British Lung Foundation Cons Media.

[boulder]

Top Story: British Lung Foundation Cons Media. Blaming Cannabis for Problems Caused By Prohibition. Tripping Over the Party Line. The Media Fell For It, As Usual, But UK Anti-Tobacco Group Does Not.

Posted by Richard Cowan on 2002-11-19 13:50:04

Source: http://www.lunguk.org Top Story: British Lung Foundation Cons Media. Blaming Cannabis for Problems Caused By Prohibition. Tripping Over the Party Line. The Media Fell For It, As Usual, But UK Anti-Tobacco Group Does Not.

Posted by Richard Cowan on 2002-11-19 13:50:04

Source: http://www.lunguk.org

 

Posted November 15, 2002

Analysis by Richard Cowan

This analysis is the intellectual equivalent of scooping up after the circus parade. Unpleasant, but it is all too easy to see where they are going.

 

There seems to be no limit to the corrupting power of the prohibitionist ideology.

See

Calling All Quacks: The Therapeutic Police State and the Politicization of Medicine. Doctors Cannot Study The Violence of Cannabis Prohibition. Because They Are The Disease, Not The Cure.

 

Last year the British Medical Journal ran a similar scam and the media fell for it just as thoroughly as they fell for this exercise by the British Lung Foundation.

See

The British Medical Journal Continues Its Mediocre Coverage of the Cannabis Issues and The Media Continue Their Wretched Journalism. Missing Essential Point That A Cannabinoid Is Not Whole Cannabis

 

The BMJ articles pretended to present new insights on the hot topic of medical cannabis, but they merely reviewed old studies on various cannabinoids, not cannabis.

 

Here the BLF begins with a sensationalistic press release that misrepresents the report it is promoting. It treats as fact assertions that are highly qualified in the report.

 

The article itself is a tendentiously selective review of a variety of old and relatively new studies, accompanied by 90 footnotes. Perhaps they were hoping that the quantity of citations would be sufficient, because the quality definitely is not.

 

In fact, some are not what they are purported to be. One article that is footnoted six different times is by Prof. Heather Ashton, a rabid prohibitionist, which might be acceptable if it had any original data. Well, actually it does have some data that are very original… because she made them up. It is used as a source for a variety of claims which are

 

There are two glaring errors in the BLF article that make it obviously worthless.

 

First, it takes as one of its major premises the prohibitionist party line that whole cannabis (marijuana) is so much stronger than it was back in the 1960s and 1970s that data from that period should be discounted if there is no harm demonstrated.

 

The first problem with that claim is that there is NO DATA on average THC content from the 1960s.

 

Typically, the BLF stoops to the obvious ploy of comparing supposed averages from the 1960s and 1970s with extremes from the present.

 

One of the sources cited for this claimed increase in potency is a 1997 World Health Organization study that simply does not support the comparison.

 

The second source is a book published in 1987. It is hard to understand how that would prove anything about today’s cannabis.

 

Professor Ashton is the third source and she cited both of these sources herself, so the BLF cites her citing them.

 

Also Ashton simply made up a chart that says that somehow cannabis became stronger in the 1980s as the result of result of “intensive cultivation and more potent subspecies (sinsemilla, skunkweed, netherweed and others” – ten years before these wonders were widely introduced. (See below.)

 

In any case, she offers no support for the data that the BLF use as their primary premise.

 

To make things worse the BLF compounds its problems by acknowledging that in the UK most of the cannabis consumed – until very recently – has been in the form of cannabis resin, hashish, and they do not postulate that there has been any change in the THC levels in hashish. They do not seem to have noticed that this made their own premise irrelevant.

 

Then there is the inconvenient fact that it is the later studies that show that cannabis did not have the damaging health consequences that had been expected by the earlier studies.

 

Their most frequently cited expert, Donald Tashkin, has concluded that even heavy cannabis smoking does not impair lung function. You have to find that in the footnotes.

 

There are other studies that the BLF simply overlooked that show that cannabis smokers do not have serious health problems. NORML’s weekly press release (see below) cited them.

 

The other major conceptual problem is that they explicitly attribute most of the purported dangers with cannabis smoking to artifacts of prohibition. They don’t or can’t understand that point.

 

Just as they did not notice that the purported increase in cannabis potency was irrelevant, they are studying the dangers of contraband cannabis smoked in the context of cannabis prohibition. That tells them very little about the actual dangers intrinsic to cannabis.

 

Most notably, it attributes the higher levels of tar to which cannabis smokers are supposedly subjected to the way that cannabis is smoked, being held in the lungs much longer than is tobacco smoke.

 

Given that cannabis prohibition has driven the price of cannabis higher than the price of gold and has kept availability uncertain, it has become the custom among cannabis smokers to try to maximize the impact of a limited supply. Unfortunately, that is rather pointless because the lungs really do not absorb much more THC, just tar.

 

The article even observes that there is more tar in the ends of joints than in the other parts. Most cigarette smokers throw away their “butts” but most cannabis smokers keep their “roaches” as cannabis butts are charmingly called. That is another artifact of prohibition’s high prices.

