Health - Smoking Pot All Day, Every Day Might Not Be Good For You

[Nargyle]

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/87677/

Ever wonder why the studies purporting to ‘prove’ marijuana’s health risks only recruit subjects who smoke pot 24 hours a day, seven days a week?


Heavy marijuana use shrinks brain parts
via Reuters

Brain scans showed the hippocampus and amygdala were smaller in men who were heavy marijuana users compared to nonusers. … The men had smoked at least five marijuana cigarettes daily for on average 20 years.


The answer: If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any purported risks left to write about.

I mean, seriously, imagine if these scientists had tried recruiting 15 subjects who drank at least five shots of vodka every day for 20 years? That is, if they could find 15 subjects who were still alive.

Marijuana may up heart attack, stroke risk
via Reuters

Heavy marijuana use can boost blood levels of a particular protein, perhaps raising a person’s risk of a heart attack or stroke, U.S. government researchers said on Tuesday. …The marijuana users in the study averaged smoking 78 to 350 marijuana cigarettes per week.

The study did not look at whether the heavy marijuana users actually had heart disease.

So here we go again. Three-hundred and fifty joints per week?! Who are these people? And what’s with the caveat at the end of the story? If the purpose of the study is to assess whether there might be a link between ridiculously heavy pot use and heart disease, then why not, you know, look to see whether the subjects actually suffered from heart disease? (Likely answer: Aside from the abnormal protein level, the patients were probably otherwise healthy.)

Bottom line: smoking pot all day, every day probably isn’t good for you (though I find it interesting that, even among the most prolific pot users, most of the herb’s purported dangers are either speculative or are only apparent on hyper-sensitive brain scans and multi-tiered neurocognitive tests). Fortunately, 99.9 percent of pot smokers don’t behave this way.

And no, it’s not prohibition that curbs their use habits; it’s the recognition that too much pot is not conducive to an otherwise healthy, responsible lifestyle (just as pounding five shots a day wouldn’t be conducive to, well, life).

So what lesson can be learned from the two studies above (aside from the fact that our government has no interest in investigating the health of ordinary cannabis consumers)? It’s that pot, like alcohol, is best consumed in moderation, and that pot prohibition — even when compared to the excessive use of the drug itself — still poses the greatest threat to health.

[purplehaze]

Another thing to take into consideration, besides the people who smoke 350 joints a week fucking wow man, what if they would have smoked 350 joints worth of weed out of a vaporizer taking the smoke out of the equation.

Vapor probably is dangerous on some level, but not as dangerous as smoke. After switching to a vap, phaze's lungs feel 100% better, he can breath and when he does smoke he doesn't cough.

Also 350 1gram joints, that's insane, that would be 12.5 ounces a week. Nobody smokes that much, thats almost 2 ounces a day.

[cosmicruler]

yea,swim agrees...this study(1nceagain) is flawed!
SWIM has been and still is a daily user of marijuana,but swim couldnt fatham personally smoking 12oz a week!!
Especially if the marijuana being smoked is of decent quality....its just ridiculous really!!

[radiometer]

If anything this study proves the relative safety of cannabis.

Good thing these people weren't buying their pot from this source, they'd really be broke! --> http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_...rlds_most_expe

[kckool]

350 joints in a week? SWIM just asked me...... "WTF?"

[lexifer]

That is a ridiculous number of joints a week a normal joint is usally what, like half a gram. Thats's roughly 39 to 175 grams a week are you kidding? Roughly 6 ounces a week. SWIM couldn't afford that. If he did smoke that much he'd probably be spending every hour of every day blazing. SWIM usually smokes an eighth or so each week. These guys need to do some studies that actually mean something.

[Panthers007]

A friend of Bongo's signed up for a study at Maclean Hospital (home of new LSD25 research) in Belmont, Massachusetts. Once he got there - in the middle of a raging snowstorm - he was told he wasn't qualified for the study. Reason: You don't smoke enough! They were looking only for people who did smoke 350 joints a week to fit into their already-written findings.

They even refused to pay him for the interview. He offered to sue them for risking his life in a snowstorm and rejecting him for not being stoned enough! They relented and coughed up $20.

[sunyata]

350, thats 50 a day. Good news for Swim, he thougt he was smoking too much, but 2-3 a day almost seems healthy compared to this.

[chillinwill]

well its not wonder if you are smoking that much that it might cause some harmful affects

why smoking weed has been proven time after time that not only is it not harmful, it also has many medicinal uses; however, just like everything else, if not used in moderation (which is opinionated) like smoking 6 oz. a week, its gotta have some ramifications

[DryIce]

I agree, the only thing this study proves is how much more safer smoking marijuana is. Get someone to smoke 170-350 normal cigarettes a week and they're toast in a month.

[ADVOR]

My senior year in high school, I did a year-long report on the war on drugs. I used evidence exactly like this. Straight from the government itself. If you read the fine print, it's obvious how the government has tainted information because they don't use likely variables. If I knew someone who smoked 350 joints per week, I would probably tell him to slow the fuck down. That's a LOT of ganja.

[Riddled]

350 joints a week? I can't take this study seriously now.

[Abscond]

Damn... SWIM had trouble smoking an ounce and 1/2 this last 4-20. 12oz a week!? I wanna hang out with this person.

[libertalism]

Thats just plain dumb , do you even feel anything from a joint then?
<3 about 2g's a day with an occasional break to reset tollerance.

