These compounds may have pharmacological efficacy, but they should not be delivered by smoking, which damages the lungs and delivers thousands of other chemicals, many detrimental

...Hence the medical research underway to isolate the relevant compounds and deliver them some other way.

In the meantime, I'd say there's a viable cost/benefit calculation that can be done re: smoking as a delivery method for THC and other cannibols. The fact that tobacco smoking doesn't seem to incur penalties beyond no-smoking zones and mandatory warnings makes it hard to argue for more stringent treatment of the same phenomenon here.

Which brings us to a key issue...

This research will probably add fuel to the medical marijuana debates, and a bit more federalism in the USA would be a good thing in my view. If American conservatives are true to their espoused principles, a federalist approach to this issue should give the country some test states to watch, and maybe learn from.

Measnwhile, I hope research continues. Though I've got to admit, cannibols as a treatment for people who eat too much does seem a bit counterintuitive at first....

Finally some real results from real research, and about time too.

Regarding knee-jerk prohibitionists, they are entitled to their opinion, but allow me to make my own when determining my state of mind and how I get there.

Regarding knee-jerk health nuts, once again entitled to their opinion, but allow me to determine the delivery mechanism. I'll cover the extra medical care, of course. I do wonder whether obesity is more costly to society than lung cancer...

If we end up offering free health care for the economic poor, we should offer free health care to the will-power poor, as well. 

Laziness will be rewarded, which is clearly why it has survived all of these years, though it must be recessive. ;-)

While smoking of a drug certainly has its drawbacks as a delivery device, these must be kept in perspective with frequency of use and compared to the unique benefits of such a delivery. Smoking allows for the best refinement of dose intake. While some drugs work best when regular oral taking of a dose keeps a certain level of drug in your body, other drugs work best when they can be delivered quickly at certain appropriate times (e.g. nitroglycerin pills dissolved under the tongue during times of cardiac duress). Smoking allows advantages over even this due to the personal variations of smoke frequency, smoke size (if rolled rather than standardized), drag frequency, drag amount/depth, and drag-held duration. While smoking of cannabinoids doesn't give quite the immediate feedback of nicotine (owing to more peripheral nicotinic receptors vs. cannabinoid receptors) it's still better than that for an orally delivered dose or even a single dose injection.

As for lung damage drawbacks, these are undeniable, but must be kept in perspective. A marijuana cigarette would not deliver the same number of harmful chemicals to the system as a standardly chemically treated cigarette. Its remaining damage would be also be proportional to the amount smoked. Smoking a joint or two a day is not the same thing as smoking 20-40 joints/cigs a day any more than eating a couple cheeseburgers a day is the same as eating a couple dozen daily.

While there is a certain counter-intuitiveness to giving an appetite stimulant to help with overeating, it doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't work (I'm not very familiar with this use, so I'll let any literature speak for itself). But as for a similar example, think of a stimulant like ritalin being used to treat ADD (over-prescribed, to be sure, but certainly works for some truly bad cases of ADD/ADHD). Sometimes artificial stimulation of one area of the brain can cause a reduction or downregulation of the receptor for that chemical, thereby reducing the potential for future activation of the area.

Think of it this way. If I get a couple pieces of junk mail a day, I might look at one each day. But if I started getting 10 pieces daily, I may start only looking at one or two a week and pitching the rest. More junk mail would then reduce the overall amount I actually looked at. Not an exact analogy, but a helpful way to think of the counter-intuitive aspects of overstimulation.

Look gentlemen. We have about 5% of the population as regular smokers. We have better than 30 years of experience with marijuana as a smoked drug.

Please some one point me to a empidemiology study that shows pot only smokers in the lung cancer wards. It is not there.

The one study I saw (and this is anecdotal at this point since I don't have a cite or a site) said that regular pot smoking added 2 to 4 years to a person's life.

Under those circumstances should it be made mandatory?

In any case where is the proof of pot's danger. A list of chemicals is no proof. Smoking is no proof. - Cigarettes are bronchio constrictors. - Pot is a dialator. That alone could change everything.

Did I mention that some compounds in pot have been shown to have tumor fighting ability. Has any such compound been found in tobacco? Wouldn't we have heard of it by now?

Smoking pot may repair lung damage. Which may be why we don't see wards full of pot only smokers.

The #1 opponents of smoked medicine at this point in time are drug companies.

Any one know what rent seeking means in an economic context?

