Lung cancer: One joint = 20 cigarettes?

The lung cancer study was the scariest. Since cigarettes are a known lung cancer risk, it seems plausible that marijuana might carry similar risks. In fact, most of the scientific evidence tends in the opposite direction - though one would never know it from reading either the study or the Reuters wire story that got the heaviest circulation.

Conducted in New Zealand, this was what is called a "case-control" study, in which researchers looked at a group of patients who had lung cancer and compared them to a group without cancer - the controls - matched for age and other demographics. All were asked about various factors that might increase their lung cancer risk, including smoking cigarettes or marijuana. After running the data on 79 cancer cases and 324 controls through myriad equations and mathematical analyses, the researchers proclaimed that one joint packed a cancer risk roughly equal to 20 cigarettes - an assertion that became Reuters' lead.

What was downplayed in the study, published in the European Respiratory Journal, and missing entirely from most media reports was context - context that strongly suggests that its alarming conclusion is wrong.

For one thing, the new conflicts with other, much larger studies. In a study published in 1997, Kaiser-Permanente researchers followed 65,000 patients for 10 years and saw no sign of marijuana use increasing the risk of lung cancer or other smoking-related cancers. And a UCLA study similar in design to this one, published in 2006, found a trend toward lower lung cancer rates among marijuana smokers. Instead of 79 cancer cases, the UCLA team looked at 1,212. The result was so striking that they speculated that it "may reflect a protective effect of marijuana."

That's right: Marijuana might protect from cancer. Piles of published studies going back to the mid-1970s document the cancer-fighting properties of marijuana's active components, THC and other chemicals called cannabinoids. Anticancer activity has been shown in many types of malignant cells, including lung cancer cells. So even though marijuana smoke contains tars and other potentially carcinogenic compounds, it is entirely plausible that cannabinoids counter any harmful effects.

But even without such context, a closer look at the New Zealand data raises questions that should have been asked by reporters. For example, most marijuana smokers in the study actually didn't show an increased risk of cancer. The only group that did was those whose marijuana use equaled at least 10.5 "joint-years" (one joint-year equals smoking a joint every day for one year). That group constituted a whopping 14 people. All those complicated mathematical models leading to the "20 times the risk" assertion, and contradicting reams of published research, rest on exactly 14 people.

Panel Backs Softer Marijuana Penalty

Concord, NH - A House subcommittee yesterday approved a bill to reduce the consequences of possessing small amounts of marijuana.

The Criminal Justice and Public Safety subcommittee voted 3-1 to reduce to a violation, punishable by a $200 fine, possession of less than one-quarter ounce of marijuana. It is not clear when the full committee will vote on the bill.

Current law makes possession of marijuana a misdemeanor, which carries a fine and criminal record upon conviction. A violation would not mean a record, Rep. David Welch, R-Kingston, said.

"Young folks who aren't always making intelligent choices could screw up their chances at a Pell Grant for college later on," under current law, he said. A quarter ounce is the equivalent of seven or eight joints, Welch said, referring to marijuana cigarettes.

The subcommittee set a lower limit than the original version of House Bill 1623, which would have decriminalized holding up to one and a quarter ounces. It also corrected a drafting error in the bill that would have removed penalties for selling small amounts of marijuana.

Rep. John Tholl, R-Whitefield, who is the Dalton police chief, voted with Welch and Rep. Ellen Nielsen, D-Claremont, for the amended bill. Tholl said possession of a quarter-ounce is "far less onerous than an ounce." He said it's not clear how far the full Criminal Justice committee, with its high percentage of retired law enforcement officers, will view the bill.

Matt Simon of the N.H. Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy said he was happy to see the bill advance. Current penalties are "unnecessarily harsh," he said.

"These representatives have taken an honest look at the facts and they've agreed to support punishments which come closer to fitting the offense." Rep. Delmar Burridge, D-Keene, opposed the bill, sponsored by Reps. Jeffrey Fontas, D-Nashua, Andres Edwards, D-Nashua, and Charles Weed, D-Keene.

Source: Union Leader (Manchester, NH), Union Leader - Front Page News

Drug Testing Ruling Stokes Dispute

A court ruling against a fired marijuana user won't stop the province's human rights commission seeking changes to workplace drug-testing policies, a lawyer on the case said yesterday.

"I think automatic termination is troubling because you're denying someone employment," said Arman Chak, an Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission lawyer who represented the fired worker, John Chiasson, during a recent court case.

Chak said the commission hasn't decided on whether to challenge a ruling from the Alberta Court of Appeal rejecting Chiasson's claims a Fort McMurray employer's drug-testing policies were discriminatory.

While Chiasson admitted he was only a recreational pot smoker, a lower-court judge had earlier ruled that in firing anyone who tested positive for drugs, engineering and construction company Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) had essentially treated him as an addict and therefore disabled.

Alberta's human-rights legislation forbids discrimination on the basis of disability.

The appeal judges, however, have now ruled safety concerns justify workplace drug-testing policies, thereby overturning the earlier court decision.

For Chak, the debate isn't over. "Is that the best way to deal with him? I think that's a level of disrespect that we don't expect in Alberta," he said of Chiasson's firing.

Chak pointed to evidence a urine test showing the presence of marijuana doesn't necessarily mean a person is impaired.

He said in Chiasson's case, the worker had started his job as a receiving clerk at a Syncrude Canada construction site by the time the test results came back.

By then, it had been weeks since he had smoked the pot.

Source: Drug testing ruling stokes dispute