It's ok Mr. Officer, it's just a joint

[rah]

AMSTERDAM - The Netherlands introduced a tobacco smoking ban in bars and restaurants on Tuesday but weed lovers carried on lighting up pure cannabis joints, pipes and vaporizers in the country's coffee shops.

"No smoking" signs were clearly visible in traditional Dutch brown cafes and trendy bars, while coffee shop owners handed out leaflets outlining the new rules of consumption and suggesting tobacco substitutes like a mix of herbs.

"Many cultures don't smoke cannabis with tobacco. Americans often smoke with bongs (hookahs). But the Dutch are used to smoking it with cigarettes, so it will be more of a hassle for them," said Barbara Bovenkerk, floor manager at the Green House coffee shop.

So smoking or second hand smoke is a health hazard and must be removed from indoor public places, but weed smoke is ok.

[C0ckney]

why yes, yes it is.

[Krill]

Awesome, I'd move the Holland if I understood Dutch or enjoyed drugs

[Asher]

At least weed smoke gets the other people high, a "Courtesy high".

[rah]

Yes, I know weed smoke is OK, but the logic here sounds like it came from someone that had already had enough weed smoke.

[Felch]

These anti-indoor smoking laws are insulting to otherwise responsible adults.

[Zkribbler]

Re: It's ok Mr. Officer, it's just a joint

Originally posted by rah
So smoking or second hand smoke is a health hazard and must be removed from indoor public places, but weed smoke is ok.

You get lung cander from pot as well as tobacco. It's just with pot, you're so high, you don't care.

[Kidlicious]

Re: Re: It's ok Mr. Officer, it's just a joint

Originally posted by Zkribbler


You get lung cander from pot as well as tobacco. It's just with pot, you're so high, you don't care.

I don't think that's true that pot causes lung cancer, but it does make you stupid.

[germanos]

Re: It's ok Mr. Officer, it's just a joint

Originally posted by rah


So smoking or second hand smoke is a health hazard and must be removed from indoor public places, but weed smoke is ok.

Pay attention rah:

Smoking weed in indoor places is ONLY ok when it's inside a coffee-shop, which is the Dutch euphenism (sp?) for a weed/hash shop. And yes, you need, and can have, a licence for that.

You can also smoke it indoor in your own house offcourse.

If your wife doesn't like it, go to a nearby sunny park .

[Felch]

Re: Re: Re: It's ok Mr. Officer, it's just a joint

Originally posted by Kidicious
I don't think that's true that pot causes lung cancer, but it does make you stupid.

It does cause cancer, just not reliably. It takes a lot of smoke (think 1-2 packs/day for decades). Most people just don't smoke that much pot for it to matter, largely because it's not as addictive.

[rah]

I know germanos, but it's illegal to smoke a cigarette in those coffee shops because it's bad for your health.

And yes felch, but what is funny is that those that argued for cigarette bans used the arguement that it didn't matter how little cigarette smoke there was, it's still a hazard. So for those people it shouldn't matter that you'd have to smoke a lot of pot, because "just a little" is still dangerous.

This is why I'm astounded about this.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by rah
And yes felch

I didn't think anyone would believe felch...

[Felch]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I didn't think anyone would believe felch...

Once in a blue moon I'm right.

I'm not anti-pot, I'm a big fan of it. But inhaling any kind of smoke is going to hurt your lungs. And people who smoke all the time, and who compound that with tobacco, are likely to see some nasty results.

Now if you meant that vaporized or cooked weed wouldn't cause cancer, I'd agree with you. I don't know of anybody who developed cancer from eating pot brownies.

I can't check out that vid while I'm at work, but I'll be off soon enough.

[rah]

Yeah, i can't check the vid out at work either.
All smoke is not good for you.
But smoking a joint or so every week has to be less harmfull than a couple of packs of sigs every day.

[Kidlicious]

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 26, 2006; Page A03

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used Tashkin's previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous. Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than previously thought.

Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.

Tashkin's study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex and neighborhood.

They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lighted up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.

"This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use," he said. "Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have real meaning."

Tashkin's group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had hypothesized that marijuana would raise the risk of cancer on the basis of earlier small human studies, lab studies of animals, and the fact that marijuana users inhale more deeply and generally hold smoke in their lungs longer than tobacco smokers -- exposing them to the dangerous chemicals for a longer time. In addition, Tashkin said, previous studies found that marijuana tar has 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked to cancer than tobacco cigarette tar.

While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older than that were generally not exposed to marijuana in their youth, when it is most often tried.