This is a response to John Kirkman’s letter, published June 11, 2007 in the ODE (“Petryni avoids an honest debate about cannabis”). Nonsense! Although I will admit that I have not read any articles or publications that cannabis causes cancer, I have not read any articles or publications stating hat cannabis is cancer-preventive. Put contains 421 chemicals, 2 of which are carcinogens.
Mr. Kirkman’s incongruous statement about alcohol and tobacco killing more Americans than pot, though, is misinforming and is like saying that rape is harmless because the perpetrator used a condom or the victim wasn’t murdered.
Not only is cannabis not a cancer preventative, it doesn’t even treat cancer, it treats symptoms of symptoms. It is useful as an anti-nausea agent for cancer patients being treated with chemo and radiation. And that’s THC, not marijuana.
By the way, DUI arrests are up in Oregon, where the primary substance detected in a urine screen is THC. In part due to the pot being grown today, it is up to 6 times more powerful than in the ’60s and ’70s, when it was thought to be non-addictive.
What are my resources? I am a two-time cancer survivor, a recovering addict/alcoholic and I’m a retired substance abuse treatment director.
I have a real hard time believing any information shared from a brain saturated with THC. That stuff stays in the cerebral cortex for weeks, even months after cessation. I am not an anti-pot advocate, But I do have personal and professional biases, just as John Kirkman may have. I worked in a detox unit for years. You’d be surprised what some of the marijuana addicts went through trying to recover.
Colin Campbell
Eugene