 

The article also cites studies concerning contaminated cannabis that cause health problems for persons with impaired immune systems, obviously a result of prohibition.

 

Even more appalling for the LUNG charity, they completely ignore vaporization or others ways that the risks in smoking cannabis might be reduced, even when they acknowledge that cannabis might help treat asthma.

 

Then there is the matter of nicotine.

 

Perhaps because there is no nicotine in cannabis the BLF chose to minimize its dangers. That is particularly odd for a group supposedly concerned about smoking.

 

Last month, two researchers at The Scripps Research Institute announced that they had discovered that a chemical called nornicotine— which is naturally present in tobacco and is also produced as a metabolite of nicotine— may contribute to the pathology of diabetes, cancer, aging, and Alzheimer's disease.

 

Nornicotine also reacts with commonly prescribed steroids, like cortisone and prednisone, potentially making them more toxic or compromising their effectiveness and safety.

 

The article appears in the October 28, 2002 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but that apparently was not of any interest to the BLF, since there is no nornicotine in cannabis.

 

Last year,Nature Medicine (July 2001 Volume 7 Number 7 pp 833 – 839) reported that nicotine on its own can cause cancer. Amazingly, the report says that nicotine had been widely seen as just being the drug that kept smokers addicted to tobacco, but otherwise was relatively harmless. That is very odd given that nicotine is highly toxic and acts as a vasoconstrictor.

 

The article says that nicotine at a concentration similar to that in the blood of tobacco smokers promoted cancerous tumor growth and narrowed arteries in mice, and accelerated growth of cancer tumors and fatty deposits on artery walls. But that is of no concern to the BLF.

 

Certainly heavy cannabis smoking can cause irritation to the respiratory system. However, it cannot be concluded that cannabis poses dangers comparable to tobacco. It is quite clear that the BLF has been conned by whoever put together this report and it then conned the all to gullible media, especially in the UK.

 

 

 

It is interesting to note that Clive Bates, the head of ASH, Action on Smoking and Health, the UK anti-tobacco group responded negatively to the BLF piece with a letter to the Guardian yesterday.

 

“The claim that smoking three cannabis joints a day would damage the lungs as much as 20 cigarettes a day needs its own health warning (Report, November 11).

 

The two 1987 studies on which this claim appears to be based examine a limited range of symptoms, and did not estimate the risks of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, eg emphysema), which are the main fatal lung diseases caused by smoking tobacco.

 

The report calls for more research "to establish what link (if any) there is between COPD and cannabis smoking". Given that the data don't cover the main risks, it is premature to draw precise risk comparisons between cannabis and tobacco.

 

This is not to argue that cannabis is safe. The most important factor will be lifetime exposure. Because tobacco is so addictive, it is not unusual for a smoker to consume 20 cigarettes a day for 40 years. But such heavy and sustained cannabis use is rare. Any comparison of risk needs to include the different ways the products are used over a lifetime; the neat 3:20 formulation cannot do that.”

Clive Bates

Director, ASH

 

Posted November 15, 2002

Analysis by Richard Cowan

This analysis is the intellectual equivalent of scooping up after the circus parade. Unpleasant, but it is all too easy to see where they are going.

 

There seems to be no limit to the corrupting power of the prohibitionist ideology.

See

Calling All Quacks: The Therapeutic Police State and the Politicization of Medicine. Doctors Cannot Study The Violence of Cannabis Prohibition. Because They Are The Disease, Not The Cure.

 

Last year the British Medical Journal ran a similar scam and the media fell for it just as thoroughly as they fell for this exercise by the British Lung Foundation.

See

The British Medical Journal Continues Its Mediocre Coverage of the Cannabis Issues and The Media Continue Their Wretched Journalism. Missing Essential Point That A Cannabinoid Is Not Whole Cannabis

 

The BMJ articles pretended to present new insights on the hot topic of medical cannabis, but they merely reviewed old studies on various cannabinoids, not cannabis.

 

Here the BLF begins with a sensationalistic press release that misrepresents the report it is promoting. It treats as fact assertions that are highly qualified in the report.

 

The article itself is a tendentiously selective review of a variety of old and relatively new studies, accompanied by 90 footnotes. Perhaps they were hoping that the quantity of citations would be sufficient, because the quality definitely is not.

 

In fact, some are not what they are purported to be. One article that is footnoted six different times is by Prof. Heather Ashton, a rabid prohibitionist, which might be acceptable if it had any original data. Well, actually it does have some data that are very original… because she made them up. It is used as a source for a variety of claims which are

 

There are two glaring errors in the BLF article that make it obviously worthless.

 

First, it takes as one of its major premises the prohibitionist party line that whole cannabis (marijuana) is so much stronger than it was back in the 1960s and 1970s that data from that period should be discounted if there is no harm demonstrated.

 

The first problem with that claim is that there is NO DATA on average THC content from the 1960s.

 

Typically, the BLF stoops to the obvious ploy of comparing supposed averages from the 1960s and 1970s with extremes from the present.

 

One of the sources cited for this claimed increase in potency is a 1997 World Health Organization study that simply does not support the comparison.

 

The second source is a book published in 1987. It is hard to understand how that would prove anything about today’s cannabis.

