- innguest 12y ago
  Great point! Let me help you out. Your hemlock hypothetical already exists. It's a Japanese fish called Fugu and the fatality rate from consumption thereof is 6.8%. I would never advocate for making Fugu illegal.
- mod 12y ago
  Well, the most-touted argument that I experience is, in a nutshell, that the danger of marijuana that people care about is the danger to others (driving impairment). Nobody seems to care that alcohol is legal. Honestly, though, I don't encounter any die-hard anti-marijuana people anymore. Most people don't care. I don't, either. My father says he doesn't, but says he'll vote against it anyway. Go figure.
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yellowapple 12y ago
I'm not sure if that's a particularly good graph; I can't get my brain to not think "Hey, look at how big cannabis is on that scale; it's obviously the most dangerous!". I can't even find where in that article it's specified what those numbers actually mean. The only thing I have is an assertion by the graph that a higher number equals lower risk, which seems backwards; a lower number equaling a lower risk would be less nonsensical.
MBlume 12y ago
Cannabis has a ridiculously high LD50, everyone knows that. When I think "is cannabis safe" I'm not wondering if I'm one day going to smoke so much weed that I keel over dead, I'm wondering if habitual marijuana use would lower my IQ/damage my lungs/etc.
- Synaesthesia 12y ago
  Vaporizing is healthier than smoking, or consuming it orally. It won't reduce your IQ, that's never been proven. The effects of cannabis are varied. Memory is affected, the degree to which it is affected can vary greatly and depends on the dosage, your tolerance and context. This is while on the drug. Once your are sober, your memory functions pretty normally and isn't affected much by occasional use.
makmanalp 12y ago
Look, I'm all for legalization and all that, but the study measures the ratio between toxic dose and typical intake. We knew this already, I thought. This isn't the be all end all because you can get harmful effects without reaching toxic levels. You can get lung cancer from smoking. You can have psychiatric issues arise etc. etc. This is a very narrow study which shows a promising result but it's not saying "marijuana is completely safe now".
pdh 12y ago
The chart is quite misleading, and by the introductory statement Meth may be even safer than previously thought.
crystaln 12y ago
The graph chosen here, the ratio of a toxic does to a typical dose, is a poor proxy for actual risk. For instance, cocaine has a relatively high risk of causing heart problems at "non-toxic" doses. GHB has a low ratio of deadly to recreational (though not so low that it's unmanageable,) yet is one of the safest recreational drugs. This is similar to the British health leader's announcement that MDMA was safer than alcohol, entirely based on how much likely someone was to die, as opposed to other potential negative effects like neurotoxicity. I'm a support of full drug legalization, and agree that most drugs are far less harmful when taken properly than alcohol. It would be great to see less obtuse statistical analysis of risk.

139 points by Libertatea 12y ago

The real kicker is that even the slim chance of "unwanted mental health effects" could be reduced without removing the substance's pain and inflammation-relieving properties, if the US Gov't would simply allow the plant to be researched for pharmaceutical purposes.

hga 12y ago
Suspected "unwanted mental health effects" include full blow permanent schizophrenia. (Emphasis on suspected, for we know there's a lot of mental illness self-medication with psychoactive drugs starting with alcohol.) That strikes me as making it very hard to do ethical research of the sort you're positing.
- techmarketerguy 12y ago
  If you think regular usage of cannabis increases the general prevalence of schizophrenia sharply enough that it would prohibit further medical research, I don't really know what to tell you. I just don't see it.
  - hga 12y ago
    This is a question of ethical experiment design. You by definition start with a postulate that there is an "unwanted mental health effect" you want to reduce. We'll assume for the moment it isn't permanent schizophrenia. To see if you've reduced it, you need a control group getting the "wild type", who will be at risk of getting permanent schizophrenia to the best of our current knowledge. If that risk is real, there's also a real chance the causative agent(s) will be administered to the control group. BTW, two of the major active ingredients are already legal drugs or being tested in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol#Marinol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol#Marinol (Schedule III!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabilone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabilone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabiximols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabiximols (in US Phase III drug trials) So your initial premise that the US government hasn't been allowing medical research is not quite the case. However, unlike recreational use, pharmaceutical use has a much higher tolerance of side effects, there's medical gain to be balanced against risks, or so you believe and keep testing at each stage of the drug trials.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  That's a reasonable point, but marijuana use is already prevalent enough that you could probably recruit a statistically significant number of existing users with little difficulty and track the incidence of mental ill-health vs. a control population.
  - hga 12y ago
    Per my other comment in this sub-thread, my concern there is that the experimental group will still be getting whatever it is that's bad, and in the context of "unwanted permanent mental health effects" of recreational use the experiment would be unethical. On the other hand, with the recent state-wide decriminalizations we're "conducting" a rather while uncontrolled experiment right now that ought to be able to yield better data on the biggest concerns, although that sort of epidemiological research is really, really hard, and few are unbiased.

