Amid all the talk about the morality of marijuana smoking, we seem to have lost sight of its medical effects.
I am not talking about addiction, because the risk of that is slight or nonexistent. It’s about lung cancer.
Many years ago, I was a tobacco smoker. I lit up first thing in the morning and last thing at night. In a typical day, I smoked two and a half packs. After many tries over two years, I managed to quit.
Over many years, at enormous expense, the nation cut tobacco smoking to levels far below what it had been for generations. Most of us breathed a sigh of relief for the many among us who would not die the lingering death.
But now we see much of the nation cheering as a new carrier of potential disease emerges triumphant — without a mention that it is equal to tobacco in its ability to cause lung cancer. Marijuana is hailed as a wonderful thing.
Tests have shown that the same cancer-causing chemicals ride on a marijuana puff as on its cousin tobacco. Medical experiments in New Zealand found that the risk of lung cancer increases 8 percent each year that someone smokes marijuana — slightly more than for a tobacco smoker. This risk is rarely, if ever, mentioned.
Later studies have questioned the findings of the New Zealand research findings, although none has invalidated them. Other sources have reported that marijuana smoke damages the lungs in various ways such as emphysema, including a warning from WebMD, an internet site authored by physicians.
Tom Doran, Buckingham County.
credit:dailyprogress.com