marijuana (Page 7)

In the past, we have reported on non-smokers who get lung cancer. There has been some speculation that while these people may not have smoked cigarettes, they DID smoke marijuana, but researchers have discovered that smoking pot does not lead to lung cancer.

Scientists always assumed that smoking pot was even more dangerous than smoking cigarettes, but a new study shows that people who smoke marijuana?even heavy, long-term marijuana users?do not appear to be at increased risk of developing lung cancer.These findings were a surprise to the researchers. “We expected that we would find that a history of heavy marijuana use?more than 500-1,000 uses?would increase the risk of cancer from several years to decades after exposure to marijuana,” says Dr. Donald Tashkin.
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Medical marijuana users in Canada may go back to the illegal stuff, if the government can’t learn to grow it right. The Ministry of Health began distributing the drug to patients with serious illnesses last month. Canada has allowed the use of medical marijuana for over two years, but until a recent court order, people had to get it from street dealers. Now the government provides it, but a patients’ rights group says their pot is weak and nauseating.
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Most writers we know who blow a lot of grass can’t write an intelligible sentence, but anthropologist J. Francis Thackeray says Shakespeare may have smoked marijuana, since several 17th-century clay pipes found at the site of his home had been used to smoke grass.

He says Shakespeare’s line “weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain” might mean he was “aware of the deleterious effects of drugs.” In Sonnet No. 76, Shakespeare writes of “invention in a noted weed,” meaning he might have smoked for inspiration. The same sonnet refers to “compounds strange,” and in Sonnet 27, Shakespeare wrote about “a journey in my head.” Sonnet No. 118 says, “to make our appetite more keen, with eager compounds we our palate urge.” Marijuana users have a huge appetite after smoking it.read more

Australian researchers have found that people who start smoking marijuana as adolescents may be at greater risk of developing depression and schizophrenia later. Their studies can’t be explained by the theory that people with mental illness self-medicate with marijuana, as schizophrenics often do with cigarettes. This also means there’s a greater risk in using marijuana to help the symptoms of diseases like muscular sclerosis.
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