flockonus 12y ago

"researchers" change their mind every single week. Gotta love how media present science.

nope_ 12y ago

Insert your smoke weed everyday comment

hga 12y ago
Echoing flockonus' comment, to replace the "drink everyday" thing, unless you're a woman of age 68 or older, if my vague memory of the recent closer look at the data is correct.
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existencebox 12y ago

I may not be doing the article justice, but it seems a bit misleading how this is presented. The title reads almost like "science clickbait" and there's a lot of talk about "safe" and "lower risk" but the study seems to only have actually computed lethal dose. This is an almost entirely useless statistic from my perspective, and by presenting it as justification for any sort of "safeness" seems almost deceptive. They do nod to this with a small section on the other impacts of use, but it seems heavily deemphisized when compared with the core message. Here's hoping I'm just reading this wrong and looking for the worst possible interpretation; I just worry that when presented without an even hand that these sorts of statements will only impede the goal of more reasonable drug policy and culture.

ertdfgcb 12y ago
Wether you're right or not, I've noticed that a common clickbait title strategy is to make sure that the title is technically correct. In this case, a higher ld50 would mean weed is "safer" in the sense that it's harder to overdose. But it's already nearly impossible to OD on weed so that doesn't really mean much, and it certainly isn't what the title implies. This way, when you read it and the article is different than the title it almost feels like your fault for interpreting the title in the wrong manner instead of theirs for push an article about something few people care about.

cowsandmilk 12y ago

Don't see what is surprising in this article. I don't know anyone who claims you can easily consume enough marijuana to kill yourself. On the other hand, alcohol poisoning resulting in death is a well-known phenomenon. When people discuss the "dangers of marijuana", they aren't saying you will take a lethal dose. More typically, there are either claims of impacts on the brain, or claims that it is a gateway to potentially lethal drugs like cocaine or heroin.

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
>When people discuss the "dangers of marijuana", they aren't saying you will take a lethal dose. More typically, there are either claims of impacts on the brain, or claims that it is a gateway to potentially lethal drugs like cocaine or heroin. It's long past time for those people to support their speculation.

trose 12y ago

I can't help but feel that statistic they're using is a little disingenuous. Yes cannabis has a ridiculously high lethal dose, more than you could ever smoke or consume. You'd basically have to create a concentrate and inject it directly or something. I don't think you should be saying that cannabis is 114 times less deadly than alcohol. There are other contributing factors that could cause harm. There seems to be no research into carcinogenic qualities of cannabis smoke for example. I'm an avid user of cannabis but I dont think we need to go around pretending like there are no side effects and its completely harmless.

