What I heard from a knucklehead

[AtomicBlaze42o]

My auto shop teacher once told me that people who smoke marijuana and Tobacco at the same time are 8 times more likely to develop lung cancer. Is my balding 26 year old auto teacher know what he's talking about?

AtomicBlaze42o Reviewed by AtomicBlaze42o on 07-01-2007. What I heard from a knucklehead My auto shop teacher once told me that people who smoke marijuana and Tobacco at the same time are 8 times more likely to develop lung cancer. Is my balding 26 year old auto teacher know what he's talking about? Rating: 5

[psteve]

It's true.
If you add tobacco into your weed, you will be exposing yourself to lung cancer.

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Tobacco itself gives you 8x more chance of lung cancer, that sounds about right. But that has nothing to do with mixing with weed, tobacco is just poisonous shit!

[birdgirl73]

In the Tashkin UCLA studies and the Kaiser studies about marijuana and lung cancer (you can Google these terms and read more information), they found that marijuana alone--even heavy marijuana use--didn't result in increased lung cancer likelihood. And they theorize--they don't know this but they suspect it--that the THC in cannabis seems to have an anti-cancer effect because, as this article I link below points out, cannabis smoke isn't a clean or healthy substance from a tar or carcinogenic standpoint.

Even in the groups of people who smoked both marijuana and cigarettes, the cannabis smokers had lower rates of lung and other cancers. They won't yet go so far as to conclude that cannabis lowers the risk of cancer, mostly because they need to do lots more studies. But they suspect that that's what these results mean.

You might print out some of this information and take it to your auto shop teacher so he'll know a bit more of what he's talking about! People who smoke tobacco cigarettes are at greatly increased risk of cancer. There's no disputing that. But the same does not appear to be true of cannabis smoking. And it may well be that adding cannabis into the mix with tobacco has some protective effects from the tobacco carcinogens.

Large Study Finds No Link between Marijuana and Lung Cancer: Scientific American

[psteve]

I suspect it's due to cannabis' well documented expectorant effect.
Cannabis makes you cough out more of the carcinogens, while nicotine constricts the lung passages, trapping them.

[birdgirl73]

I don't think I believe that myself. If expectorant effects helped prevent cancer, then people who took lots of expectorant medicines--or even people who coughed a lot from bronchitis, for instance--would have lower rates of cancer. And that's not the case.

It appears to be the anti-inflammatory/anti-carcinogenic properties in THC and how it works at the cellular level. In lab-rat studies, THC has amazing anti-cancer effects on certain types of cancer cells and causes unique and beneficial types of cell-pruning. This is what Tashkin and the other researchers theorize is happening, and I expect they're right.

[AtomicBlaze42o]

Crap, I was toasty when I asked that question. I meant people who smoke cannabis and tobacco at the same time are 8 times more likely to get lung cancer than a person who just smokes tobacco.

[lovetogrow]

hes full of shit you will not get it from the weed, but as long as you using tobacco is there is a good chance

[psteve]

Crap, I was toasty when I asked that question. I meant people who smoke cannabis and tobacco at the same time are 8 times more likely to get lung cancer than a person who just smokes tobacco.

He's a god damned liar and will burn in hell with beelzebush for lying to children.

[birdgirl73]

Well, there's certainly no evidence anywhere that anyone has done any scientific testing on cannabis combined with tobacco, which makes one thing fairly clear: your teacher pulled that 8 times statistic right out of thin air. It's always fun to call people who cite figures like that on their stats. Just ask him to show you the reports or studies that cite that figure.

Considering that cannabis appears to have some anti-carcinogenic effects, when combined with tobacco it would probably be far more likely to lower the risk of cancer than raise it. But, again, no one really knows since this hasn't been studied.

I think your teacher is indeed a knucklehead. Anyone who uses tobacco, either with cannabis or without, needs to be worried about an increased risk of lung cancer. Whether it's a .08, 8 times or 800% increased risk, tobacco presents a cancer risk.