Or if you want to get technical look up "Baptists and Bootleggers". It is an official economic theory. It explains why criminals and moralists often are on the same side opposing free markets.

One side gets moral uplift. The other gets reduced market competition.

M. Simon,

I've not come across the exact study you seek but there are some that point towards marijuana smoking as being harmful as well as beneficial (sort of like cigarette smoking). Here's one that touches on a few areas:

Marijuana smoking and head and neck cancer.
Hashibe M, Ford DE, Zhang ZF.
Department of Epidemiology, UCLA School of Public Health, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, 90095-1772, USA.
J Clin Pharmacol. 2002 Nov;42(11 Suppl):103S-107S

Abstract: A recent epidemiological study showed that marijuana smoking was associated with an increased risk of head and neck cancer. Among high school students and young adults, the prevalence of marijuana use was on the rise in the 1990s, with a simultaneous decline in the perception that marijuana use is harmful. It will be a major public health challenge to make people aware of the harmful effects of marijuana smoking, when some people view it as the illicit drug with the least risk. The carcinogenicity of delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is not clear, but according to laboratory studies, it appears to have antitumor properties such as apoptosis as well as tumor-promoting properties such as limiting immune function and increasing reactive oxygen species. Marijuana tar contains similar carcinogens to tar from tobacco cigarettes, but each marijuana cigarette maybe more harmful than a tobacco cigarette since more tar is inhaled and retained when smoking marijuana. More molecular alterations have been observed in bronchial mucosa specimens of marijuana smokers compared to nonsmokers. Field cancerization may be occurring on the bronchial epithelium due to marijuana smoking exposure. Several case studies were suggestive of an association of marijuana smoking with head and neck cancers and oral lesions. However, in a cohort study with 8 years of follow-up, marijuana use was not associated with increased risks of all cancers or smoking-related cancers. Further epidemiological studies are necessary to confirm the association of marijuana smoking with head and neck cancers and to examine marijuana smoking as a risk factor for lung cancer. It will also be of interest to examine potential field cancerization of the upper aerodigestive tract by marijuana and to explore marijuana as a risk factor for oral premalignant lesions.

Here's a couple more that might be worth a look:

Clinical consequences of marijuana.
Khalsa JH, Genser S, Francis H, Martin B.
J Clin Pharmacol. 2002 Nov;42(11 Suppl):7S-10S

Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol inhibits antitumor immunity by a CB2 receptor-mediated, cytokine-dependent pathway
Zhu LX, Sharma S, Stolina M, Gardner B, Roth MD, Tashkin DP, Dubinett SM.
J Immunol. 2000 Jul 1;165(1):373-80

To be honest though, there just isn't a very high volume of literature in the areas of cost/benefit of marijuana smoking. This lack, of course, is due largely to govt efforts to keep it illegal, but the picture is still quite incomplete.

As for whether we would hear of health benefits of tobacco cigarettes, how often do you hear about their association with reducing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases? Or the benefits of heavy (yes heavy) alcohol consumption in reducing Parkinson rates. Some things just rub too many or the wrong people the wrong way.

#7,

Thanks.

I think an inconclusive study at minimum shows that the risk is low. Certainly not at the level of cigarettes.

The fact that there are so few of these studies despite the American Government's desire to show the harm of marijuana is in itself indicative.

The dog that didn't bark.

BTW I had a friend A the Bee Man who smoked cigarettes for medical reasons (cira 1969) so I'm aware of that to some extent.

BTW if I remember correctly Tashkin has been associated with a number of disreputable studies.

Putting his name on a paper is a red flag for me.

Let me update that: I think the research he has done has been twisted for propaganda purposes.

"Marijuana Less Harmful to Lungs
than Cigarettes"http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_health1.shtml

Heavy marijuana smokers show less evidence
of lung injury than heavy tobacco smokers, and it may be cannabinoids that are protecting them from developing a condition like emphysema.

That's according to the principal investigator of a study done at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Speaking at the third annual meeting of the InternationalCannabis Research Society here, Dr. Donald Tashkin, a pulmonologist and UCLA professor of medicine, concluded heavy
marijuana use did not cause the same degree of lung injury as tobacco smoke.

Marijuana Less Harmful to Lungs

than Cigarettes

This drug harmful to lungs and also heart, but not the level of ciggrate.

In my view our social programs are not achieving their results and that should give policymakers pause about the decisions they are making in regards to healthcare.