On Tuesday I posted an entry with a link to a Salonarticle by Maia Szalavitz which exposed the fatuousness of the Drug Czar’s current attempt to scare people into thinking that marijuana causes insanity. It provoked the following comment titled “Another fact” by one John Chapman, “Why be concerned whether marijuana causes insanity? The amount of carcinogens in one marijuana cigarette equals about one cigarette pack full of carcinogens.”

However, Mr. Chapman is not dealing in fact but rather in myth. And, if he had bothered to read Szalavitz’s article he would have discovered the following passage concerning the rationale behind the idea that smoking marijuana causes cancer, “But that reasoning was called into question in late June, when Dr. Donald Tashkin of the UCLA School of Medicine presented a large, case-control study -- of the kind that have linked tobacco use with increases in lung cancer -- at an annual scientific meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society in Clearwater, Fla. Tashkin is no hippie-dippy marijuana advocate: His earlier work has been cited by the drug czar's office itself, because his research showed that marijuana can cause lung damage. The new study, however, found no connection between pot smoking -- even by heavy users -- and lung cancer. In fact, among the more than 1,200 people studied, those who had smoked marijuana, but not cigarettes, appeared to have a lower risk for lung cancer than even those who had smoked neither.”

Also, this is by no means the first time that researchers have found an absent connection between cancer and cannabis. For example a study conducted by Daniel E. Ford, M.D of Johns Hopkins Medical School and released in 2000 found no association between smoking marijuana and increased risk of head, neck or lung cancers.