No Link Between Cannabis Use and Lung Cancer, Says American Association of Cancer Research

University of California researchers have once again concluded a study that shows that cannabis does not have the detrimental effects once thought and taught by doctors, politicians, teachers and law enforcement. Whereas at one point during D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), I distinctly recall being told that a SINGLE JOINT was just as detrimental to the lungs and body as ONE PACK OF CIGARETTES, recent findings published in The Oncology Report show otherwise.

The study included data from six case-control studies conducted from 1999 to 2012 in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand, with a subject pool of 2,159 lung cancer cases and 2,985 controls. All of the studies were part of the International Lung Cancer Consortium (ILCCO), an international group of lung cancer researchers with the aim of sharing comparable data from ongoing and recently completed lung cancer studies from different geographical areas and ethnicities...

When compared with cannabis smokers who also used tobacco, habitual pot smokers had no significant increase in cancer risk. In an analysis of marijuana smokers that excluded tobacco smokers, there were no significant differences in any of the comparisons, including habitual vs. nonhabitual use; number of joints smoked per day; duration of up to 20 years or duration of more than 20 years.

This obviously flies in the face of previous schools of thought claiming marijuana to be detrimental to the body in terms of carcinogenic content. Despite this conclusive research, it is almost assured that the government will continue to deny that marijuana is at very least, "neutral" to an individual's health. Consistently, the campaign to maintain validity of the DEA and countless billions of dollars that go to incarceration and propaganda that keeps the stigma of "reefer madness" alive.

It's time to contact our local officials and raise up uproariously to call that marijuana be legalized Federally. It is time to push off the old "Schedule I" mentality in favor of an integration of the cannabis plant into our medicine and our recreational scene.

Without emailing and contacting our legislators, they will never consider this issue important. Only by vastly outnumbering those with financially vested interests against cannabis can we be a serious force that is heard by our government!

See the Action / Resources Page for current petitions on Change.org.