DanBC 12y ago
> There seems to be no research into carcinogenic qualities of cannabis smoke for example. We know that cannabis smoke contains a bunch of the same carcinogens as tobacco smoke. But tobacco smokers smoke a lot more than cannabis smokers; and you don't have to smoke cannabis.
- misiti3780 12y ago
  and you can use a vaporizer - which further reduces those carcinogenic qualities - most people i know that smoke cigarettes do not smoke e-cigs
- spacemanmatt 12y ago
  Do we really know that? I mean, it stands to reason that combustion produces carcinogens, but cannabis is not tobacco. I think this is one of the basic assertions that must be validated by quantitative analysis.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    Soot from bits of stalk in a spliff is going to be little different from breathing in soot from any other bit of dry burning wood.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    You make it sound like noone has analyzed cannabis smoke. Do you really believe that? Obviously they have. Here's an easy read summary. http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=636 http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?question... The interesting one is: > Dale Gieringer, PhD, State Coordinator of the California National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), stated in his 2004 article "Cannabis Vaporizer Combines Efficient Delivery of THC with Effective Suppression of Pyrolytic Compounds," published in the Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics, where he compared the chemical constituents of marijuana smoke (from a glass pipe) with marijuana vapor (from a vaporizer machine): [...] > Comparison runs using combusted [burned] cannabis presented a strikingly different picture... Review data from the gaseous headspace detected 111 tentatively identified compounds, including THC and CBN. Included were five known PAHs [polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons]. Cannabinoids represented only 12% of the inferred recovered mass; the remaining 88% consisted of extraneous products of combustion." And that is followed by a different study: > Donald P. Tashkin, MD, Director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratories at the University of California, Los Angeles, stated in his article "Effects of Marijuana on the Lung and its Immune Defenses," published in the Mar. 1997 "Secretary's Youth Substance Abuse Prevention Initiative: Resource Papers" by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention: > With regard to the carcinogenic potential of marijuana, it is noteworthy that the tar phase of marijuana smoke contains many of the same carcinogenic compounds contained in tobacco smoke, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, such as benz[a]pyrene, which was recently identified as a key factor promoting human lung cancer... Preliminary findings suggest that marijuana smoke activates cytochrome P4501A1, the enzyme that converts polycyclic hydrocarbons, such as benz[a]pyrene, into active carcinogens."

JoshMilo 12y ago

It's legal here in WA and we haven't had a problem with it being "unsafe". These articles kind of remind me about articles on coffee/wine. One day they're bad for the heart, the next day they boost heart health. I think these types of articles are why we have those anti-vaccine people.

guelo 12y ago

As a programmer I'm very protective of my higher level brain functions. Marijuana's effects on short term memory are especially concerning to me. Do any of you long term smokers feels like it has affected your programming skills for the worse or better?

Synaesthesia 12y ago
As a Marijuana addict, It has negatively affected mine, although that may be due to the underlying pschological problems that cause me to be an addict. I find that with infrequent use, it is a legitimate psychedelic which can be very intense. It can however give one deep insights into your topic of study under the effects. With frequent use the character of the drug changes, and it becomes almost a normal state, where I am, probably, slightly less functional than normal. If I were abusing almost any other drug as much, I'd be looking at far greater cognitive damage, IMO.
- PaulHoule 12y ago
  There is no doubt at all that is affects short term memory when you are using it. The long term affects of cannabis use is difficult to study and there is the whole problem that the median scientific paper is wrong.
madaxe_again 12y ago
Neutral in my experience - I find sleep deprivation is far, far, far more damaging to my ability to think clearly. If I code while stoned, I find I take longer, but come up with ideas I may not have otherwise considered - and I take way more notes and actually document my code, due to the whole memory thing - which is only while you're stoned, rather than permanent. I mean, if you inject most of the LD50 of THC into your blood stream every few hours from infancy to adulthood, you're going to have some significant neurological problems - just like the lab rats used in the study I think you're referencing.
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discardorama 12y ago

While I agree that the headline is click-baity, and the stats are a bit suspect, I still want to see headlines like these in the mainstream press, because it raises questions about why MJ is classified as a Schedule-I drug after all? I'm not a smoker (maybe once or twice a year, at most?). But the blatant lying by the government (that MJ has no medicinal value and is more dangerous than meth), which flies in the face of science, _and_ the governments prohibition on research, really bothers me. Are we a theocracy? Shouldn't we let science inform our decisions?? Edit: gah! I meant Schedule-I, not Schedule-III ! Edited.