 

Professor Ashton is the third source and she cited both of these sources herself, so the BLF cites her citing them.

 

Also Ashton simply made up a chart that says that somehow cannabis became stronger in the 1980s as the result of result of “intensive cultivation and more potent subspecies (sinsemilla, skunkweed, netherweed and others” – ten years before these wonders were widely introduced. (See below.)

 

In any case, she offers no support for the data that the BLF use as their primary premise.

 

To make things worse the BLF compounds its problems by acknowledging that in the UK most of the cannabis consumed – until very recently – has been in the form of cannabis resin, hashish, and they do not postulate that there has been any change in the THC levels in hashish. They do not seem to have noticed that this made their own premise irrelevant.

 

Then there is the inconvenient fact that it is the later studies that show that cannabis did not have the damaging health consequences that had been expected by the earlier studies.

 

Their most frequently cited expert, Donald Tashkin, has concluded that even heavy cannabis smoking does not impair lung function. You have to find that in the footnotes.

 

There are other studies that the BLF simply overlooked that show that cannabis smokers do not have serious health problems. NORML’s weekly press release (see below) cited them.

 

The other major conceptual problem is that they explicitly attribute most of the purported dangers with cannabis smoking to artifacts of prohibition. They don’t or can’t understand that point.

 

Just as they did not notice that the purported increase in cannabis potency was irrelevant, they are studying the dangers of contraband cannabis smoked in the context of cannabis prohibition. That tells them very little about the actual dangers intrinsic to cannabis.

 

Most notably, it attributes the higher levels of tar to which cannabis smokers are supposedly subjected to the way that cannabis is smoked, being held in the lungs much longer than is tobacco smoke.

 

Given that cannabis prohibition has driven the price of cannabis higher than the price of gold and has kept availability uncertain, it has become the custom among cannabis smokers to try to maximize the impact of a limited supply. Unfortunately, that is rather pointless because the lungs really do not absorb much more THC, just tar.

 

The article even observes that there is more tar in the ends of joints than in the other parts. Most cigarette smokers throw away their “butts” but most cannabis smokers keep their “roaches” as cannabis butts are charmingly called. That is another artifact of prohibition’s high prices.

 

The article also cites studies concerning contaminated cannabis that cause health problems for persons with impaired immune systems, obviously a result of prohibition.

 

Even more appalling for the LUNG charity, they completely ignore vaporization or others ways that the risks in smoking cannabis might be reduced, even when they acknowledge that cannabis might help treat asthma.

 

Then there is the matter of nicotine.

 

Perhaps because there is no nicotine in cannabis the BLF chose to minimize its dangers. That is particularly odd for a group supposedly concerned about smoking.

 

Last month, two researchers at The Scripps Research Institute announced that they had discovered that a chemical called nornicotine— which is naturally present in tobacco and is also produced as a metabolite of nicotine— may contribute to the pathology of diabetes, cancer, aging, and Alzheimer's disease.

 

Nornicotine also reacts with commonly prescribed steroids, like cortisone and prednisone, potentially making them more toxic or compromising their effectiveness and safety.

 

The article appears in the October 28, 2002 online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but that apparently was not of any interest to the BLF, since there is no nornicotine in cannabis.

 

Last year,Nature Medicine (July 2001 Volume 7 Number 7 pp 833 – 839) reported that nicotine on its own can cause cancer. Amazingly, the report says that nicotine had been widely seen as just being the drug that kept smokers addicted to tobacco, but otherwise was relatively harmless. That is very odd given that nicotine is highly toxic and acts as a vasoconstrictor.

 

The article says that nicotine at a concentration similar to that in the blood of tobacco smokers promoted cancerous tumor growth and narrowed arteries in mice, and accelerated growth of cancer tumors and fatty deposits on artery walls. But that is of no concern to the BLF.

 

Certainly heavy cannabis smoking can cause irritation to the respiratory system. However, it cannot be concluded that cannabis poses dangers comparable to tobacco. It is quite clear that the BLF has been conned by whoever put together this report and it then conned the all to gullible media, especially in the UK.

 

 

 

It is interesting to note that Clive Bates, the head of ASH, Action on Smoking and Health, the UK anti-tobacco group responded negatively to the BLF piece with a letter to the Guardian yesterday.

 

“The claim that smoking three cannabis joints a day would damage the lungs as much as 20 cigarettes a day needs its own health warning (Report, November 11).

 

The two 1987 studies on which this claim appears to be based examine a limited range of symptoms, and did not estimate the risks of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, eg emphysema), which are the main fatal lung diseases caused by smoking tobacco.

 

The report calls for more research "to establish what link (if any) there is between COPD and cannabis smoking". Given that the data don't cover the main risks, it is premature to draw precise risk comparisons between cannabis and tobacco.

 

This is not to argue that cannabis is safe. The most important factor will be lifetime exposure. Because tobacco is so addictive, it is not unusual for a smoker to consume 20 cigarettes a day for 40 years. But such heavy and sustained cannabis use is rare. Any comparison of risk needs to include the different ways the products are used over a lifetime; the neat 3:20 formulation cannot do that.”

Clive Bates

Director, ASH