Prohibitionists scare people with comparisons between marijuana and tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke is bad, therefore all smoke is bad the reasoning goes. If somebody suggested that burning PCBs (dioxin), high sulphur coal, firewood, nuclear waste and natural gas all produced the same combustion products and all were equally dangerous, most people would demand proof before accepting such a ridiculous claim. But make the claim that tobacco smoke and pot smoke are equally bad and no one questions it. But what does science say.......

There is one very important difference between marijuana smoke and tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke contains ionizing radiation and cannabis smoke does not. The tobacco plant's roots and the sticky leaf surface absorb radioactive polonium-210 and lead-210 isotopes which are inhaled with tobacco smoke.  A pack and a half a day smoker receives a daily dose of radiation equal to what a person would have received standing downwind from Three Mile Island nuclear reactor during the first 21 hours after the infamous accident. Pack and a half a day smokers are exposed to the equivalent of over 300 hundred chest x-rays every year from this ionizing radiation.

Radioactivity in tobacco may explain why smokers of low-tar and low-nicotine cigarettes have the same lung cancer rate as smokers of regular cigarettes. 50% of tobacco radiation is discharged into the air which might explain why non-smokers married to heavy smokers may have an increased risk of lung cancer.  "Americans are exposed to far more radiation from tobacco smoke than from any other source," says Dr R T Ravenholt, former director of World health Surveys at the Center for Disease Control.

It is extremely misleading to blame tobacco risks on "carcinogens" without accounting for ionizing radiation. Some experts speculate that combining ionizing radiation with carcinogenic substances increases cancer risks a hundredfold. Vilma Hunt, who discovered radioactive polonium 210 in tobacco in 1964, recalls the day her study was released. It seemed that every chemist and physicist she knew quit smoking. "They immediately understood the implication," she recounts. "They said, 'If there's ionizing radiation in this stuff, that's it. I'm finished'."

Even former Surgeon General C. Everettt Koop admits that radio activity may be the primary cause of lung cancer in smokers Marijuana plants do not absorb radioactive elements.

Where Are The Bodies

If marijuana caused lung cancer, prohibitionists would be giving body counts on the six o'clock news instead of peddling scare stories. The truly sad aspect of this fear mongering is that the authorities KNOW marijuana is harmless. Back in the 1960s, the drug warriors got to believing their own propaganda and authorized over 10,000 government approved studies of marijuana between 1965-75. To their amazement and disgust, report after report gave cannabis a clean bill of health. Even worse from the drug crusader point of view, many studies provided preliminary evidence that cannabis compounds are effective in treating a wide range of diseases including cancer tumor suppression.

Anti-Cancer Compounds In Cannabis

Another reason to demand proof before accepting any assumptions about marijuana causing cancer is the fact that cannabis contains several very active anti-cancer compounds.

In 1976,  Louis S. Harris, of the Medical College of Virginia, reported that delta-9 THC increased cancer survival time by 36% without the weight loss caused by most standard anti-tumor  agents. Delta-8 THC and cannabinol were also found to be quite active in tumor suppression. No other chemotherapy agent differentiates between tumor and normal cells the way cannabis compounds do. Like all other studies showing medical potential for marijuana, Harris's funding was immediately discontinued.

Cannabis Receptors

The discovery of "cannabis receptors" in the human brain and other parts of the body and naturally occurring THC compounds (anandamide) in the body has ended most scientific speculation that the active ingredients in marijuana cause any kind of health damage. Previous assumptions about brain damage and other health injuries have been rejected because it is now known that cannabis is metabolized without any toxicity whatsoever. Marijuana is safer than public drinking water.

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