[Blu_berrytoke]

Swim doesn't find it too outlandish of an idea since swim went through close to that much for a period of 6 months. (Swim had access to large ammounts of good shit for cheap at the time) And swim will tell you, when he came out of that fog, he felt higher coming off of it all than he did when he was smoking an insane ammount. It took swim nearly 3 weeks to get back to being able to function like normal, so swims experience is going to have to say that smoking that much for that long can't be that good for you physically(lungwise) and mentally.

^^ And no, after the first week or so, one joint definitely didn't cut it. Swim got a casual drug-test from a friends dad who was just curious of my thc levels at the 3 month mark. Both him and the doctor said it was the highest they'd ever seen. But inaccurate since most people get drug tests to pass them, not just to see their levels out of curiosity.

[Imafish]

haha. swim thinks swim would have a hard time smoking that many joints and still have a life/job. and i would think that after like 30 joints to the face, swim would be as high as a motherfucker and be unable to get any higher. This study is obviously a joke made to scare ignorant people into believing that weed is evil and should never be tried.

[Blu_berrytoke]

^Yea Swim ended up getting high to start off, then within the next week, the goal became to just stay on the nice plateau he was residing in. It wasn't even about getting high, it was about staying high.

[Imafish]

swim knows what you mean. swim was smoking 2 oz a week at one point and that was all he really needed to be perma-baked. its just not as good of quality high as when you take it a bit more chill. the whole time swim never got as baked as he did after he cut back to like a couple grams every other day. one bowl wasted him.

[Greenport]

Eating apples is bad for you too if you eat 420 of them all day every day, as deliciously stonerific as it may sound.

[Boca Bitch]

Well doing too much of anything is not good.

There's no questioning that regular smoking isn't healthy for the lungs.

As for psychological side-effects, there are increased rates of mental disorders amongst regular cannabis users. At this moment, it's believed that marijuana can cause individuals predisposed to schizophrenia to actually develop the disorder.

Nothing at this point is conclusive, as many, many more studies have to be done. But until then, practicing moderation can do no harm. But SWIM's not one to judge, considering he's such a stoner.

[Cryptic Concoction]

Originally Posted by Boca Bitch

As for psychological side-effects, there are increased rates of mental disorders amongst regular cannabis users. At this moment, it's believed that marijuana can cause individuals predisposed to schizophrenia to actually develop the disorder.

Nothing at this point is conclusive, as many, many more studies have to be done. But until then, practicing moderation can do no harm. But SWIM's not one to judge, considering he's such a stoner.

Even if there is a higher prevalence of mental disorders in regular cannabis users, this cannot establish a causal link between cannabis use and mental disorders. It does not even establish cannabis as a contributing variable. Without a means of controlling other potential lurking variables, nothing can be inferred regarding the cause of the higher prevalence of mental disorders in regular cannabis users. It is possible that those vulnerable to developing mental disorders, or with preexisting mental disorders, are more inclined to drug use. Without controls, there are simply too many variables to account for.

Likewise, regarding the slight increased risk in developing schizophrenia as cannabis use increases, this is only a correlation. A causal association cannot be established without a mechanism of controlling variables. Even if cannabis use increases the likelihood of developing schizophrenia in genetically predisposed individuals, it may be erroneous to confuse potentiation with cause. To the best of my knowledge, it has not been shown that cannabis use causes predisposed individuals to develop schizophrenia; it has only been demonstrated that heavy cannabis users show a tenuous increase in risk of developing schizophrenia.

Can cannabis use potentially elicit latent psychological disorders to the fore? Perhaps, but I think it would be premature to assert it. Keep in mind that I am not denying that cannabis use may potentiate the development of latent psychological disorders in predisoposed individuals; I am merely expressing skepticism.

[Euthanatos93420]

averaged smoking 78 to 350 marijuana cigarettes per week.

First of all, average, is a single number. So what they're saying here is such a logical inconsistency that this could mean some users smoked upwards of 500/week. At it's lowest point, 78/wk that roughly works out to a J every other hour...including the ones you're sleeping through. Sounds like someone with MS...

[wisol]

First of all whilst its true that doing anything too much is not good for you, swim was an everyday smoker for several years and in the last few months has cut back substantially. swim hasnt noticed much change between heavy smoking and not.
Second, and especially where cannabis is concerened there is a plethora of contradictory studies. It is near impossible to figure out which ones should be listened to.

[Euthanatos93420]

But seriously though....where do I sign up for this 350 tokes/wk study?

[doggy_hat]

Originally Posted by Euthanatos93420

But seriously though....where do I sign up for this 350 tokes/wk study?

ha ha, I think If SWIM participated in a 350 joint a week study, he would be traumatized, and never even consider smoking again. It'd be fun for the first few dozen joints, but you'd probably start to feel sick from being so high, not to mention all the smoke inhalation.

I did the math, and smoking 350 joints a week comes out to smoking one joint every 19.2 minutes. This is taking into consideration an 8 hour period each day where the subject would be sleeping and not smoke anything.

But there are considerable variables. How much does each joint weigh? They could be smoking 0.2 gram mini-joints, or big 1 gram joints. How did they smoke the joints? Dragging casually on a joint as if it were a cigarette wouldn't get a person nearly as high, or hurt their lungs nearly as much as smoking a joint the way people normally do. What was the quality of the cannabis used? There's a big difference between top quality, name strain, hydroponically grown pot, and buds from some random plant found in a ditch. A person might be able to mentally function if they were smoking the worst weed in the world.