mycroft-holmes 12y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, marijuana is a Schedule I drug. https://www.google.com/search?q=schedule+1+drugs&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=schedule+1+drugs&ie=utf-8&oe...
- masklinn 12y ago
  You're correct, schedule I is "high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use and unsafe to use even under medical supervision". Schedule III would be "less potential for abuse than I and II, accepted medical use, abuse may lead to high psychological dependence or low to moderate physical dependence" (Schedule II is for high abuse potential and severe physical or psychological dependence drugs which nonetheless have accepted medical use e.g. cocaine, amphetamines, morphine). A problematic side effect of I is that being allowed to study them is extremely difficult, so getting enough data to move a drug from schedule I to schedule II is near-impossible.
  - shawabawa3 12y ago
    > schedule I is "high potential for abuse, no accepted medical use and unsafe to use even under medical supervision" I think even the most vocal marijuana opponents would agree schedule 1 classification is insane. Stricter control than cocaine? Really?
    - 12y ago

madaxe_again 12y ago

Decided to feed the rage centres of my brain and read the most replied to comments in the article. Apparently every joint smoked causes four pregnancies. By this math, everyone please, give me a pat on the back, I've repopulated a small city. I suppose my lowered testosterone and enhanced aggression have made me super-virile, and I'm causing parthenogenesis all over without trying. Thing is, I don't know how you can even begin to argue against that level of stupid. Scientific fact and rational discourse don't work. You may as well try to convince a lamp post of the validity of deontological ethics.

rprospero 12y ago
That does make for some interesting math. For instance, there's about four million children born each year, so that gives us an upper bound of about a million joints consumed. The penal system seems to regard about thirty grams as the unit of scale, so the total mass would be 30 Mg. According to their own website, the DEA seems to seize about an average of 400 Mg of marijuana a year. So we now have a lower bound on production (400 Mg) and an upper bound on consumption (30 Mg). Clearly, production has greatly exceeded demand, in violation of basic micro-economics. Thus, the statement there are four children born for every joint smoked is one of the greatest refutations of capitalism you can imagine. Everyone who believes it should be issued a free Che Guevara t-shirt to show their disdain for free market enterprise. Similarly, anyone who supports the war on drugs should preferentially hire jobs candidates wearing Che Guevara t-shirts in order to avoid hiring those pot heads.
mod 12y ago
I have to actively avoid comment sections on most of the internet. HN is my safe-haven, although I still try to avoid politic-centric discussions here. It's appalling the level of discourse of the average person, even in my normal friend/family circles (my facebook feeds).

Someone1234 12y ago

I've never been a user, but I do support legalisation. The reason I support it even though I myself wouldn't benefit is: - It is at least as safe as tobacco and alcohol. So even if we leave the question of what is safer on the table, I think most people would agree based on available evidence that it isn't LESS safe than those two, and they're legal. - The "war on drugs" has been a disaster. It has actually hurt economic growth, you have too many people in jail for trivial things, you leave a black mark on their file almost indefinitely making them unable to get a [good] job, you isolate them from society, you further push people into criminality, and the benefits of it are not clear if you ignore moralist arguments. - We gain tax money from it being legal AND drug users aren't funding pretty horrifying criminality in countries like Mexico and Columbia. - It has been shown to help with certain medical conditions (e.g. chronic pain, PTSD, etc). And while much more research needs to be conducted, it might be easier after legalisation as the permits needed are much easier to get. However I will say my support for legalisation dropped quite a lot after reading how lightly "weed" users take smoking and driving. A lot of them seem to do it now and don't consider it a big deal, which I take a pretty dim view of. Unfortunately there isn't a very reliable test to see if someone is under the influence of anything other than alcohol. People who drive under the influence of any mind altering substance (be it alcohol or weed) should have their driving privileges taken away or for repeat offenders they should literally go to jail for a period. It endangers their lives and the lives of other people on or near the road.

madaxe_again 12y ago
Agreed on the whole driving bit - but commensurately, whenever I'm in the US, I am astonished by how casually people drink and drive. Don't think it's a stoner problem, more an inconsiderate dickhead/cultural problem.
- misiti3780 12y ago
  people smoke and drive here too though
- Someone1234 12y ago
  I agree. People are far too blasé about drinking and driving in the US. It also seems like the punishment is often fairly light for the first few offenses (e.g. a small ticket, no penalty points, or similar). People from the US I've spoken to often claim this is because in some areas not having a car is pretty unworkable due to a lack of public transport or alternatives. So if driving was revoked then people could get "stranded" at home (e.g. the nearer store is a 10 minute drive away on roads with no sidewalk). I think if they're unwilling to revoke people's driving, then waste a bunch of their time. People car much more about their time than their money, just force people to take a full day weekend class even on the first offense and make it three weeks worth or more on the second attempt (you can fine them also).

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legulere 12y ago

> the risk of death associated with the use of a variety of commonly-used substances. But just looking at risk of death isn't enough. I'm pro legislation, but I think downplaying risks does harm.

LordKano 12y ago

I don't smoke but I don't care if you do. Because of my field of work, I am subject to drug testing and I like my job so I don't partake but it really doesn't matter to me if someone else wants to. It doesn't make any sense to me to spend billions of dollars every year to try to stop people from obtaining and ingesting a plant. Even if it were a deadly poison, it still wouldn't make sense to me. For example, if drinking Hemlock infused tea were to became fashionable and people were dropping left, right and center from it, I would still think it's absurd to spend billions of dollars to stop consenting adults from doing so. Since it makes no sense in that case, I have not heard a convincing argument for prohibition of a much less harmful (and often helpful) plant.

innguest 12y ago
Great point! Let me help you out. Your hemlock hypothetical already exists. It's a Japanese fish called Fugu and the fatality rate from consumption thereof is 6.8%. I would never advocate for making Fugu illegal.
mod 12y ago
Well, the most-touted argument that I experience is, in a nutshell, that the danger of marijuana that people care about is the danger to others (driving impairment). Nobody seems to care that alcohol is legal. Honestly, though, I don't encounter any die-hard anti-marijuana people anymore. Most people don't care. I don't, either. My father says he doesn't, but says he'll vote against it anyway. Go figure.

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yellowapple 12y ago

I'm not sure if that's a particularly good graph; I can't get my brain to not think "Hey, look at how big cannabis is on that scale; it's obviously the most dangerous!". I can't even find where in that article it's specified what those numbers actually mean. The only thing I have is an assertion by the graph that a higher number equals lower risk, which seems backwards; a lower number equaling a lower risk would be less nonsensical.

MBlume 12y ago

Cannabis has a ridiculously high LD50, everyone knows that. When I think "is cannabis safe" I'm not wondering if I'm one day going to smoke so much weed that I keel over dead, I'm wondering if habitual marijuana use would lower my IQ/damage my lungs/etc.

Synaesthesia 12y ago
Vaporizing is healthier than smoking, or consuming it orally. It won't reduce your IQ, that's never been proven. The effects of cannabis are varied. Memory is affected, the degree to which it is affected can vary greatly and depends on the dosage, your tolerance and context. This is while on the drug. Once your are sober, your memory functions pretty normally and isn't affected much by occasional use.

makmanalp 12y ago

Look, I'm all for legalization and all that, but the study measures the ratio between toxic dose and typical intake. We knew this already, I thought. This isn't the be all end all because you can get harmful effects without reaching toxic levels. You can get lung cancer from smoking. You can have psychiatric issues arise etc. etc. This is a very narrow study which shows a promising result but it's not saying "marijuana is completely safe now".

pdh 12y ago

The chart is quite misleading, and by the introductory statement Meth may be even safer than previously thought.

crystaln 12y ago

The graph chosen here, the ratio of a toxic does to a typical dose, is a poor proxy for actual risk. For instance, cocaine has a relatively high risk of causing heart problems at "non-toxic" doses. GHB has a low ratio of deadly to recreational (though not so low that it's unmanageable,) yet is one of the safest recreational drugs. This is similar to the British health leader's announcement that MDMA was safer than alcohol, entirely based on how much likely someone was to die, as opposed to other potential negative effects like neurotoxicity. I'm a support of full drug legalization, and agree that most drugs are far less harmful when taken properly than alcohol. It would be great to see less obtuse statistical analysis of risk.